If it wasn’t for her name, Gerry (pronounced Gary) Poirier might never have worked on Wall Street. It was the late ’80s, and females were a rarity in the male-dominated world of finance. When Poirier arrived for her scheduled job interview with Credit Suisse in a skirt, she was told she was in the wrong place. The interviewers assumed they were meeting a male; the man who became her boss later admitted he was looking forward to meeting someone (again assuming she was a male) who had traveled through Southeast Asia—information Poirier highlighted on her résumé.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Poirier decided to attend the University of Pennsylvania to study non-Western history. “I learned so much American history during my school years; I wanted to study something different,” she explains. Poirier also graduated with a concentration in marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Which is a good time to explain why Southeast Asia was included on her résumé.
“I’m a curious person; I want to learn,” she relates. “I wanted to experience new cultures that I didn’t know,” adding, “I get bored easily.”
As a child, Poirier often traveled with her family to Europe. “One uncle lived in London, another in Paris,” she relays. When only 13, she formulated a plan to spend three months in Paris, promising to babysit her younger cousins and teach them English while she learned French.
At 16, she decided she wanted to visit every country in Europe. She initiated her plans with so much confidence that her parents did not push back. This was long before cell phones and Google Maps had made their debut. She bought a Eurail Pass and Lonely Planet guide and set out on her European tour.
In her junior year of college, Poirier, who has Scottish roots, studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh. At the end of that experience, faced with four months off before her senior year, she recalls, “I wasn’t ready to come home.” She told her parents she wanted to spend the summer traveling through Southeast Asia and found an inexpensive way to do so on a cargo plane.
“I bought a student-rate ticket that made seven stops.” This time, however, her parents intervened and insisted her brother, who was studying at Princeton University, accompany her and a girlfriend she had invited along.
The traveling trio’s first stop was in Sri Lanka. The day before they arrived, the country erupted in civil war. Their planned two-day stay turned into two and a half weeks. Poirier remembers enjoying accommodations at a luxury hotel where they were attentively tended by a bored staff and driven around the countryside—never feeling unsafe.
After graduating from college, Poirier’s first job was on the trading floor at Credit Suisse—100 Wall Street—where she worked in a high-risk, high-reward environment for five straight years. By her late 20s, she was at the top of her game and started thinking about what she was going to do next. She told her boss she wanted to work for Credit Suisse in Japan. “I’ve always been a risk-taker,” she admits. He said no. “What if I learn to speak Japanese?” she asked. He reluctantly agreed. After a yearlong language course, Poirier reminded her boss of his promise. She was soon working among New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
It was during this time that Gerry met Bob Poirier at the Harvard Club in New York. She discloses she was interested in finding a partner, but she didn’t think it would be Bob—a divorcé with five children (and a serial entrepreneur). She decided, once again, to take a risk: she said yes. After marrying, they moved to Washington, D.C., to be near Gerry’s parents; together the couple have four boys: Tyler, Morgan, Connor, and Devon. Gerry continued working full-time, employed by global financial services companies, such as Lazard.
In her more than two decades in the financial industry, Gerry was often the only woman in the room. Added to that, whenever she traveled, she witnessed firsthand how disadvantaged women were across all economies and countries.
“I saw with my own eyes how difficult it is for females,” she tells. “I knew I wanted to help in some way. I’ve always felt driven to leave a positive impact.”
First though, there was a move to Naples. “We call it the Nantucket of Florida,” Gerry remarks. The family often visited her sister, who had a home in Boca Grande, explaining, “We love the elegant island.” At the time, Bob and Gerry owned a large home in Washington, D.C., as well as a country home. They decided a condo in Florida would make a nice addition to their real estate portfolio.
She and Bob visited various developments in Southwest Florida, including Talis Park, a golf community in North Naples. That night, over what Gerry remembers as “a really good bottle of wine,” the two looked at each other and about purchasing a newly built single-family home on Seneca Drive, said “Why not?”
They then asked their boys (their youngest was only in third grade) if the family should move to Naples full-time. As their boys all enjoyed the sport of golf, Bob and Gerry thought the answer would be a resounding yes. Although not a unanimous vote, the scales tipped in favor of a move, and the family relocated full-time in 2015.
Moving to paradise was in no way a time to retire or relax for Gerry. Rather, it was her opportunity to bring her longtime vision of helping females to reality. After learning that 70 percent of crowdfunding donors and nearly 80 percent of crowdfunding campaign organizers are women, she chose peer-to-peer lending as her portal to help women come together and support each other.
She set her sights on becoming the Bumble (a popular online dating and networking application based on integrity, kindness, equality, and respect where women make the first move when it comes to relationships) of crowdfunding.
Gerry admits she had no idea how challenging building a collaborative funding platform would be, citing the payment flow as the most difficult part. Through the process, she learned that two of the world’s largest payment companies are headquartered in Florida.
“Who knew?” she says. Combined, ACI Worldwide, in Coral Gables, and FIS Global in Jacksonville, “process $34 trillion in payments in one day,” she relays.
Determined to find solutions, Gerry consequently became acquainted with such companies and became well-versed in fintech—a portmanteau derived of “financial” and “technology,” wherein computer technology is used to support or enable banking or financial services. The Forbes Technology Council has even invited her to contribute articles discussing the topic.
In 2022, AngeLink launched. Today, the company boasts 55,000 active users; it has transcended borders and is available in 100 different currencies. Last year, the company completed $3 million in transactions. Gerry’s goal is to have a presence in every country of the world. In pursuit of this, she has already successfully raised $5.75 million in seed capital, which will close at $10 million. With eight anti-fraud patents pending, AngeLink is on track to become the world’s first AI-driven crowdfunding platform. In the donation space, Gerry already considers AngeLink the safest, most trusted platform. “We review every single campaign using AI tools, such as image and text recognition, and help users write a better story,” she says.
And that’s not all. Gerry rattles off more statistics sharing that “women-led start-ups are five times more likely to become billion-dollar companies compared to male-led businesses,” and “they generate more revenue and achieve more revenue per dollar invested compared to men.” Except, she adds, “Female entrepreneurs receive only 2.3 percent of total venture capital invested across all industries.”
In response to this gender inequity, Gerry envisions AngeLink as the go-to bank to help raise venture capital for female-generated business ideas.
Since relocating to Naples, Gerry has created a caring, empathetic, female-centric community. She has found the talent needed to run a visionary company in only three years—her 20 employees work remotely. She has assembled an impressive all-female board and started the AngeLink Community Foundation, an independent, IRS-registered 501(c)(3) public charity that makes direct impact grants.
When it comes to closing the gap on gender-based economic disparities, this blonde guardian has taken a leading role, helping females soar to great heights.
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