Joy Hanawa

Founder, Technology Enabled Business

Joy Hanawa is a financial services technology veteran with over 25 years of executive-level experience driving growth and innovation in the private sector. She is the founder of Technology Enabled Business, a new venture created to share her decades of experience and help other organizations learn, grow, and benefit from her human-first, technology-enabled approach. For her new company, she now wields Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a powerful tool to accelerate the innovation process, launching the firm with sophisticated, results-driven capabilities.

Underpinning her executive leadership is nearly 18 years of hands-on experience building SaaS software, where she grew from the first developer hired to Chief Information Officer of a 20-person development team. This unique background, spanning both the creation and implementation of technology, gives her unparalleled insight into the critical "build versus buy" decision. Her deep understanding of the development lifecycle has been instrumental in turning around vendor relationships and negotiating significant cost reductions, including a 70% discount on Salesforce licenses for a prior firm.

Previously, as a core member of the executive team at Edge Capital Lending, Ms. Hanawa served as the Director of Technology, Data & Analytics, where she architected the firm’s modern technology stack from the ground up. Her leadership was pivotal in migrating the company to Salesforce at one-third of the previous CRM cost and integrating disparate systems, including the Solifi (Stucky) loan servicing software, to significantly improve productivity and reduce risk.

Her track record of transformative leadership includes serving as VP of Technology at Thunder Funding, where her initiatives contributed to 400% company growth and saved the operational equivalent of over a dozen full-time employees in four years. Before that, as CTO of E-Capital, she modernized the company's IT infrastructure and implemented over 250 business process automations. Ms. Hanawa's work has earned significant industry recognition, culminating in being named a finalist in the prestigious Banking Tech Awards, where her innovations stood alongside a multi-billion dollar platform launch from JP Morgan Chase.

Underlying her technical expertise is a deep-seated passion for education. Ms. Hanawa holds a Master of Science in Technology Management and has served as a professional trainer and a community college adjunct instructor who helped develop online courses. This unique blend of technology leadership and educational focus defines her mission to not only build great systems but to empower the people who use them.