Shivani Siroya is the founder and CEO of Tala, the leading financial technology company on a mission to build a financial system that works for everyone. Tala’s first product is a lending app that instantly underwrites and delivers credit to customers who have little or no formal borrowing history. Tala has disbursed over $1B to more than 4 million customers across East Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, and India who use Tala loans to start and expand small businesses, and build more stable financial lives. Tala is backed by leading venture and impact investors including GGV Capital, PayPal, Revolution, IVP, and Lowercase Capital. Earlier this year, Forbes named Tala as one of the top 50 FinTech companies in the world, and Tala's work has been highlighted by the New York Times, Forbes, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and TED, among others. Tala is headquartered in Santa Monica with offices in Nairobi, Manila, Mexico City, and Bangalore.

Prior to founding Tala, Shivani worked as an analyst with UNFPA, holding over 3500 interviews to understand the financial capacity of thousands of microcredit users in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. She has also held a variety of positions in global health and investment banking, including with Health Net, Citigroup, and UBS. These combined experiences sparked the idea for Tala. Shivani is an Aspen Institute Finance Leader Fellow, a WEF Young Global Leader, Senior TED Fellow and Ashoka Fellow. She is also on the board of Stellar.org. She holds a M.P.H from Columbia University and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.