Women at Level39 Network: Stories That Shape Success

The Women at Level39 Network gathered for an inspiring morning celebrating International Women’s Day through powerful storytelling, honest reflections, and practical insights on leadership, entrepreneurship, technology, and the shared theme of “Give to Gain.”

The event brought together founders, innovators, executives, technologists, and ecosystem leaders who each shared personal journeys marked by resilience, community, and purposeful growth.
The aim of Stories that Shape Success was to:

• Elevate the voices of women across fintech, AI, digital innovation, and entrepreneurship.
• Create a space for authenticity, where speakers could openly share the pivotal moments, challenges, and decisions that shaped their careers.
• Highlight the power of community, visibility, and shared learning-especially across an ecosystem as global and interconnected as Level39.
• Encourage action, urging women (and allies) to give their knowledge, support, and expertise to help shape a more equitable, inclusive future.
• At its heart, the event reinforced Level39’s commitment to celebrating women’s leadership, widening representation in fast-growth industries, and fostering a community where connection drives collective success.

Speaker Highlights & Their Stories

Opening Audience Introductions

To set the tone, six audience members introduced themselves:

• Divya Jyoti – Gemba
• Sireesha Jajala – Peach Ventures
• Elizabeth Jones – Welcome to With
• Hilde Huckleberg – Innovation Norway
• Rashee Pandey – Innovate Finance
• Tulasi Parmar – TULASI

Offering an immediate sense of community and showcasing the breadth of experience in the room. From fintech operators and investors to ecosystem leaders and digital fashion founders, their stories framed a morning rich in cross-sector inspiration.

Fireside Conversation: Tram Anh Nguyen – Co-Founder, CFTE & Global Women in AI

In conversation with Amy French, Director at Level39, Tram Anh shared her deeply personal story – from her family’s history to her journey as a trader, wealth manager, and finally tech educator and global community builder.

Key points included:

• Education as empowerment: Her father arrived in France with only “10 francs and a diploma”- a reminder of why knowledge unlocks opportunity.
• Democratisation of skills: CFTE now educates 260,000+ professionals across 130 countries, ensuring no one is left behind in the future of finance and AI.
• Representation gap in AI: Only 22% of the AI workforce and 1% of top AI leaders are women.
• Global Women in AI: A free, fast-growing network active in 100 countries, designed to increase visibility, recognition, and opportunity for female talent.
• “Give to gain” in practice: She described her mission as capturing global knowledge from industry pioneers and redistributing it to people everywhere who want to learn, build, and advance.

Her message was clear: Don’t wait. Join a tribe. Take the first step. The tools are accessible, and the community is ready to support you.

Storytelling Speakers

Abantika Chatterjee – Associate Director, AI CoE, EBRD

Abantika charted her path from software engineer to AI leader driving transformation in a multilateral development bank.

Themes from her journey:

• Calculated risk taking: Leaving Deloitte and moving countries with “zero connections” to pursue an MBA and pivot into AI.
• Building trust in AI: Overcoming fear that “AI will take our jobs” by creating solutions that improve workflows, not replace people.
• Creating impact at scale:
  • Delivering 11 AI tools in months
  • Achieving 75–100% efficiency gains
  • Seeing EBRD-built tools adopted by other global development banks
• Changing mindsets: Introducing AI agents that augment human decision-making, proving that technology is a partner-not a threat.

Her story demonstrated courage, strategy, and the importance of aligning people, data, and vision to drive transformation.

Tamara Kostova – Founder & CEO, AllVesta

Tamara delivered a powerful talk on purpose, financial confidence, and the barriers women face in wealth and investing.

Key messages:

• Purpose fuels direction: Her mission emerged from experiencing the structural barriers in wealth management first-hand.
• Democratising wealth: Her company enabled global access to investing and financial education, growing from South Korea to Brazil and the Middle East.
• The real gap is confidence, not just literacy: Even financially literate women often lack confidence to invest or grow wealth.
• Motherhood & role modelling: Her daughter’s reaction to her business exit became a reminder that visibility and example-setting matter.
• Communities change outcomes: She credited female founder networks (SuperScalers, KPMG programmes, etc.) with helping her survive the emotional and practical challenges of entrepreneurship.

