FinTech Female Fridays: Meet Sara Schmitt, COO and Co-Founder of Adro

Sara Schmitt is the COO and co-founder of Adro, a fintech startup in New York that’s reimagining banking for international students, visa holders, immigrants, and foreign business owners. But before building one of the most inclusive financial platforms in the industry, Sara’s journey wound through advertising, healthcare IT, grocery retail, and pandemic-era logistics.

“I’ve had a very circuitous career,” she says, with good reason. Her career has been defined by the kind of fearless curiosity and strategic adaptability that many professionals only aspire to. What ties it all together? “A willingness to work on large, tough, highly integrated problems,” she says, “and to work closely with customers or clients on creative solutions.”

It wasn’t until business school that Sara’s next chapter started to take shape. MBA programs often promise transformation, but for Sara, it delivered in full: she met her cofounder, began mapping the operational and financial realities of running a company, and built the foundation for what would become Adro.

Building a Startup 

Moving to a new country is overwhelming enough. Now imagine trying to start your financial life from scratch, only to hit wall after wall because of the documents you don’t have, or the systems that weren’t designed with you in mind. “Getting access to your own money should not be another barrier,” Sara says. Adro is changing that.

With tailored onboarding systems and compliance models that account for international documentation, Adro is proving two important things to the industry:

1. Inclusive financial services are needed, and

2. They are not only possible, but profitable.

   
   

Adro’s approach isn’t just about tech. It’s about people, people with stories, complexities, and ambition. And that perspective starts at the top. The company’s internal culture reflects its external mission: collaborative, transparent, and purpose-driven.

“Until becoming a founder, I had never done traditional sales work, and I had to learn it fast,” she says. It wasn’t a weakness, it was an opportunity to grow.

“As a founder, you will not know everything, but someone else in your network will. And they’ll likely be willing to share advice that saves you time, money, or pain.”

Looking Ahead

In fintech, trust is everything. As AI tools continue to transform customer service, Sara is keeping a close watch.

“There’s definitely a place for chatbot-first support,” she says, “but especially in fintech, customers want to know they’ve done everything right. They want to talk to a real person.”

Sara predicts that the best companies in the space will marry automation with authentic human expertise. As AI gets better, the edge will go to the companies that don’t fully replace people, but instead offer them where it matters most.

Sara Schmitt’s story is a reminder that power doesn’t come from having all the answers. It comes from asking the right questions, working through the complexity, and choosing courage, even when the path is unfamiliar.

More on Sara

Where you currently live: Jackson Heights, Queens (often ranked as the most diverse ZIP code in the US – it’s a very cool neighborhood in NYC!)

Living arrangement: I reached a huge life milestone last year when I bought my first apartment. I’m slowly making changes to put my own stamp on the place, starting with some bright colors on the walls!

Hometown: Buffalo, NY

Favorite show to binge: Fun fact: I don’t own a TV, and don’t watch any shows. I burned out on that when I worked in media.

Favorite fintech media : I think it’s actually the non-fintech news and reading that inspires me most, since I bring a financial lens to different challenges and try to figure out how I might solve a problem with financial tools and systems. Plus I think it’s important to have well-rounded interests, and having a few fun treats in my inbox every week is a great way to maintain some balance. My favorite newsletters/Substack subscriptions include: She’s a Beast; After School; Hard to Watch, and Dracula Daily.

If your life was a documentary, who would voice it over?

Oh, this is a good one. I feel like the most appropriate pick to try and narrate my zany, all-over-the-place career would be someone who did voicework for the Animaniacs.

What’s a passion you used to have that you’d love to reconnect with? 

I was seriously into bodybuilding for a few years, and am thinking of getting back into it! Another hobby that people don’t expect me to have because of my punky mohawk hairstyle is opera - I love going to see a classic opera at the Met.

Favorite condiment and why? 

I love hot sauce, the spicier the better. Maybe I should start a fintech founder version of Hot Ones...

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

The best piece of advice for anyone starting a new venture is to "solve real problems for real people"—and get really specific about both the problem and who is struggling with it. What I learned from my advisors in grad school, and from a failed startup project from my Cornell days, is that you also have to make sure it’s a big enough problem. There are lots of things we do every day that annoy us, but not enough to trigger a change in behavior, or to cause us to spend money to fix it. You want to find the problems that are big enough that people are going to invest in a solution… and then be that solution. This is true across all industries, but you really feel this acutely in fintech, where you will discover very quickly if customers are willing to pay.

What's the best decision you ever made? 

Making the leap to start Adro despite having a secure corporate position at Amazon was unquestionably my best (and craziest) decision, even though it meant significant financial uncertainty and a ton of work. But I had saved up, which allowed us to bootstrap the work early on, and I really trusted my cofounders, which is crucial. I still don’t know exactly where this journey is going to take us, but I’ve learned as much about running a business in the past two years as I have in my previous roles combined. Not only that, we’ve been able to make an outsized impact in a relatively short amount of time live. The best feeling is when I hear from a customer that we’ve helped them solve a real problem and they are less stressed about being able to make and receive payments.