2025 Tech Leader Award shortlist

We’re delighted to reveal the shortlist for this year’s Tech Leader Award.

This award honours women who have made an exceptional impact in digital or technology disciplines within financial services. It recognises individuals driving the tech agenda through thought leadership, technical expertise, or innovation, and celebrates those who bring passion and creativity to their work- whether by leading transformative projects or leveraging technology to enhance their organisation’s impact.

Crucially, our Tech Leader nominees have not only pushed the boundaries of technology, but also advanced gender equity and inclusion across financial services.

This year, nine incredible women have been shortlisted for the award.

Tech Leader Award Shortlist

Catherine Ablott – Citi

Catherine joined Citi in 2021 to build a new department focused on developing engineering talent, transforming ways-of-working and driving adoption of a modern engineering toolkit. She developed Engineering Excellence from a small, volunteer-led Markets Technology program and dramatically increased its scope, scale and impact across all 50,000 engineers at Citi – without losing the valuable input of the community volunteers or the foundation on which it was built.

Notable achievements include:
Developing technology talent – Designing and implementing a Talent Framework, empowering engineers to advance their technical careers through training, highly selective talent programs and recognition schemes – increasing applicant numbers on these programs by over 200%.

These programmes have delivered solutions that go on to become enterprise solutions for Citi including the strategic CI/CD platform.

Boosting developer productivity – Leading initiatives to increase productivity through equipping engineers with resources to work more efficiently, innovate faster and deliver impactful outcomes – including driving adoption of strategic DevOps tools and Citi AI tools to save engineers thousands of hours per week.

Fostering strategic collaboration – Holding the annual Engineering Excellence Tech Conference; in October 2024 the conference included events for engineers in 14 countries in one week, with over 14,000 attendees globally.

Chandini Jain – Auquan

Chandini Jain is the CEO and co-founder of Auquan, where she is revolutionising financial services through AI-driven automation. Under her visionary leadership, Auquan launched the industry’s first agentic AI platform for finance—transforming how professionals in private equity, credit, and asset management conduct research, risk analysis, and compliance. In just over a year, Chandini has led Auquan to triple its revenue, secure $8M in funding, and gain adoption by 40% of the world’s top 50 financial institutions.

She has steered the company’s expansion across London, New York, and Bangalore, scaling a 50+ person team. Her strategic direction has resulted in the successful deployment of specialized AI agents that autonomously complete investment and risk workflows – saving clients over 50,000 hours of manual effort.

Chandini is known not only for her technical acumen and financial expertise, but also for her hands-on leadership style and deep customer empathy. Her commitment to innovation, transparency, and empowering talent has made Auquan a category-defining company in financial AI. Beyond the business, she is a vocal advocate for responsible AI and increasing representation of women in both finance and tech, mentoring aspiring leaders and shaping the next generation of industry professionals.

Claire Sunderland Hay – Citi

Claire has made outstanding contributions across Citi, positioning her as a standout nominee for the Women in Banking and Finance Tech Leader award.

An impactful leader in technology, she has played a pivotal role in embedding operational resiliency across Citi, and the introduction of a streamlined incident escalation process, which in turn has led to improved client outcomes. This initiative not only ensures faster, clearer communication during critical events, but also supports more effective engagement with regulators, reflecting best-in-class governance and transparency.

By fostering closer alignment between business and technology teams, she has helped break down silos and embed a culture of collaboration and shared accountability. This has resulted in more robust service delivery, reduced downtime, and an elevated client experience.

Beyond Citi, Claire actively shares her expertise to benefit the NHS, advocating for enhanced risk management and operational resilience in her role as board member and co-chair of the Infrastructure Committee of St George’s, the largest hospital in London.

Her ability to unite technical excellence with strategic business insight sets Claire apart. She continues to inspire others through her impactful contributions, championing inclusive leadership and driving lasting, meaningful change in financial services technology.

Ellie Hewitt – KPMG

Ellie is a Director in KPMG’s Payments Consulting business, and KPMG’s MENA lead for Open Banking / Open Finance. Ellie has extensive experience in digital product innovation, use case design, M&A activity, and running large transformation programmes. Ellie’s experience extends across Europe and Australia, working across the industry with large banks, payment schemes, payment infrastructure operators, fintechs and regulators. Ellie is dedicated and passionate about gender equality not only within KPMG but in the wider Payments ecosystem. She is involved in Women in Payments, Women in Open Banking and the Money 2020 Rise Up programme, all of which promote the advancement of women within the payments sector and also promote the KPMG brand

Prior to KPMG, Ellie was European Head of Product & Strategy for Open Banking & Real Time Payments at Visa. As part of this role, Ellie defined the corporate strategy for alternate payment (ie non-card) diversification, wallet partnerships, led the Visa programme to acquire Tink, and designed various new account to account propositions.

