From Learning to Leading: The Final Chapter of Women in Finance & Technology
The Women in Finance & Technology Mentorship Programme has once again demonstrated the power of innovation, leadership, and diversity in shaping the future of finance and technology.
Over the past four months, 40 selected candidates participated in practical initiatives and applied learning experiences, supported by expert mentors and industry leaders. The programme featured a dynamic mix of training sessions, engagement activities, and teamwork-focused tasks, all designed to equip women with practical skills and industry exposure needed to take on leadership roles in fintech.
The journey culminated in a dynamic final pitch event at Nexus Luxembourg, the country’s premier tech gathering, where participants presented their ideas to a panel of industry experts. Among them, three teams stood out: ExploDORA, LetzBank and Greenfi – with ExploDORA delivering this year’s winning pitch.
ExploDORA is an AI-powered RegTech platform built to help financial institutions navigate the EU’s complex Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). Conceived by Nathalie Gulyaeva, Paola Colombo, and Ramya Rao, it combines deep regulatory expertise with cutting-edge technology to turn compliance from a burden into a strategic advantage.
This programme was proudly delivered by the LHoFT – Luxembourg House of Financial Technology, in collaboration with the Luxembourg Tech School (LTS) and supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).
Now, let’s hear from the winners themselves — the founders of ExploDORA — as they share their journey, insights, and vision for the future of intelligent compliance.
When Pain Points Become Products: How ExploDORA Took Shape
- Can you introduce your team and your project?
At ExploDORA, we believe DORA compliance shouldn’t feel like finding a needle in a flaming haystack — while the haystack yells at you in legalese. So, we built something better.
ExploDORA is an AI-powered RegTech platform designed to help financial institutions navigate the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) with clarity, speed, and a touch of style. Think: automated gap analysis, Register of Information, remediation plans, NLP-fueled document analysis, and OCR — all in a secure, multilingual SaaS platform.
We’re three women, one vision: build the tool we wished existed.
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- Nathalie Gulyaeva, Compliance & Strategy Lead, has over 16 years as a global Head of Legal and CCO. She’s led legal, regulatory compliance and governance functions across the UK, Luxembourg, and Russia. She turns regulation into roadmap — and yes, she once made a 130-item wish list. This startup is one of them.
- Paola Colombo, Governance Lead and a master of turning frameworks into future-proof systems. With 18+ years in financial institutions and regulatory strategy (ECB, CSSF), she’s now combining that with blockchain and AI to rethink how compliance is done — smarter, faster, and ethically.
- Ramya Rao, Tech & DevOps Lead, is the engineering force behind ExploDORA’s architecture. With over 12 years in cloud and infrastructure, she’s led mission-critical builds where resilience, scale, and security are non-negotiable. Ramya doesn’t just write code — she designs systems that think ahead. Her superpower? Turning complex technical chaos into streamlined, scalable solutions that just work — and keep working under pressure.
We met through the Female Talent in FinTech programme, and on June 18 at Nexus Luxembourg, we pitched ExploDORA — and took home 1st place.
We’re building ExploDORA to help 22,000+ financial entities tackle 900+ requirements — intelligently, intuitively, and with impact.
- What inspired your idea and how did it come to life?
The idea for ExploDORA was born the way many great ideas are: in a moment of overconfidence and chaos.
Nathalie was handed a DORA-related project at her bank — adjacent to her expertise, but deep in tech waters. The team was lean (read: no ICT manager), and she, ever the optimist, rolled up her sleeves and said: “I can do it.”
What followed? Manual madness.
Gap assessments done the hard way. Remediation plans stitched together by consultants (also manually). A separate consultant for the Register of Information — not fully automated either. Hundreds of hours, documents flying, dashboards breaking, and compliance reports that felt like they were written with a quill.
That’s when Nathalie had the lightbulb moment: There had to be a smarter way.
ExploDORA was born from that experience — not from theory, but from real, boots-on-the-ground compliance pain. We built the platform we wish we had: one that handles the heavy lifting, connects the dots, and doesn’t send you into spreadsheet despair.
DORA may be complex. But surviving it shouldn’t require heroics or a small army of consultants.
- What problem are you solving, and what makes your solution unique?
We’re not just solving a problem — we’re solving a compliance migraine in slow motion.
