Today’s guest is a champion of female empowerment and gender equality.

With her 20 years of experience in the finance industry, she has been a FINTECH industry leader at companies such as Credit Suisse First Boston, Lazard Freres, and Equity Growth Partners.

She has been a catalyst for positive change serving as a senior-level executive and leading numerous corporate turnarounds of VC-backed portfolio companies. She has served as Vice Chairman of the Serious Game Institute at George Mason University which has a focus on women and girls in technology and coding.

She founded Angelink, the first social crowdfunding platform inspired and powered by women. Angelink is a purpose-driven community to empower people around the world, transform lives, and restore faith in humanity.

Please join me in welcoming Gerry Poirier.

In this episode we discuss:

• her thoughts on leadership: “Leaders are courageous and sympathetic. They have to make decisions based on imperfect information. Good leaders are not scared to make mistakes.”
• her trip around the world for over four months with her little brother and friend, taking charge and building her self-confidence.
• her background in finance and how she landed a job in finance at the interview based on how risky her resume was.
• her passion to be an entrepreneur and do something that would help women, especially who were under-represented in the world of finance.
• her reason to start AngeLink and how her background in gaming and coding helped her build community.
• the challenges of building AngeLink outside of the main tech hubs in the United States and how her network helped her get some (back) doors open.
• her bucket list wish to meet Sara Blakely, inventor of Spanx.
• her strategy to nurture her network and the risk-taking required to make the first move.

Listen, subscribe and read show notes at www.OnTheSchmooze.com – episode 219.