Dr Marta G. Zanchi is the Founder and Managing Partner of global healthtech VC, NinaCapital.
Artificial Intelligence is not just changing how we work; it’s rewriting the global economy, with McKinsey projecting that Generative AI alone could add between $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in economic value annually.
While AI affects every sector, finance is in the midst of a true revolution: 75% of financial firms already use AI, with another 10% planning to adopt it within the next three years.
However, there is a glaring disparity in who stands to benefit from this boom. Despite progress in the last decade, women remain missing from the roles where real influence happens. As an example, in the UK only 17.3% of tech businesses are female-led, and female founders receive a staggering 2% of VC funds. Globally, women represent only 22% of AI professionals.
To change these statistics, we must stop encouraging women to merely be users of AI, and push them to become the innovators and architects of technology. Here is how women in finance can move from the periphery to the centre of value creation.
Leap 1: Own the Data Pipeline
The first step to leadership is technical fluency in the industry’s control point: data. An AI model is only as valuable as the data it is trained on, yet over a third of business leaders cite data quality as a primary barrier to adoption.
Women must avoid stagnating in purely user-facing or managerial roles and aggressively advance into the core infrastructure. The best way to lead in AI is to be fluent in the data that feeds it. By mastering the pipeline, you secure a position where value is created, not just managed.
Leap 2: Enter “Solutions Mode”
Too often, women wait for a formal mandate to act. To bypass traditional, incremental career paths, women must shift into “solutions mode.
Do not wait for permission. Identify critical, costly organisational problems – such as regulatory compliance costs or fraud detection efficacy – and tackle them. Use these challenges to develop proof-of-concept solutions, either independently or with a self-assembled team. Presenting a solution rather than just a problem establishes you as a value driver and bypasses the typical corporate ladder.
The Toolkit: Governance and Translation
Beyond core technical abilities, two specific capabilities will define the next generation of high-impact leaders.
The first concerns systemic risk & governance. In finance, AI impacts capital allocation and trading, and organisations must understand the cascading risks these models introduce. Women who can ensure fairness, prevent catastrophic bias, and maintain auditability – essentially converging regulatory expertise with machine learning – will be highly compensated.
The second is all about cross-domain translation. The opportunity in AI isn’t just in building the model, but in translating its outputs for the C-suite. Women who can bridge the gap between a data scientist’s output and an executive’s investment decision will become indispensable integrators.
The Future of Female Inclusion
The financial sector is at a pivotal moment. As AI becomes the engine of value creation, women cannot afford to lose out on this opportunity.
The path forward requires moving decisively into the data pipeline, proactively building solutions, and mastering the governance skills that will safeguard the future of finance. By doing so, we ensure women are not just participants in the AI economy, but the architects of it.