As DORA rolls out across the EU, thousands of financial entities are bracing for complexity overload. Existing tools only scratch the surface — one tackles registers, another handles risk, none speak your language (literally or technically), and most lack any meaningful AI.
ExploDORA will change that.
We’re building a secure, multilingual platform that will combine AI-powered gap analysis, smart remediation planning and development, intelligent register generation — all in one end-to-end solution. The in-house AI models will read and understand DORA, analyze internal documentation, and generate actionable outputs in real time. It won’t just highlight gaps — it will suggest how to close them.
What will make ExploDORA unique is its ability to think like a compliance officer and work like a team of them — but faster, multilingual, and tireless. It’s not just a smarter tool. It’s your future co-pilot for resilience.
While others digitize checklists, we’re designing ExploDORA to deliver strategic clarity and automated execution — turning compliance from a burden into a competitive edge.
We’re building the tool we wish we had — and soon, others won’t want to work without it.
- How was your experience during the Women in Fintech program?
The Women in Fintech program wasn’t just a program — it was a five-month adrenaline shot of ambition, ideas, and firepower.
From day one, we were surrounded by brilliance: mentors who challenged us, industry pros who shared real-world insights, and a cohort of 40 unstoppable women — each one a pioneer, disrupter, leader, or all three. It wasn’t just empowering. It was electrifying.
There was no room for playing small. Every workshop, every pitch, every discussion pushed us to level up — and fast. It was intense (yes, our calendars cried), but it was also transformational. We learned to think bigger, move faster, and build smarter — all while cheering each other on.
The environment? Pure energy. You couldn’t walk into a session without getting inspired — or slightly intimidated (in the best way). It was a place where “what if” turned into “why not” — and then into “let’s build it.”
We didn’t just grow ideas. We grew as founders, teammates, and future leaders in finance and tech.
If this is the future of fintech, we’re in very good hands — and we’re proud to be part of the generation building it.
- What were some of your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
Our biggest challenge? Doing it all — and realizing we couldn’t.
Between the AI masterclasses, blockchain deep-dives, pitch prep, conferences, and the sheer brilliance flying around the room, we wanted to catch every moment. But life doesn’t pause for programs. We had full-time jobs, families, responsibilities — and more than a few late nights spent toggling between compliance frameworks and bedtime stories.
At times, the calendar felt like a battlefield. Prioritization wasn’t just a skill — it became survival.
And then there was the mental game: that quiet little voice asking, “Are we good enough? Smart enough? Ready enough?” Hello, imposter syndrome.
But here’s the truth: we weren’t alone. Every time doubt crept in, someone in the cohort echoed it — and that made it easier to fight. We leaned on each other, laughed through the overwhelm, and reminded ourselves why we were here.
We didn’t overcome challenges by pretending they weren’t there. We acknowledged them, adjusted, and kept showing up.
Sometimes with polished decks. Sometimes with coffee and chaos. But always with heart.
That’s how we moved forward. And that’s why we’re still standing — stronger, smarter, and more confident than when we began.
- What’s next for the project – any milestones or plans ahead?
What’s next? A lot — and fast.
Our ambition is to roll out ExploDORA in smart, focused phases — starting with the Register of Information module, our pilot use case. Ideally in 2026 (funding and team permitting), users will upload their vendor contracts, our AI will extract DORA-required fields, flag missing elements like SLAs or criticality tags, and generate a multilingual, submission-ready register — minus the migraine.
From there, we plan to expand into automated gap assessment, remediation, AI-powered dashboards, and ecosystem integrations. The vision: a modular, explainable, end-to-end compliance engine that grows with your needs.
ExploDORA fits perfectly with Luxembourg’s AI Strategy 2030, which champions secure, explainable, and human-centric AI — especially in high-trust sectors like finance. We’re building local, thinking global.
And yes, we’ll need people (hiring!) and partners (collab welcome!), but also fuel — funding. If you’re an investor ready to back a regulation-hungry, AI-powered SaaS with global potential, let’s talk.
We’re also eyeing programs like Fit 4 Start, because we’re not here to pause — we’re here to launch.
We’re not promising magic overnight but we’re building toward it.
Join us and help shape the Jarvis of DORA.
No stress. Run ExploDORA with success.
