Leaders & Founders

In this episode of Leaders & Founders, we sit down with Iman Majumdar, VP Engineering at ZOE Health, the company behind the world's largest nutrition science study and one of the most AI-forward product teams in Europe. Iman talks openly about what it actually looks like to run an engineering team with 84% AI adoption, why he insists on using different models to review AI-generated code, a...

Andrew Smith has spent his career quietly rewiring the plumbing of modern finance - the stuff that keeps the financial world running even when nobody’s looking. As the Founding CTO of ClearBank, he helped architect and launch the UK’s first new clearing bank in more than 250 years. What started as a blank sheet of paper became the backbone of real-time payments for fintechs, banks, and entire ecos...

In this episode, Jack sits down with Lee Provoost , the Chief Technology Officer at Flagstone , to explore what it really takes to scale a fintech engineering organisation — responsibly, rapidly, and without compromising on innovation or compliance. Over the past year, Flagstone has grown its headcount by 30% , all while operating within one of the most tightly regulated sectors in tech. Lee opens...

Kirsty Rutter has over 25 years of experience in financial services, holding various roles in finance, strategy, risk, data, technology, innovation, and strategic investment across six top-tier financial institutions. She is passionate about driving organisational growth through cultural change, challenging traditional methods, and championing the opportunities presented by new tools and technolog...

Darren is a seasoned sales and marketing channel specialist with a career spanning nearly three decades in the technology industry. Over that time, he has held a variety of senior leadership roles, shaping the strategies and cultures of the organisations he’s been part of. Since 2021, he has been serving as Chief Revenue Officer at Smartbox.ai, a multi-award-winning artificial intelligence company...

We’re absolutely thrilled to welcome Conrad Ford to the L&F podcast today — a genuine heavyweight in the UK fintech and banking space. Conrad is Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Allica Bank (⁠www.allica.bank⁠), which has been recognised as the UK’s fastest-growing company by The Sunday Times and as the fastest-growing financial technology firm in UK history by Deloitte. That’s no small...

In this episode, we welcome Beks Yelland — a seasoned digital product leader with a track record across Financial Services, Health, Energy, Utilities and many more, and founder of the not-for-profit community The Female Product Lead . With a mission to build inclusive spaces in the tech and product world, Beks is inspiring a fast-growing network of women to thrive, share knowledge, and step confid...

In this episode, we sit down with Sergio Zavota , AI Architect and Lead MLOps Engineer at NewDay, and Co-Founder of NutriCoach. Together Jack and Sergio explore how AI is reshaping everything from consumer finance to personalised health.  We get into the nitty gritty of Sergio’s work building responsible AI systems at NewDay, and the vision behind NutriCoach, his startup using AI to deliver tailor...

This episode, we’re joined by David Ferguson, the visionary CEO of Seccl and founder of Nucleus Wealth. With a deep background in financial services and a drive to eliminate friction, David shares how he’s transforming investment platforms, and the industry itself.    We dive into: Uncovering hidden inefficiencies: Why David believes the wealth tech space has "a tech gap."  Lessons from...

In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with David Wascha, a seasoned product and technology leader whose career spans major names like Microsoft, Travelex, Moo and Zoopla. David opens up about the lessons he’s learned across industries, the evolving role of technology in shaping great products, and how his family life has profoundly influenced his leadership style and career decisions. It’...

Jason Oakley  is the CEO of  Afin Bank , where he leads a dynamic and diverse team united by a clear purpose: to redefine value in financial services through innovation, agility, and purpose-driven leadership. With nearly 40 years of experience in banking and investment, Jason has a consistent track record of launching, scaling, and guiding businesses to success across a wide range of markets. At...

In episode 41 of Leaders & Founders, we sit down with Nicole Olbe, a true force in fintech and the current UK Managing Director at Adyen UK - one of the world's most innovative payment platforms.  With a career spanning Barclaycard, The Logic Group, and Verifone, Nicole brings unmatched expertise in global financial services, strategic partnerships, and payment innovation. She also opens u...

