The Female Founder Changing the Face of Financial Advice

Mindset, Leadership, and Building Inclusive Teams

In the latest episode of FinTech’s DEI Discussions, host Nadia welcomes Karen Barrett, Founder and CEO of Unbiased, to explore what it takes to create inclusive, resilient, and high-performing teams in today’s evolving financial technology landscape. Karen’s journey from founding Unbiased to building a global platform that connects millions of consumers with trusted financial advisors offers a compelling blueprint for leadership in FinTech.

Her story encapsulates not only entrepreneurial drive but also the values that sustain innovation, diversity, curiosity, adaptability, and emotional maturity. As a FinTech recruitment business, Harrington Starr understands the importance of these traits in building the teams that power the sector forward, and Karen’s experience provides real insight into the mindset and skillsets that underpin lasting success.

Building a Platform That Connects and Empowers

Karen Barrett founded Unbiased in 2010 with a clear vision: to make financial advice accessible, trustworthy, and easy to navigate. The platform connects consumers facing big life decisions with regulated financial advisers who can guide them through complex choices with confidence.

The early days of the business were defined by persistence and balance. Karen was raising three children while slowly building the company’s foundations. Growth accelerated when she finally found more headspace as her youngest child started nursery, a moment that catalysed Unbiased’s evolution from a small team into a thriving marketplace.

Today, Unbiased serves around ten million visitors each year, operating in both the UK and the US. The platform now channels an impressive £37 billion of assets under management annually into the books of its professional advisers. What began as a personal mission to solve a real-world problem has become a thriving FinTech business that not only scales financial access but also embodies the inclusive leadership principles Karen advocates.

Diversity in FinTech: How Inclusive Hiring Drives Growth

When reflecting on the early growth of Unbiased, Karen recalls that diversity emerged organically in her first hires. In the beginning, her team was small but made up of individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and mindsets. That early diversity, though unplanned, became a powerful driver of innovation.

Karen noticed that as the company expanded, each early team member hired in their own image, but because the initial group was diverse, subsequent hires continued to reflect a broad mix of perspectives. This naturally inclusive hiring process helped Unbiased build a culture where creative thinking and healthy debate became the norm.

For any FinTech recruitment leader or hiring manager, this offers a vital lesson. Diverse teams are not just good for optics; they are engines of creativity and resilience. Karen’s team was often short on time and resources, as most startups are, but their ability to approach problems from different angles made them more adaptable and inventive. In an industry driven by change and technology, those qualities are essential for sustainable growth.

The Power of Mindset in FinTech Careers

One of the most insightful aspects of Karen’s discussion with Nadia centred on the role of mindset in building effective teams. In her view, the right mindset can often outweigh a perfect skillset.

She described the early experience of hiring someone who excelled technically but struggled in the fluid, ever-changing environment of a startup. That moment taught her that Unbiased needed people who thrived in ambiguity, embraced change, and wore many hats with enthusiasm. For small, fast-growing FinTech companies, adaptability and curiosity are non-negotiable.

Today, Karen and her team recruit for mindset as much as experience. They look for people who are accountable, emotionally mature, and mentally tough, individuals who see challenges not as setbacks but as opportunities to improve. This mirrors a growing trend in FinTech recruitment, where cultural fit, resilience, and growth mindset are just as valuable as technical expertise.

As Karen explained, optimism and positivity are vital traits in any startup environment. In FinTech, where innovation moves fast and roadblocks are inevitable, teams need to recover quickly, learn rapidly, and maintain confidence in their shared mission. That ability to get up after a setback, and to enjoy the process of learning through failure, defines not just individuals but successful businesses.

Listening as a Leadership Superpower

As Unbiased grew, so too did Karen’s approach to leadership. She openly reflected on her own evolution from being a “talker”, someone who thought through problems aloud, to a leader who truly listens.

In FinTech, where technology and talent intersect, listening has become one of the most critical yet underappreciated leadership skills. Karen highlighted that most people come to work wanting to do well, contribute ideas, and make a difference. By listening first and creating space for others to speak, leaders can unlock this potential.

She learned that letting others share their ideas, even when she had already reached the same conclusion, was crucial for team motivation. When employees feel ownership of solutions, they are more engaged, creative, and loyal.

This insight resonates deeply across the FinTech recruitment landscape, where inclusive leadership and empowerment are increasingly recognised as competitive advantages. Listening isn’t passive, it’s a deliberate act of enabling growth, innovation, and trust within teams.

Karen noted that leaders who don’t listen risk becoming bottlenecks, stifling creativity and disengaging talent. In contrast, those who actively listen and encourage contribution cultivate workplaces where people genuinely want to give their best.

The Evolution of Leadership in FinTech

As FinTech organisations mature, their leadership demands evolve. Karen acknowledged that being an effective founder in the early days of a startup requires a different skillset from leading a more established company.

