Berkeley Haas FinTech Club

Berkeley Haas FinTech Club

Founded in fall 2016 by five MBA candidates — Matt Mueller, Ricky Tan, Leah Staub-DeLong, Scarlett Li, and Ashley Lannquist — the Berkeley Haas FinTech Club launched with a mission to prepare students for leadership roles in financial technology. The club originally formed around three pillars: career placement, professional networking, and education across fintech subsectors. Today it counts more than 700 current and former members, with events drawing over 250 attendees from across UC Berkeley. The club’s programming covers a broad asset-class and sector mix, with active coverage of embedded finance, digital payments, consumer and commercial lending, blockchain and crypto, and financial inclusion. Its activities include company treks, career panels, and alumni mixers held in the Bay Area, connecting members with operators at venture-backed fintech startups, large banks, and consulting firms. Past leadership internships include placements at a fintech-focused venture capital fund, Visa, and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s FinTech Roundtable, alongside professional backgrounds at Wells Fargo, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Accion Venture Lab. Leadership rotates annually through a cabinet of co-presidents and vice presidents overseeing technology, communications, academics, and evening-weekend MBA outreach. The club operates no permanent fund or AUM; it deploys no capital. Its influence instead rests on a dense network — linking students to firms such as Accenture, EY, Renault Innovation Silicon Valley, and MGM Resorts International via executive and alumni relationships. Co-presidents Ashley Lannquist and Caitlyn Driehorst set strategy, while VPs manage emerging-technology coverage, academic content, and member communications. The club’s structural distinction lies in its dual role as both a career-launching apparatus and an intellectual hub that bridges Berkeley’s MBA program with the Bay Area’s fintech ecosystem. Unlike a typical student organization, it operates with an alumni network of more than 700 and multi-year institutional memory built through repeat treks and recurring speaker series — functioning less as a campus club and more as a continuing professional network with a Berkeley anchor.