Jas Shah  is a Fintech Product Leader, who has spent over 16 years ideating, developing and helping bring products to life in fintech and FS organisations. He's worked with organisations and led the build and launch of Digital Banks, Open Banking Products, Payments Systems, Trading Platforms, and many other FS products for consumers, businesses and enterprise, as well as advising several Seed...

Hold on tight—this one’s a game-changer! In this episode of Leaders & Founders , we’re joined by the incredible Beth Horn , UK Managing Director at Pinterest —one of the world’s most inspiring and fastest-growing digital platforms. Beth is a powerhouse in the tech and digital space, with an impressive career spanning Meta, Spotify, and search-driven commerce before taking the helm at Pinterest...

Leda is a seasoned fintech executive and former banker, with a career spanning two decades working in transformation and technology functions across a variety of financial services verticals. She is the author of best-selling book‘Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition’ (Taylor and Francis, 2023) and of the upcoming‘Beyond Resilience: Patterns of Success in Fintech and Digital...

Want to know how to get that promotion you've always wanted? Ever wondered how some people are able to secure such a better package than you, despite doing the same job? Do you want to truly understand why you and only you are in control of your destiny? If you answered 'yes' to any of those questions, then this episode if for you! -------------------------------------------------------------- Our...

Jo Drake is a highly accomplished technology leader and current CTO at THG, one of the UK’s most recognisable and successful e-commerce businesses. Once an aspiring professional tennis player, Jo was thrown into the world of technology when a career-ending injury changed her direction of travel. But what a change this was, with Jo’s career becoming a huge success that has seen her lead organisatio...

Carl is an inspirational leader that is currently guiding the incredible team at Super Payments as CTO. With a rich history of building and leading high-performing teams at businesses such as Beauty Pie, Funding Circle, GfK and a global credit business, it's safe to say that Carl gets leadership and how to build highly efficient teams. In this episode, we dive deep into what has led Carl to wh...

Phil is a VP Engineering at Google, where throughout a 9-year tenure he's led a number of technical teams, including the Site Reliability Engineering group for Google Cloud Platform and Google's internal Technical Infrastructure. A UK native, Phil holds a BA in Mathematics from Oxford University and before joining Google, he spent 17 years as Chief Architect at Fidessa, where he led teams...

Anyfin was launched in 2017 by Mikael Hussain (CEO), Sven Perkmann (CTO) and Filip Polhem (COO), who together bring more than two decades of experience in helping to build some of Sweden’s leading technology success stories at Klarna, Spotify, and iZettle. Their mission is to help as many people as possible to become the best financially stable versions of themselves. Using new technology, they ha...

Tomas Ohlson is the Founding Engineer at Einride, joining as one of the company’s first 5 employees. Originally from the countryside in Sweden, Tomas grew up on a farm where he was always surrounded by creative minds, passionate about helping those around them. A societal obligation was instilled in him at a young age. Following his passion for engineering, computers and building things, Tomas gra...

Matthew O'Riordan is the CEO & Co-Founder of Realtime Tech company Ably. Ably provides cloud infrastructure and APIs to build realtime features like chat, notifications, live maps, loT control.  Matt has a very interesting background, coming from South Africa to the UK we hear about his journey. He founded and successfully sold digital consultancy, Econsultancy. We hear about how the idea...

Jakub Zakrzewski is the Managing Director of APAC at Kraken Digital Exchange, one of the world's most successful and widely used Cryptocurrency exchanges. As MD of APAC, Jakub guides the team on their growth journey in the region and plays a huge part in allowing the business to scale to meet the incredible demand for their product worldwide. With Cryptocurrency and Blockchain once again being at...

Nicholas Goubert is the Chief Product Officer at CLARK, an exciting German-based InsureTech scale-up and has had an incredible career within Product Leadership at some of the most innovative technology companies in Europe. After studying Computer Science and geography at university, he started working in geospatial technology which took him all over the world, working on some very unique challenge...

Sustainability Leadership is the brand new book from Henrik Henriksson, CEO & President of Scania Group and Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, the Founder of the AI Sustainability Centre and former Chief Sustainability Officer at Ericsson. Honest about the dilemmas but bullish on the opportunities, Henrik and Elaine advise leaders on how to accelerate sustainability in their organisations told through...