Blog

Spotlight: Lindsey Fowler

by Harjyot Dhanjal
by Harjyot Dhanjal

Lindsey is a breath of fresh air. She brings a very positive energy with her in both professional and personal interactions. She is a complete boss woman who is a Director of Engineering at Remitly, a digital financial services provider on a mission to make the international money transfer process faster, affordable, and more transparent. Her teams own the backend systems supporting all of the Finance teams including the Data Platform, Accounting, Treasury, and Reconciliation. Prior to Remitly she was at Amazon for 18 years and has been leading engineering teams for the last 12 years.

Lindsey grew up in Loveland, Colorado and was set on becoming a botanist. There’s something about “feeling at home with plants,” that has resonated with her from a young age and continues to this day. As she grew older, this career goal shifted to engineering, which was very much a family business. Lindsey has always had a passion for computers, highly influenced by her grandfather and father, both of whom were engineers. This continued on in both of her sisters as well, who are respectively electrical and chemical engineers.

Lindsey’s early work history helped shape her future career. In high school she had the opportunity to be an assistant to an executive assistant at Agilent Technologies, where she was able to see engineering first-hand. She also dove into web designing which truly began her love of computing and programming as she taught herself programming languages and explored the limits of what she could do with them. She built websites for local businesses in the late 1990’s, before it became a necessity in the business world.

This started her interest in business technology. She LOVES solving problems and as she has become a manager, her passion has evolved to creating diverse teams with a great work culture. Now Lindsey has interests in many other things outside of work. She loves to watercolor, knit, crochet, bake, cake decorate, and learn new hobbies. She enjoys flexing both the analytical and creative sides of her mind whenever she can find the time.Her daily inspiration comes from her younger sister who has overcome a lot of adversity in her life and no matter what, she chooses to be happy. This has led Lindsey to embrace this outlook and try to choose positivity and lead with joy.

A transformational time in Lindsey’s life was overcoming her eating disorder. She had struggled with her body image since she was six years old. Her perspective was completely changed on her life and health when she read Fat! So? by Marilyn Wann. Working with a nutritionist, she was able to overcome anorexia, gaining time, joy, and freedom in her life.”Everyone is worthy, no matter what shape, size, weight, color, etc., you are”, are words she both lives by and shares with others. When Lindsey joined Remitly, she started an Affinity Group – an employee-led group for individuals with common characteristics to provide networking, resources for mentorship and training for its members – for employees in marginalized bodies, specifically focusing on size. Remitly is unique in offering a corporate group that specifically focuses on size discrimination, supporting employees of all shapes and sizes.

Something Lindsey wished she knew earlier in her career is all feedback is the receiver’s true perception of your behavior – even if you do not agree. The feedback and your reaction to it are two separate things. When you receive feedback you then get to take from it what you want to change about your behavior. That may be something you want to shift to change the next interaction, it may not be.

by Harjyot Dhanjal

Related Readings

Q&A: The Importance of Soft Skills

Q&A: The Importance of Soft Skills

I had the pleasure of interviewing our Account Executive, Avery Wojcik. Based on her experience, Wojcik believes that communication must be at the forefront of any candidate’s...