FinTech Female Fridays: Meet Stephany Kirkpatrick, Founder and CEO at Orum

More than $80 trillion moves each year across the traditional payments infrastructure in the U.S. While new technology is available to modernize that money movement, legacy systems, and processes have stalled innovation in the U.S., hurting businesses and consumers alike. Stephany Kirkpatrick, founder and CEO of Orum, built her company to change that. Orum transforms payment technology for businesses by revolutionizing payment speed, certainty, and orchestration through their best-in-class platform. A seasoned business executive and thought leader in the FinTech space, Stephany is revolutionizing the financial system to empower businesses and consumers.

The daughter of an immigrant father who owned a small business, Stephany learned

the importance of financial literacy, problem-solving, and hard work early in her life.

Growing up working in the family business, she saw firsthand the complexities that

small business owners face in managing cash flow, which sparked her passion for

solving financial challenges.

From CFP to Fintech Founder

After launching a successful career in financial services as a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) and helping people navigate their financial futures, Stephany recognized financial literacy could be amplified by technology to make financial advice accessible and actionable for the people who need it most, she built and sold her own technology software, and was eventually hired as an executive with LearnVest.

As the driving force behind LearnVest’s financial planning business, Stephany was instrumental in developing the product strategy and operating structure, eventually becoming the principal inventor and patent-holder for intellectual property later acquired by Northwestern Mutual.

After her time with LearnVest, she ventured into a completely different industry—fitness tech at SoulCycle—where she tackled the challenge of creating new products and building a new line of business from the ground up.

Throughout all of this, one question remained constant:

How could she fix the time-to-money problem in the U.S., which costs businesses and consumers billions each year?

The answer came in the form of Orum, a payments infrastructure company that combines her deep understanding of finance with her proven ability to build technology. By focusing on how to transform money movement in the U.S. —and how to make money move faster, more reliably, and with greater certainty—Orum is meaningfully impacting the financial sector.

Building Orum: Revolutionizing Payment Technology

Orum was born out of the belief that the financial system needs to be better and more accessible. Through the company’s innovative, API-based solutions, Stephany and her team are transforming the payment technology used by businesses.

A key example of this vision in action is Orum’s money movement API, Deliver, which is built on a direct connection to the Federal Reserve’s payment rails. This groundbreaking technology eliminates the years of bureaucratic red tape and millions of dollars that would normally be required for a company to integrate directly with a bank. Instead, Orum’s customers can get set up in two weeks or less and access all payment rails – RTP, FedNow, Same Day ACH, ACH, and Wires – via a single integration. That same API also features smart routing that orchestrates and optimizes the money movement based on speed and cost, removing considerable complexity for Orum’s customers.

For Stephany, this achievement was not just about developing technology; it was about breaking barriers and creating new possibilities for businesses. The path to securing a direct connection to the Federal Reserve was exceptionally difficult, involving rigorous testing, compliance, and contractual hurdles. But with Orum’s innovative approach, the company has positioned itself as a leader in the industry, making payments faster, more reliable, and more predictable for its customers.

Navigating Challenges and Lessons Learned

As with any entrepreneurial journey, there were challenges to overcome. For Stephany, perhaps the biggest came from being a non-technical founder. To solve the problem, she built an exceptional team of engineers and product experts Stephany also learned how to make the switch from leading companies with a direct-to-consumer (D2C) business model to building Orum’s business-to-business (B2B) solution. Unlike D2C, where customer purchases happen quickly, B2B sales take longer and rely more heavily on trust, intuition, and long-term relationships.

Orum has benefited from Stephany’s customer-centric mindset, which allows the fintech to innovate quickly and develop new products that drive customer growth and revenue.

A Vision for the Future: Empowering Innovation in FinTech

As Orum continues to grow, Stephany is unwavering in her mission to transform payment technology for businesses and ultimately modernize how money moves in the U.S. Her vision is not just about making payments faster or more efficient—it’s about empowering businesses and consumers to have the freedom to pursue their full potential. 

More on Stephany

Where you currently live:

Larchmont, New York  

Hometown: Portland, OR

Favorite hobby: Running, reading, hiking and exploring tropical beaches

Favorite books:

🐦 City of Night Birds:

A vivid portrait of a Russian prima ballerina returning to the stage after a devastating accident. Rich with the ambition, pain, love, and beauty of the ballet world.

