Robinhoods Christine Brown explains how the company is making crypto more accessible

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Looking at Christine Brown’s professional accomplishments, one would assume that she grew up with an interest in STEM and was a stock market prodigy. Most people would be shocked to learn that she had never placed a trade independently until about four and a half years ago, when she joined the fledgling trading and trading applications company. Robinhood investment. Brown joined Robinhood when it was a 16 person company as a product developer. Today, the company has over 31 million users and Brown is the senior vice president of product operations and head of crypto. Recently, I reached out to Brown to find out more about her phenomenal rise through the ranks of Robinhood, as well as how she is paving the way for future female leadership in finance.

Growing up, Brown says, money was never discussed in his household. I think like a lot of families, money was super taboo for us, she says. It wasn’t something we talked about at the dinner table. It wasn’t something I remember being in a conversation with my parents.

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Brown, however, had a unique relationship with mathematics and technology, thanks to his father, a professor of engineering. Most of my friends’ parents would say, Oh, you gotta do those chores, or you gotta clean your room before you go out and do those normal teenage things, she said. My father would sit me at the kitchen table with a derivative sheet and tell me: You can go out when you solve all these derivatives. Through this unique approach, his father organically developed Browns’ problem-solving and math skills. But even with this kind of domestic influence, Brown didn’t focus his college education on a STEM field. Brown says his tech journey has been very roundabout.

Brown’s early experiences with finance were very similar to those of Robinhoods’ clientele. The market was just something that seemed really inaccessible to me and hadn’t been created for me, she said. This meant that you had to have a lot of savings or that huge wealth to invest. It just hasn’t been where I’ve been in my life or my financial journey.

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However, after joining Robinhood in 2017 and successfully building his self-clearing platform, Brown has gained considerable knowledge of the financial market. All the subtleties after a transaction, what really happens? How do you come to actually own that part of this stock that you bought? she says. While I was learning all this, I discovered two essential things: First, the technology was really old and created years before I was even born. For Brown, this archaic technology has hampered innovation and failed to take advantage of new technologies in the market. Second, she said, the whole process had to be aligned across the company, as well as the trust of their customers. Brown notes that transparency and trust are sometimes taken for granted, which is a mistake. Unlike a free economy like ours, where we can have this fundamental trust, there are a lot of places in the world where you may not fully believe in the transparency of government or the entity supporting the market, she says.

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As she learned more about the inner workings of the financial industry, Brown took a keen interest in crypto. Crypto looks like an alternative, which solves both these two outdated technology issues and the transparency side of things, Brown says. When there was an opportunity to step in and really support a crypto business, I was overjoyed to take the challenge and immediately fell in love.

According to Brown, crypto creates a more democratic financial system. Crypto was really developed to provide secure decentralized currency to everyone, and at its core it’s all about equality and access, she says. This principle really resonated with me and supports the founding mantra of Robinhoods to democratize access to investments for all. For me, Robinhood isn’t trying to reach the expert crypto insider; we already have their attention. Instead, we try to reach investors who are curious or even maybe a little skeptical about crypto. You don’t need to have a deep understanding of every facet of cryptography to get started with us.

For female investors who often feel unwelcome in these traditional financial spaces, the Robinhoods crypto platform is a safe space. I was lucky in terms of education and work opportunities, and even with that, the stock market didn’t feel accessible to me, says Brown. In general, research shows that women face real systemic barriers to investing. Women feel less empowered to invest, whether in traditional stock markets or in crypto. So, for cryptography, the barrier of entry is even higher because it is presented as this new cutting edge technology. Instead of dismissing crypto because its new approach, Browns is to flip it as positive. Crypto is new to everyone, so it’s actually a level playing field. Robinhood introduces women to crypto in a way that doesn’t fit some sort of tech sibling or Bitcoin sibling culture.

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Unlike other complex crypto platforms, Brown describes the Robinhoods product as more intuitive and customer-centric in terms of product design and learning tools: we build our product every day to meet the needs of the daily investor and not institutional traders. I think you can see that in some of the recent launches or releases that we’ve had. For example, we recently announced recurring investments, which allows a user to choose them, choose a time period, and set up automated investments over time. This type of functionality coupled with all of their educational resources demystifies and simplifies the process and makes the barrier to entry a bit lower, says Brown.

Robinhoods is focused on developing and creating products that appeal to the female investor begins within the leadership team. The crypto leadership team has a strong group of women in all of our functional groups, from our first product manager to our first finance manager, our designer, our engineering managers and myself, says -she. We have this powerful internal group of women leaders who bring their perspective to the creation and development of our products every step of the way.

Prior to her tenure at Robinhood, she got to know many types of tech companies, from small start-ups to very large, well-known global brands. For Brown, her gender didn’t impact her experience or her opportunities at Robinhood. To be successful at Robinhood, she says, the winning formula is having the skills to break problems down into their fundamental parts and solve them. From there, you realize that gender is not a component of success here. I felt incredibly supported and had an amazing peer group throughout my time at Robinhood.

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I would say being a woman in tech, I had experiences before Robinhood that were difficult to navigate, Brown continues. At one point, I went back to school and got my masters in computer science. I distinctly remember that we had to show up online in a class. I had to scroll through over 50 presentations before I got to a woman’s name. When you don’t see people like you in an environment, sometimes you feel like you don’t belong or are going to be branded as a UI designer during a group project rather than taking over. difficult technical implementations. At Robinhood, I really haven’t experienced any of this, which I love.

When asked what advice she would give her young self as she grappled with the derivations her father gave her before recess, Brown says, I would tell myself to find great mentors and leaders who have a vision that excites you and that will invest in you. , and then, when you have the opportunity, willingly do the same for others.

Robinhoods Christine Brown’s post on How The Company Is Making Crypto More Accessible first appeared on Worth.

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