Danielle Madison is Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships at Forward, an Austin-based embedded payments company. After nearly two decades building software with deep ties to payments, Danielle and Forward's founding team had a successful exit to Fiserv. They went inside the payments giant and ran the integrated payments division, where it all clicked: no wonder it was so hard to get payments right all those years. Unfair economics, rigid technology, and a model that wasn't built for software companies.

That experience became the catalyst for Forward, as in pay it Forward. Now as co-founder, Danielle partners with vertical SaaS platforms to help them unlock payments revenue through modern infrastructure and a true partnership model.