In Unbiased’s growth journey, Karen learned to recognise her own strengths and weaknesses. She emphasised the importance of surrounding herself with experts, people who could fill her gaps and bring new perspectives. This self-awareness, she explained, was not immediate. Many leaders are late to realise that they can choose who they work with and build teams that energise rather than drain them.

Her advice to FinTech leaders mirrors the principles of modern executive recruitment: build complementary teams where expertise is distributed and trust is central. As companies grow, leaders must transition from doing everything themselves to enabling others to excel.

Karen also underlined the importance of autonomy. Empowering specialists to make decisions not only speeds up progress but also fosters accountability. Without this trust, leaders risk creating dependency and slowing innovation, something that fast-moving FinTech businesses cannot afford.

Equally, she recognised that the best leaders continue to learn. Karen believes that leadership is not static but a journey of continual development. She encouraged embracing insights from younger colleagues, especially in today’s tech-driven environment. For FinTechs navigating automation, AI, and emerging technologies, listening to digital-native employees can be a huge advantage.

From Startup Scrappy to Scale-Up Success

Every phase of a company’s growth requires different capabilities. Karen’s reflections on this transition are particularly relevant for FinTech hiring managers and founders.

In a startup, she said, you need “scrappy” people, those comfortable making decisions with limited information, who act decisively and adjust quickly. Mistakes at this stage are learning opportunities. But as the company scales and the stakes rise, decision-making becomes more complex and the margin for error narrower.

At Unbiased, growing from a lean operation to a business handling £37 billion in assets meant adapting the culture and hiring approach. The organisation needed professionals with more caution, experience, and analytical precision, while still maintaining the entrepreneurial mindset that defined its early success.

Karen believes that throughout this evolution, maintaining a growth mindset is key. Whether at startup or corporate scale, teams must remain curious and adaptable. The right mindset sustains innovation even as processes formalise and responsibilities expand.

FinTech Recruitment and the Human Side of Business

Karen’s reflections offer rich insight into what makes workplaces thrive. She emphasised that positivity matters, not the performative kind, but the everyday warmth and resilience that make teams enjoyable to work in.

Her metaphor of “radiators and drains” captures the essence of team dynamics: you want to be a radiator, someone who brings warmth and optimism, not a drain who depletes others’ energy. In a fast-paced industry like financial technology, where pressure and change are constant, this emotional intelligence is essential.

At the same time, Karen doesn’t shy away from the realities of leadership. Difficult decisions are inevitable, from restructuring to budget constraints. But she believes these can be handled with fairness, care, and transparency. Leadership in FinTech, she argued, must remain human, even when facing tough business calls.

This perspective aligns with Harrington Starr’s belief that FinTech recruitment is about more than matching skills to job descriptions. It’s about finding people who elevate the culture, contribute to the mission, and embody the values of inclusion and empathy that define great workplaces.

The Future of Work in FinTech: Inclusion as a Business Imperative

As the conversation drew to a close, Nadia asked Karen what the future of work should look like in the FinTech industry. Karen’s answer was grounded, thoughtful, and actionable.

She believes that building inclusive workplaces starts with understanding, reading, learning, and acknowledging that there is always work to be done. Even at Unbiased, where gender balance once defined the leadership team, shifts in recruitment meant the ratio later changed. The point, Karen said, is to keep inclusion at the forefront of every decision.

She encourages leaders to use their influence intentionally, choosing to work with and support diverse founders, suppliers, and partners. For female leaders in particular, this can be a powerful way to create ripple effects across the wider ecosystem.

Mentorship, too, is central to her approach. Helping others navigate their challenges not only supports the next generation but also offers leaders fresh perspectives on their own problems. It’s a virtuous cycle that strengthens both individuals and the industry as a whole.

For Karen, diversity and inclusion are not moral add-ons; they are business-critical. A diverse workforce enables Unbiased to understand both sides of its marketplace, the consumers seeking advice and the professional advisers serving them. Diversity drives better products, stronger relationships, and more sustainable success.

Listening, Learning, and Leading the Future of FinTech

Karen Barrett’s conversation with Nadia Edwards-Dashti stands as a masterclass in inclusive leadership, self-awareness, and sustainable growth. Her journey at Unbiased demonstrates that the qualities driving success in FinTech, innovation, adaptability, and trust, are inherently human.

In a world where technology evolves faster than ever, it’s easy to forget that behind every great platform are people. Karen’s philosophy, that mindset, listening, and empathy matter as much as strategy and skill, is a timely reminder of what truly powers progress.

For FinTech recruitment businesses like Harrington Starr, these lessons are invaluable. They reinforce that finding exceptional talent means looking beyond CVs and into the values, motivations, and perspectives that shape future-ready teams.