Ellie also has a prominent industry profile within the Open Banking and Payments sector. She contributes significantly to industry associations, sitting on The Payments Association Open Banking working group, Innovate Finance working group and is a Global Board Member for Women in Payments.

Farirai Gora  – We Are Eden

Farirai Gora is a visionary technology leader and the founder of We Are Eden, a pioneering B2B SaaS platform transforming how financial services organisations address workplace inclusion and human capital risk. Leveraging over 12 years of insurance and product innovation experience, Farirai has developed a clinically designed, AI-powered solution that tackles the £20 billion productivity loss caused by inadequate reproductive health support in the UK workforce. Her platform, Policy Pulse, empowers managers with instant, legally compliant guidance for sensitive employee conversations, directly mitigating legal risks and fostering psychological safety.

Farirai’s leadership is defined by her ability to translate complex, human issues into scalable, data-driven solutions that deliver measurable business and social impact. She has secured multinational clients for her compant, improved talent retention, and driven up to a 15% increase in team productivity. As a Black female founder, Farirai is a visible role model, championing gender equity and inclusion both within her organisation and across the financial services sector. Her work not only advances women’s careers but also sets a new standard for DEI innovation, making her a standout candidate for the Tech Leader Award.

Suky Sandhu – Deloitte Consulting

Suky Sandhu, a Financial Services Partner at Deloitte Consulting, is an exceptional leader renowned for her passion, authenticity, and commitment to diversity and inclusion. She’s significantly impacted Deloitte’s technology leadership agenda, notably through establishing the Deloitte Sikh Network (600+ members) and championing initiatives like Women in Cloud and Engineering. Simultaneously building a 150+ practitioner Wealth Platforms team and driving the 30% female Partner target in FS Consulting, Suky exemplifies work-life balance as a mother of a 5-year-old. Her collaborative, supportive leadership style fosters trust and growth, inspiring confidence and encouraging ethical conduct. Suky’s dedication to mentoring and uplifting women, coupled with her unwavering commitment to excellence, makes her a truly deserving nominee for exceptional tech leadership.

Shirin Hine – Deutsche Bank

Shirin is a visionary technology leader with over two decades of experience driving innovation in banking and finance. An early advocate for AI adoption, she champions its role as a transformative force and often shares insights on how society adapts to this wave of change.

As a member of the Technology Executive Committee for the Investment Bank, Shirin helps shape AI strategy and promotes its safe, effective adoption. She bridges technology best practice with education, supporting diversity initiatives such as Women in Technology and Women in Data Science, and produces materials to nurture female talent and future leaders.

Previously, as Head of Research and Index Technology, Shirin developed AI use cases including content generation, monetisation models, and client-facing chatbots, delivering significant cost savings.

She also plays a key role in aligning data strategy across divisions, breaking down silos to enhance impact. Shirin promotes federated query technology and tools such as Trino and Hasura to balance speed, compliance, and simplicity. Beyond her technical expertise, she is adept at shaping executive narratives, ensuring alignment between AI strategy and business priorities. Her ability to connect technical teams with senior stakeholders sets her apart as a leader in the field.

Tasneem Bhamji – Lloyds Banking Group

Tas is a visionary digital executive leading transformation at scale. As Digital Engagement Director at Lloyds Banking Group, she drives innovation for 21 million+ app users – shaping customer journeys, scaling AI responsibly, and embedding trust into digital experiences.

Operating at Chief Digital Officer level, she has delivered enterprise-wide change across digital sales, platform design, and organisational transformation. Her leadership has driven app innovation, multi-million-pound business cases, and major shifts in operating models – all with measurable impact.

What sets her apart is the ability to turn strategy into real-world outcomes. She’s led high stakes change across contact centres, back-office functions, and complex stakeholder  landscapes – from platform architecture to team capability. Her work blends performance with purpose: she’s clear that digital should not just automate, but earn trust.

A confident communicator, she speaks regularly on panels about AI, digital intimacy, and tech ethics. She’s also the founder of Office Real Talk, a platform supporting diverse talent in tech and leadership — proving she can scale systems and communities alike.

In short, she is redefining what inclusive, impactful tech leadership looks like, and she’s only just getting started.

To find out more about our 2025 awards and the rest of the shortlists, click here.