Donna Wells

CEO at Valencia Ventures

Speaker

Donna Wells is a nationally recognized Fintech executive with an exceptional track record in driving growth in both Fortune 500 and start-up companies. She now applies that expertise in her work with the Sway Ventures Fintech sector fund, her teaching role at the Stanford Business School and her corporate board service. Ms. Wells is one of perhaps a dozen women in the US who have served on multiple public company boards, two Fintech “Unicorn” company boards and a successful, top decile SPAC board. Ms. Wells was named Board Director of the Year by Women in Information Technology in 2021.

Ms. Wells was previously CEO of Mindflash Technologies from its SaaS product launch in 2010 to a market leadership position in 2017. Mindflash was acquired by Trakstar. Prior to Mindflash, she was employee #9 and founding CMO at Mint.com, where she designed and led a breakthrough, B2C earned media growth strategy successful in acquiring 2 million users at an average cost of $1 each. She was a member of the Mint executive team from product launch to company acquisition for 60X revenue in two years. Prior to Mint, Ms. Wells held senior roles within industry leaders Charles Schwab and American Express, where she launched the iconic Corporate Platinum and Gold Rewards Cards. and ultimately led U.S. marketing for two Fortune 500 companies: Intuit and Expedia.

Ms. Wells currently serves on the boards of Walker & Dunlop, a $3 B CRE finance company; Mitek Systems, a leading provider of digital identity software in the US and Europe; and Betterment, the digital wealth management “unicorn”. She was previously a board member for Boston Private Bank, the Apex Technology SPAC (now AvePoint); and Happy Money, a B2C digital lending platform with more than $6 billion in loan originations.

Ms. Wells was appointed by the Stanford Graduate School of Business as a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship in 2019. She holds a B.S. in Economics from Wharton and an MBA from Stanford. She is a frequent speaker on corporate governance, technology industry leadership/diversity, and digital transformation.