📙 Colors of the Dark:

This intricate, unique take on the abduction/serial killer mystery really took me by surprise. It’s as much about the process as it is about the characters; this tale covers everything from survivor guilt to the intrigue of what happened to a girl named Grace.

📕 Fourth Wing  & Iron Flame:

Frankly, I’ve never been interested in fantasy novels. But this pair — the first two books in the “Empyrean” series — sucked me into a world of beautifully personified dragons and I can’t get enough. I can’t wait for the third book in January!

📘Long Bright River:

Culled from Barack Obama’s reading list, this is a newly minted all-time favorite. It’s a page-turning police procedural that takes place in a part of Philly racked by the opioid crisis, and full of wild twists I never could’ve predicted.

Favorite fintech media:  This Week in Fintech is a top read and I have been loving the “OG Fintech” podcast series that Julie VerHage-Greenburg created and hosts. I also love Nicole Casperson’s Fintech is Femme newsletter (and her new book!) that covers women in fintech making the headlines. 

What are you excited about Fintech this year? 

We’re excited about the ability to offer novel solutions to help businesses revolutionize payment speed, certainty, and orchestration. Orum’s customer count grew 94% over the past year. Looking ahead, we very much see an opportunity for FinTech to work more closely with banks and other financial institutions to modernize legacy operations. We believe the future is sending payments based on speed or cost–the same way we ship a package, where we don’t look at whether it’s Amazon or FedEx doing the shipping. We  believe customers shouldn’t have to decide whether payments are sent via wire or RTP or ACH, but simply choose what method is fastest and most cost-effective.

What is one piece of advice someone told you that resonated with you that can give to other women in FinTech?     

I recently attended an investor event where we discussed how few women are promoted to senior operator roles, and one of the biggest reasons is the ability to understand the P&L. This was especially resonant for me, as I had to learn on the job. I didn’t go to business school. When I started out several jobs ago, I wasn’t versed in terms like EBITDA, top-line, and margin. I was lucky because after becoming a VP early in my career, I was asked to put together a budget and a forecast for my department — and my incredible manager/mentor Ainslie Simmonds taught me. Without her, my growth might have been stifled by never really understanding “how it works;” Things like CAC, LTV, and OpEx became familiar, and started to influence how I led my team. One of the best things you can do is understand these mechanisms and a great place to start is a chat with the VP of Finance or other financial leaders in the company who are often wonderful resources and eager to help the firm grow. 

What's the best job decision you ever made? 

I was following a pretty linear path in financial services and was offered a job at Goldman Sachs at the same time I received an offer for a role at SoulCycle; I chose the latter and embarked on a journey that made me better as founder and CEO of Orum. After years of finance and lots of work travel, I had specific criteria in mind: I wanted to work for a female CEO, in a category I found interesting, at a company based in New York. Melanie Whelan and SoulCycle checked all those boxes. I was used to building services on the internet; SoulCycle was not only software but brick and mortar, media, talent, hardware, creative, and content. I had no choice but to get even more comfortable with figuring things out. I developed the confidence and wherewithal to unpack a problem — to break it into small pieces and figure out how to get it done. This made me the founder I am today and has delivered a huge return on investment in my decision to build Orum.

Can you tell us about a time someone encouraged you to try a task or take on a project you didn’t think that you would know how to do/or be good at? 

As a founder, I feel like I have to take on something I haven’t done before nearly every day. To be honest, I was certain I would always be a “great #2” and taking the leap to start a company was way outside of my comfort zone.

These days, my “911 list” is one of my greatest superpowers. It’s my trusted group of informal advisors: other founders or business leaders who have had similar experiences. I call the list a superpower because it’s important for entrepreneurs to recognize when we don’t have the knowledge or expertise—and to know that that’s OK.

Do you have any productivity hacks? 

I started my career in that Silicon Valley hustle culture, working round the clock, where it was cool to be at your desk on a Sunday, to boast about working 24/7. But with more perspective, I know there’s a big difference between doing our best work versus working to the extreme all the time. Our customers depend on us, and my team and I are motivated to show up for the hard, intense moments. But as a leader, it’s my job to give myself and my team permission to take time away from working. That’s what it takes to be a whole person, to have the energy and clarity to give it your all when it IS time to work. A big productivity hack for me is achieving inbox zero every day–it’s a daily challenge, an overarching framework for how I think about my impact at Orum, and a structure that trains me not to use my inbox as a task list.