March is Women’s History Month and March 8th is International Women’s Day. Bond is so proud to recognize the amazing contributions of the women we work with every day, including our employees, customers, and partners. We respect them, admire them, and just plain think they’re cool. Here is what their teammates had to say about them.

Please join us in celebrating the outstanding contributions of these women! And don’t forget to do the same for the women in your life - they deserve recognition, too. 

Bond employees and colleagues

Kudos to Lu Zhang, who previously led the Bond OS team through our early days and now is leading the Bond Comply team to build one of the critical pillars for our financial system. If I need to describe Lu in three words, it would be: diligent, accountable, and passionate!

To our engineering leader Yang Wang - Yang constantly presents a voice of reason in our internal discussions and always asks the right questions to understand the task at hand. She recognizes the accomplishments of others and inspires me to be a better leader.

To our in-house payment expert, Annette Faynburd, who led the direct ACH integration project with our banking partners, which is a major accomplishment for a company of any size! I have seen her handle several moments of potential conflict with grace and composure and she is a joy.

Thank you, Lapis Kim, Bond's Head of Finance! Your kindness, open-mindedness, positivity, and dedication to making Bond the best place to work are reflected in every conversation we have.  You continue to be an amazing partner, helping us navigate the challenging waters of fintech. Your solutions to incredibly complex settlements, financial reports, and financial metrics are fantastic and reflect how incredibly talented you are.

To our General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer Sandrine Cousquer-Okasmaa, for being a combination of an exceptional lawyer, skillful negotiator, and an exceptional business leader. I have never met a lawyer that “gets” the business lens as much as Sandrine does. She wears a lot of hats and carries a heavy load, but always makes time for her team and constantly strives to make this organization a better place for its employees and clients.

To our marketing expert, Emily Novosel, for bringing a can-do mindset, positivity, and deep marketing expertise to every initiative we have worked together on. I look forward to every new project that we will get to work on together.

To our fearless Executive Assistant, Amelia Loy, for working through ever-changing schedules, priorities, and meeting rooms, and for being the backbone of our All Hands meetings and culture initiatives. It takes a superwoman to be able to do all this!

To our inimitable content marketer, Amanda Kilmer, for doing everything under the sun here at Bond as our Executive Business Partner before taking on this latest role as the voice of Bond in our blogs and social media. Thank you for literally setting the tone at All Hands meetings by DJ-ing our music, choosing the emojis, and bringing your infectious enthusiasm. Now you’re putting your journalism skills to good use as our content guru and putting your indelible stamp on our external comms. Thank you!

To Swati Teerdhala, our product marketing expert, for learning all the crazy complexity of our products and turning them into smooth, eloquent prose. From the blog post you wrote within a few days of joining to the sales collateral you produced in a few hours, thank you for making Bond look good and for helping the rest of us be better at our jobs.

To our data wizard, Sofia Buzeti, for giving the whole company reporting tools to better understand how customers use our products, having patience with our ever-evolving reporting needs, and providing visibility around ACH reconciliation in record time. Thanks for always being inquisitive, positive, and delivering value!

Thank you to Audrey Gallimore, our rockstar DevOps engineer, for expertly using her deep experience in infrastructure engineering to improve our platform. Her relentless focus toward evolving our systems in the right way has been huge in helping us build a best-in-class platform infrastructure, and her willingness to liberally share her knowledge with those around her makes the entire engineering team at Bond better.

Melanie Barker's depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise is a vital asset to the Bond Team, our technology partnerships and the overall fintech ecosystem. Under her leadership, we've built a collection of best-in-breed technology partners to help our customers build world class financial products.

To Simrat Sethi, our Director of Implementation, your leadership is powering Bond’s ability to efficiently and rapidly launch our customers. In a very short period of time you took control of one of the most complex and cross-functional activities at Bond, and through your level-headed and compassionate approach, you are guiding our customers to success.

To our Director of Fintech Operations Grace Tang with extensive industry knowledge and a deep understanding of our how Bond’s business interacts with our partners, Grace is elevating our most important relationships with our issuing banks, card fulfillment partners and card networks. Grace’s attention detail, crisp and clear communications and enthusiasm exemplify Bond’s strive to excellence.

To our compliance expert Katie Zahn, for understanding all the regulatory complexities associated with credit compliance and always jumping in to help with whatever needs to be done. Katie is patient, provides a thorough analysis, and is always willing to communicate with all of her business partners.

To our product operations expert Chris Drury, thank you for giving the Prod/Eng teams actionable frameworks to be more efficient. For being a great resource and guide, and infusing our mindset with customer empathy. Thanks for inspiring us to be better doers and leaders!

To Tory Zehnder, our product manager of the Brand Experience team, I believe you have the most challenging job in the product organization at Bond and you’re the captain steering the ship for exploration and discovery. You show tremendous effort and passion in building products and working with our Engineering team and you never shy away from a problem; you question issues to get to the root while embracing new challenges. Salute to your patience, dedication, and devotion, for all the journey we have been through as a team and for many beyond.

Bond partners and customers

Cristina Vila Vives is a powerful leader in FinTech and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with her and her team at Cledara. Those companies who will partner with Cledara will reap the benefits of the years of experience she and her team bring to the US. With more leaders like Cristina in FinTech, this industry is headed in the right direction.

It's uncommon to find a bank president as forward thinking as Suchitra Padmanabhan. When she first made the leap to purchase CBW Bank, she had a vision for it that superseded the typical model of taking deposits and making loans. Today, Suchitra's leadership continues to guide her team to the forefront of fintech and we're product to have her as a Sponsor Bank for Bond and our customers.

Kelly Reiter is an incredible example of women's leadership in her role as VP, Client Engagement, at i2c.  As the point of contact for Bond, she has exemplified grace and poise in complex situations that require in-depth knowledge as well as first-rate emotional intelligence skills to reach a successful conclusion. For example, she was instrumental in paving the way for Bond to create a unique platform protocol. Kelly has provided all this and more as Bond has grown and successfully launched our brands in partnership with i2c!

An accomplished athlete, Kristen Kines at Evolve Bank and Trust brings to our partnership the commitment, discipline and adaptability that was instilled in her early in life. She is the ultimate team player and will support you every step of the way to achieve your goals. Kristen's deep industry expertise allows her to find a solution to the various needs of growing fintech platforms like ours and we are lucky to have her on our side!

Azita Zahedi is has been a powerful advocate for Bond. Her leadership and total commitment to Evolve’s customers shines in every interaction with Bond. Every customer of Evolve will enjoy working with Azi and will benefit from her knowledge, grace, and dedication.

Mary Hardwick exemplifies Evolve’s commitment to lead the Fintech industry. Her years of experience and superior knowledge of this industry are a huge benefit to every Evolve customer. Not only is Mary dedicated to the success of Evolve’s customers, but she is also a mentor and a leader.

Thank you to all our female colleagues who bring their energy, enthusiasm, intelligence, and experience to help Bond, our customers, and our platform. We see you and appreciate all that you do!