Her call to action: Women must build in financial services and AI – because inclusive systems require inclusive builders.

Veronika Bond – Head of Creative and Design, CybSafe

Veronika offered an honest, reflective look at career lessons learned through moving countries, working in male-dominated cybersecurity, and launching a startup.

Her three “gives”:

1. Give up perfection – progress matters more than flawless execution.
2. Give up permission – don’t wait for someone to offer you a role; step into it.
3. Give up doing it alone – strength comes from collaboration and community.

Other powerful themes:

• Choosing discomfort as a growth strategy
• Building support systems intentionally
• Recognising confidence as a skill, not a trait
• Reflecting on startup failure as a source of deep learning, not regret

Her message resonated deeply: To gain, you must let go.

Asked about her role models, Veronika points to Susan Kare and Angela Ahrendts – two women who have shaped her perspective on building, leadership, and meaningful careers in tech. Kare represents craft and a pioneering spirit, while Ahrendts reflects people-centred leadership at scale, together capturing her focus on thoughtful building and impact.

Jasmine Sayyari – CEO, Lean Health

Jasmine shared a bold and unconventional journey spanning frontline medicine, e-learning, tech, B2B partnerships, and now health-tech.

Highlights:

• Resilience shaped in adversity: From practising in the world’s most infected zones during COVID to founding her first startup.
• Reinvention through curiosity: Studying market gaps, behaviours, and metabolic health led her to build Lean-first as a community, then as a product using AI tools.
• Power of visibility: She emphasised personal branding, especially for immigrants who must rebuild networks from scratch.
• Representation matters: Sharing your story publicly may inspire someone in another part of the world who has never seen a path into tech.

Her final encouragement: Be visible. You’re not competing with the most competent, but the most visible. Tell your story.

Cross-Cutting Themes

Across every speaker, several unifying themes emerged:

The Power of Community

Level39, SuperScalers, Innovate Finance, CFTE, Global Women in AI – each speaker emphasised the life-changing impact of networks where women uplift, mentor, and advocate for each other.2.

Give to Gain

Whether through mentorship, knowledge-sharing, visibility, or vulnerability, success grew when women invested in others, and allowed others to invest in them.

Education & Democratisation

From finance to AI to wellbeing, access to knowledge is a common thread enabling women to advance, build, and lead.

Representation & Visibility

Panels, conferences, boardrooms, and AI datasets must reflect women’s voices. Visibility isn’t vanity – it’s systemic change.

Confidence, Not Perfection

A recurring challenge: women often wait to feel “ready.” The learning: act first, refine later.

Building in the Age of AI

AI is no longer a distant future, it’s a present enabler that lowers the cost of innovation and widens access for new founders.

Purpose-Driven Leadership

Each speaker showed how mission, not just ambition, drives sustainable impact.

Closing Reflections

As the morning ended, one thing was unmistakably clear: the women of the Level39 community are not only shaping the future of technology and entrepreneurship – they are reshaping the culture that surrounds it. Through stories of courage, reinvention, visibility, and purpose, our speakers reminded us that progress is never a solo journey. It grows through shared experience, collective strength, and the willingness to “give to gain.”

International Women’s Day is a moment of global recognition, but events like Stories that Shape Success prove that true change is built in the everyday connections we forge, the opportunities we extend, and the voices we choose to amplify. Whether it was a lesson in confidence, a call to embrace discomfort, an invitation to build in AI, or a reminder to step forward before we feel “ready,” each story offered the same powerful message: we rise higher when we rise together.

To every speaker, guest, partner, and ally who joined us – thank you for contributing to a morning and network that grows stronger with every gathering. Let’s carry this momentum forward, championing representation, widening access, and building ecosystems where women don’t just participate, but lead, innovate, and thrive.