From there, Rajah pivoted into a different space and, since 2007, has been working in Fintech.
“I joined my first Fintech startup straight out of business school in 2007, which was a payments platform, before moving into consumer lending and various different lending platforms.”
After this she was approached by Alex Michelen, one of the co-founders of CapitalRise, to build a new digital based lending business in the property finance space.
“We started CapitalRise in 2016, that’s when we first started trading, and we’ve been going from strength to strength ever since.”
Transition
Despite not having any “strong roots” in the financial services industry before joining it, Rajah reported that she was able to make the transition fairly easily due to her past experience.
“When I was working at Mars, when I was running the factory, it was typically always in an all male team, the environment wasn’t particularly gender diverse.”
“For me, I think I’ve always had that feeling of being different to everybody else. I was often the only woman around the table or in the room or in the team so it’s something I'm very familiar with. “
tom.dunstan@ft.com
If you would like to be featured in our New Voices series, or you know someone who would be a good fit please get in touch with Tom Dunstan at tom.dunstan@ft.com
