Advisory Board & Mentors

Founder & COO, Open Sparkz

Debra Taylor is a Founder & COO of OpenSparkz – an innovative, disruptive (low cost) payment industry technology company.

Debra has been an established start up entrepreneur in the fintech space for over 25 years. She has been a founder in over 10 businesses ranging from telcos, electronic payments and fintech. She has exited four, including two which reached 8-figure exits each within 24 months.

During this time, she has had first-hand experience and appreciation of the risks associated with the challenges, unpredictability and constant change of early stage ventures. This includes the multitasking requirements of managing legal negotiations and subsequent commercial agreements, finance as well as cashflow management, HR and operations.

Debra is a specialist generalist in business, a very rare commodity indeed!

Debra’s long standing entrepreneurial endeavours were recently recognised (1st August 2019) when she won the Financial Services Industry award for Fintech Leader of the Year for Women in Finance. In November 2019, she was announced Innovator of the Year, Women in Payments.

Debra’s company is a foundation resident of Stone and Chalk and she is also currently a non-executive Director of Stone & Chalk. Previously Debra has held leadership roles within her own companies in the provision of services as a preferred supplier to global giants such as Oracle, IBM, Unisys, NCR, MasterCard and Visa.

Debra has championed women in fintech for over 25 years and is a sort after as a panellist for women’s and industry events.