Lori Shao spent more than 20 years spearheading innovation in global payments, treasury management and portfolio growth at some of the nation’s largest banks. Today, as founder and CEO of Finli, she helps financial institutions win back the business clients that vertical software has been quietly banking.

Throughout her career, Lori has championed financial access and social impact, and that passion shaped how she built Finli. Finli is a certified B Corp and a certified social enterprise. It exists to understand the challenges business owners face and build solutions that scale through the institutions that serve them, which is why its programs also earn CRA credit for its partners. Lori serves on the boards of The Linkun Foundation, a nonprofit servicing immigrant solopreneurs, and B Local Los Angeles, the city’s B Corp community.

Her conviction started at her parents’ flea market stand. She watched her father carry the worries that kept him up at night, and she noticed that the only time he put on his best outfit was to meet with his banker. Lori became a banker to be the solutions architect for business owners like him. With Finli, short for “financial lift,” she has set out to be an ally to every financial institution that wants to do more for the businesses in its community.

Off the clock, she’s a devoted mother to two human children, caretaker to eleven non-human ones, and, in her spare time, keeper of a growing dubia roach colony.