Five women. Five stories. Countless milestones.

Five years of Female x Finance isn’t only a milestone for us. It’s a collection of thousands of individual milestones: the first job, the career move, the moment someone decided to put herself out there, the connection that turned into an opportunity, or the decision to give back to the women coming next.

So instead of only looking back at what we’ve achieved, we want to celebrate some of the women who have made Female x Finance what it is today.

These are five of their stories.

Charlotte still remembers walking into her first Female x Finance event, Desk to Disco with Charlotte Tilbury, and thinking: wow, I wish I’d had this when I started my career in Finance.

FxF instantly felt different to her. It had been created with women in mind, by two female founders who just get it. It wasn’t only about Finance or networking, but about creating a community where women could connect, have fun and feel inspired.

Since then, Charlotte has become a familiar face within the community — from spin classes and International Women’s Day events to meeting women with completely different career stories. One of those connections was Paola Vivoli, who moved from Finance to build her own Megaformer studio. Charlotte’s football team even ended up taking over her studio: exactly the kind of unexpected connection that can happen when you become part of a community like FxF.

For Charlotte, progress happens when we put ourselves in new rooms and connect with new people. And now, as a role model herself, she wants to hold the door open for the women coming through behind her — whether that means sharing what she’s learned, making an introduction, creating an opportunity or simply encouraging someone to take their next step.

That’s what FxF represents to her: connection, possibility and community. Something she knows she would have valued when she was starting out, and something she’s now proud to help create for others.

When Zoë started her career, she had no industry experience, no university degree and no professional connections. She certainly didn’t imagine that one day she would be working as an Associate Banker at Citi — or that she’d be the one helping others navigate the beginning of their own careers.

Her journey is proof that where you start doesn’t have to determine where you end up.

Today, as one of our Female x Finance ambassadors, Zoë uses her own experience to encourage other women to back themselves, take the opportunity and stop waiting until they tick every box.

“You don’t need to tick every box. Sometimes, you can create your own.”

It’s a message she not only shares, but has lived herself. And that’s why Zoë has become such a meaningful part of our community. She represents what happens when women open doors for themselves — and then hold those doors open for the women coming next. Her milestones have become encouragement for someone else’s first step.

By the end of her bachelor’s, Otsie had discovered she wanted a career in Finance — but she felt like she was already behind. While others had spent years building finance-focused CVs, securing internships and growing their networks, her experience was a mix of consulting, side jobs and extracurriculars. After some rejections, she reached out to us.

One of our Young Talent Managers helped Otsie understand the industry, position her experience and prepare for recruitment with materials and mock interviews. Most importantly, she reminded her that she wasn’t too late. With the right preparation (and a lot of hard work), Otsie landed her first Finance internship in Rabobank’s Corporate M&A team.

Soon after, her journey with FxF came full circle: she joined our team and became a Young Talent Manager herself, helping other ambitious women navigate the same process she had once found so overwhelming.

But her journey didn’t stop there. At one of our events with Bank of America, Otsie met women working in Investment Banking in London. Their stories sparked something. She applied for opportunities in London and eventually secured a summer internship at Bank of America, where she worked towards one big goal: earning a full-time return offer.

And she did.

Today, Otsie is preparing to return to Bank of America as a full-time Investment Banking Analyst in London. From believing she had started too late, to breaking into Finance, helping other women do the same and building the international career she wanted, Otsie’s story is a reminder that you don’t need the perfect CV or to have everything figured out from day one. Sometimes, you just need the right opportunity, the right preparation and people who believe in your potential.

We met Terri earlier this year, and she quickly became one of those women we knew our community needed to hear from. An ex-Wall Street Trader, Board Director, Keynote Speaker and Risk & Reinvention Expert, she was one of the most powerful speakers we’ve had on an FxF stage.

Since then, she’s continued to inspire our community — and us — to think bigger about our careers, take ownership of where we’re going and be brave enough to reinvent ourselves along the way. She’s become a real role model for Female x Finance.

And the feeling goes both ways. For Terri, Female x Finance represents something she deeply believes in: the power of having a community behind you when you decide to take a risk. She knows from her own career that taking ownership of your future can be scary, especially when it means stepping away from the path you know and choosing something different. Having the right people around you makes being brave a little easier.

As Terri puts it: “Taking ownership of your future potential is scary. But it’s less scary when you have a community behind you.”

Careers change, industries change and sometimes the path you thought you were on changes completely. The important thing is not to let yourself be carried by the tide. And when you have a community of ambitious women encouraging you to take the next step, the bigger dream suddenly feels a little less scary.

When we first met Lyke, she was doing her bachelor’s and still trying to figure out what she wanted to do. Finance wasn’t some big career plan she had mapped out. She didn’t really know what the industry looked like, which careers existed or even that internships would become such an important part of getting her foot in the door.

But she was curious. So when Female x Finance hosted one of our very first networking events, Lyke showed up.

That one event became the beginning of a journey we’ve been lucky enough to follow ever since. She found her first internship through FxF, then another, and slowly started building the experience, confidence and network that once felt completely unfamiliar to her.

And then, this summer, we got to witness one of our favourite full-circle moments: Lyke landed her first big job through the FxF network. The student who showed up at one of our first events not knowing where Finance might take her is now officially starting her career in it.

There’s something incredibly special about growing alongside the women in our community. We’ve watched Lyke go from figuring it all out to building a career of her own — and she’s watched FxF grow from that first networking event into the community it is today.

Five very different women. Five very different career journeys. But there’s something connecting all of them.

Female x Finance has grown a lot over the past five years, but the reason we built it hasn’t changed: to create the community we wished existed when we were starting out.

And these five women are just a small part of what that community has become. 💕