Women in Technology: AttainX’s Jill Robb

In what is a recurring feature, Finopotamus spotlights innovative women who are positively impacting technology applications in the credit union industry, and beyond.

In the latest installment in our “Women in Technology” series, we visited with AttainX’s Founder Jill Robb. Based in Delaware and Belfast, the company offers fractional executive services aimed at enhancing fintech sales, marketing and public relations strategies. The company currently serves financial institution clients, including credit unions.

By W.B. King

A self-described “change agent,” Jill Robb told Finopotamus that she “fell into tech” after years working in retail—starting at age 15. Throughout college and thereafter, she continued in the field but decided she wanted a greater challenge. So, she quit the retail game and went back to school, earning an advanced degree.

“I studied e-marketing and a data-led module in management information systems, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. Just before graduating with a post grad, I accepted a junior marketing position at a website agency,” said Robb, an Irish resident who earned her master’s of business administration from Wesley College, located in Delaware. “I later moved to London and joined an agency which built e-commerce websites, where my former retail background proved particularly valuable.”

During this time, Robb worked directly with developers, which allowed her to learn more about the technical side of operations, while also developing knowledge and experience in digital marketing. “This eventually led to me working with tier-one e-commerce retail clients, including brands such as Toys‘R’Us and Levi’s Europe,” she said. “The experience and expertise that I gained also led to me expanding into training, consultancy and speaking at events across Europe.”

Jill Robb

By 2009, she had established her own digital marketing and analytics consultancy. Her first two clients were tier-one retailers. While her focus was in marketing, she also began incorporating data analytics. “I often worked alongside project managers, acting as an interpreter between the commercial needs of e-commerce businesses and the technical teams responsible for delivering the work,” she continued. “My role there was to translate business requirements into technical requests, which were then handed over to project managers.”

In 2024, Robb merged with a Northern Ireland-based website/app agency, which created a full-service digital agency providing technical web and app design, build, and marketing. Here she worked with banks, insurance and insurtech companies and fintech companies. “I exited the agency and have continued to work with U.S. fintech companies that sell technology into financial institutions,” she noted.

Lift Each Other Up

When Robb was starting her career twenty-plus years ago, women worked more in design and marketing roles as opposed to engineers. “I am definitely seeing more women working in technology today, particularly within the startup world. I regularly encounter female engineers, data analysts and project managers, with project management being one area where I see particularly strong female representation,” she said.

“My main concern is that, at an educational level, there is still not enough awareness of the range of STEM careers available,” she continued. “When I first started my career, people generally understood what an engineer was and may have known what a developer was, but technology careers were often associated more with hardware than software, and certainly not with areas such as Web3 (unfortunately I’m that old!)”

One of her tier-one retail clients was led by a woman who encouraged Robb to start her business—so much so that she promised to be her first customer, if Robb launched the business model.

“That initial commitment gave me the confidence to take the step and helped me secure other business. She remained a good friend of mine. However sadly, she passed away from cancer a few years later,” she shared. “I flew back to London to attend her funeral because she had made such a significant impact on both my career and my life. I was diagnosed with breast cancer myself in 2024, so this became even more significant to me.”

These experiences have compelled Robb to support women in the industry—lift one another up, rather than viewing each other as competition is her motto. “That is how I try to treat the people I work with, and it is an approach I learned from her,” she said.

A Unique Perspective

Recently named among the Top 30 Most Influential Fintech Marketers, and a former winner of the North American Lead Generation Campaign of the Year award for a campaign delivered on behalf of a fintech client, Robb’s work underscores a unique understanding of the fintech space.

“I have worked within a bank, marketed financial institutions directly, including banks, and I have also helped fintech companies market and sell their technology into financial institutions,” she said. “That experience has allowed me to understand both the commercial objectives of fintech providers and the operational, compliance, member and customer considerations of the institutions they serve.”

The emergence of AI co-workers and AI agents, and the way they support people across different functions are among tech trends on her radar.

“The speed at which teams can now use AI co-workers is immense. That applies across the full development process, from front-end design through to back-end engineering and the development of the underlying technology,” she continued. “From a marketing and a technical development perspective, it is exciting to explore how these tools can improve the quality, speed and effectiveness of the work we do. It is equally interesting to see how financial institutions are beginning to apply AI within their own organizations.”

Understanding Credit Unions Here and Abroad

Robb also possesses a unique understanding of the difference between fintech and credit unions in the U.S., UK and Ireland. The larger size of the U.S. organizations is among the biggest differentiators, she noted. 

“Credit unions in the UK and Ireland are generally much smaller, partly because there is a more limited pool of members they can access, particularly in direct lending. The smaller scale of UK and Irish credit unions naturally affects the budgets they have available for technology,” she said. “This can make it more difficult for them to invest in the same breadth of systems and modern platforms used by U.S. credit unions.”

Regulatory environments between the three countries are also vastly different—there are no apples-to-apples comparisons. “In the UK and Ireland, open banking requirements and rules governing how data can be accessed and used affect how fintech solutions must be developed and implemented. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also creates additional data requirements that influence how technology can be deployed," she said.

“These requirements can make the process more constrained, although they do not prevent innovation,” Robb continued. “Fintech companies are still developing new solutions and making an impact within the financial institution sector, but it can take longer for those solutions to reach the market and be adopted.”

Recently, the UK addressed some of these challenges via the Financial Conduct Authority, which has taken steps to support fintech innovation, including providing regulatory and data sandboxes. “These allow fintech companies to test their solutions using non-live or simulated customer data before going into production,” she said. “Another major difference, particularly within lending, is the maturity and structure of the technology ecosystem surrounding credit unions.”

While most U.S.-based credit unions use established third-party core platforms and loan-origination systems, which allows for more third-party seamless interfaces, UK and Ireland-based credit unions aren’t always in the same position.

“Credit unions in the UK and Ireland also use third-party core and digital banking platforms, so it would not be accurate to suggest that they generally build all their technology internally. However, the market is smaller and more fragmented, and there are fewer integration routes that give a fintech provider access to a large number of institutions through a single connection,” she said. “As a result, fintech companies entering the UK and Irish credit union markets may encounter a greater need for institution-specific integration work, particularly where credit unions operate older systems, use different combinations of providers or have limited internal technology resources.”

Building Successful Partnerships

While Robb is a proponent of more fintech integration with credit unions, she said only if the commercial and operational goals are aligned with the needs and interests of its members.

“A strong partnership requires the fintech to have considered how credit unions typically operate, including their technology infrastructure, internal resources, regulatory obligations and implementation requirements,” she told Finopotamus. “When the two organizations are aligned on the intended outcome, the role of the technology and how it will be implemented, they have a much stronger foundation for a successful partnership.”