Cristina Junqueira

Since she cofounded Nubank in 2013, the online Brazilian bank has grown to serve more than 25 million customers (across Mexico as well as Brazil) and has attained a valuation of more than $10 billion—the only female-founded company to reach that size. Now the largest independent digital bank in the world, Nubank has swept Latin America while providing a model for a fintech challenger bank that could thrive worldwide, undercutting Brazil’s sky-high interest rates and banking costs with a fee-free credit card and a customer-friendly mobile banking app. A rare female fintech founder, Junqueira signed Nubank’s first round of investment documents while at the hospital in labor with her first daughter, and has been a model of success in the face of gender bias and discrimination as a woman raising venture capital while pregnant.