From banking to her current role as CEO of Visa, Hong Kong and Macau, Maaike Steinebach has advocated for women and new technologies. Here’s what she has learned about making it in your career
Maaike Steinebach got her first lessons in how to navigate different cultures and viewpoints at the age of four, when her family moved from the Netherlands to Saudi Arabia.
The eight-year experience helped set her up for a career in which she has thrived as an outsider. From visiting equatorial coffee farms and warehouses to working in oil and gas in China to championing fintech in Hong Kong, Steinebach continues to build connections and stake out space for herself—and other women—in male-dominated industries.
“I’ve always tried to understand the local ways of working and values and not to impose my own, and I think that is a bit of the secret sauce of my success,” says Steinebach, who also cites her ability to adapt. Around 2005, while living in China, she came up with two party tricks to get past the initial awkwardness with male factory owners. The bad trick was joining them to smoke cigarettes.
“The good trick was that I learned a karaoke song in Mandarin so that whenever there was an opportunity and people would look unsure what to do with me, I’d always say, ‘oh yeah, I’ll join you, no problem.’” Steinebach would do her best Teresa Teng impression and feel the mood relax. Once the conversation was flowing, she found they would build respect over shared interest in a product and industry.
See also: How Women Can Thrive in Male-Dominated Spaces
After working her way up the ranks of banking, Steinebach attended the 2013 South by Southwest conference, which sparked her pivot to technology. Hearing about bitcoin from the Winklevoss brothers and about using data to hack athletic performance was a wake-up call that she and her team needed to better understand the new frontiers of tech. Steinebach, who was CEO of the Hong Kong branch of Commonwealth Bank at the time, set up an internal innovation lab and was eventually approached by the Hong Kong SAR government to help establish the Fintech Association.
“I dragged onto the first board as many women as I could find, saying ‘you need to be a part of this,’” recalls Steinebach. She also set up a WhatsApp group for women in tech to support each other and identify participants for panels (not manels). “It’s been really interesting to see how over the past five years the whole ecosystem in fintech has developed and female participation is at least a little better,” she says. “I’m personally very excited about how we can use some of the technology now coming to market for female empowerment.”
See also: Upfront With Microsoft's Cally Chan on Becoming A Female Leader In Tech
In 2019, this passion brought Steinebach to Visa, whose corporate purpose states that economies that include everyone will uplift everyone—and whose programmes include She’s Next to support female tech entrepreneurs with funding, networking, and digital skills as well as Support Small to aid local businesses during the pandemic.
“I love working on the recovery of Hong Kong,” says Steinebach, whose strong suit is developing businesses and making connections that can grow the pie for all.
“There’s a lot of talk about how the future is female, but I don’t believe that—I actually believe the future should be equal; I don’t see any need for one to stand out because we need each other at the end of the day,” she says. “If you have people from different backgrounds and genders, it creates a continuous learning organisation and it’s much more inspiring.”
In her words below, Steinebach shares the advice she gives female founders, a must-have conversation for working couples, and why she believes new technologies will empower women.