Diana Avila

The 34-year-old exec has a very personal connection to her work: A few years back she wanted to send money to her home country of Colombia to pay off student loans, but struggled to find a fair transfer price. Since she joined the company in 2015 and became global head of banking and expansion in 2019, Avila helped further expand London-based TransferWise’s footprint into several markets, including Latin America—notably launching in Brazil, a largely underbanked market. Under her supervision, TransferWise, which offers money-wiring services for discounted fees, has moved roughly $5 billion to and from Brazil since it launched in 2016, at fees the fintech claims are about one-third of those offered by Brazil’s banks. Of late, Avila’s efforts helped TransferWise, which has 8 million users worldwide and was most recently valued at $5 billion, secure a foreign exchange broker license from the central bank of Brazil to expand activities there, while also widening its offerings to countries including Argentina, Peru, Chile—and Avila’s own Colombia.