Name: Dr. Lidia Kurt
Job title: CEO at Seturion & BX Digital
Organisation: Boerse Stuttgart Group
1. Brief description of nominee’s role and job.
Dr. Lidia Kurt is Chief Executive Officer of Seturion, a pan-European settlement platform within Boerse Stuttgart Group, and concurrently CEO of BX Digital, the Group’s Swiss-based subsidiary.
She leads the strategic development and implementation of next-generation financial market infrastructure for tokenised assets. Seturion’s mission is to unify Europe’s fragmented post-trade landscape by enabling seamless, cross-border settlement across asset classes. Under her leadership, the platform leverages blockchain technology to deliver secure, efficient and transparent settlement solutions, connecting traditional and digital markets, banks, brokers, trading venues and tokenisation platforms across Europe.
Dr. Kurt drives the overall strategy, regulatory positioning and stakeholder engagement required to advance a fully integrated European capital market powered by digital innovation.
2. Short bio (career highlights, education, interests/hobbies).
Dr. Lidia Kurt is a recognised thought leader at the intersection of finance, technology and regulation, combining academic depth with entrepreneurial execution.
Prior to joining Boerse Stuttgart Group, she co-founded vision&, a European consultancy and venture builder focused on emerging technologies. Over nearly eight years, she led strategic initiatives for financial institutions and fintechs, supporting the design, implementation and scaling of digital asset projects. Under her leadership, vision& became an early European pioneer in transitioning traditional capital markets to distributed-ledger technology.
In 2022, she co-founded Swiss Stablecoin AG, an initiative dedicated to developing a regulated, accessible digital Swiss franc aimed at strengthening Switzerland’s monetary sovereignty and innovation capacity.
Earlier in her career, she served as Managing Partner at Algofin AG, advising institutional investors and multinationals on quantitative finance strategies, and began in Asset Management at Swiss Re, specialising in portfolio analytics and asset-liability management.
Dr. Kurt lectures on digital assets at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and HWZ Zurich and is the author of Digitale Assets & Tokenisierung (Springer Gabler), exploring the economic, legal and technological foundations of tokenised finance.
She holds a PhD in Finance, an MA in Banking & Finance, and a BA in Law and Economics from the University of St. Gallen.
3. What were your professional highlights and challenges of 2025?
A major milestone in 2025 was securing the FINMA DLT licence in Switzerland for BX Digital – a foundational regulatory achievement validating the vision of building institutional-grade digital market infrastructure. This progress was reinforced by onboarding five leading institutions as trading participants, welcoming initial issuers and receiving the Swiss Crypto Award for Best Digital Asset Solution.
In parallel, launching Seturion as a pan-European DLT platform marked a significant strategic step. Partnering with Société Générale as the first institutional partner demonstrated strong resonance with established financial institutions and underscored the relevance of regulated digital infrastructure at scale.
Equally important was building a diverse and highly capable team committed to reshaping capital markets across Europe.
At the same time, 2025 reinforced that meaningful transformation requires patience. Implementing new technological foundations often demands parallel systems before efficiencies are fully realised. Navigating this phase requires resilience and long-term commitment – essential ingredients for sustainable change.
4. Tell us about a few of your key achievements throughout your career?
Dr. Kurt has consistently operated with an entrepreneurial mindset, focusing on building infrastructure that creates lasting impact in financial markets.
She was an early advocate of blockchain and digital assets at a time when the technology was still nascent. Building Seturion and BX Digital from the ground up stands among her proudest achievements. Together with her team, she developed regulated infrastructure with the potential to fundamentally reshape how transactions are executed – making them more efficient, transparent and accessible.
Her career reflects a consistent commitment to translating emerging technologies into durable value for the European financial ecosystem.
5. What and who inspires, and has inspired, you to achieve your professional success?
Her greatest inspiration has been her mother, who built and ran her own law practice at a time when women were expected to prioritise domestic roles over professional ambition. Watching her navigate a demanding career with integrity, independence and empathy instilled a deep belief in forging one’s own path.
Her mother’s courage to challenge expectations and build something meaningful continues to shape Dr. Kurt’s entrepreneurial drive and conviction that lasting change begins with those willing to question the status quo.
6. How have you overcome setbacks, and what advice would you give to others dealing with setbacks?
Dr. Kurt approaches setbacks with perspective. Anchored in a purpose beyond short-term success, she views challenges as part of the innovation process rather than as failures.
Each obstacle reveals valuable insight – whether a conceptual flaw, a missing perspective or an opportunity to refine the approach. By treating setbacks as signals rather than barriers, she transforms them into catalysts for clarity and progress.
Her advice is to ground yourself in a mission larger than immediate results. With that foundation, setbacks become stepping stones rather than stopping points.
7. What advice do you have for other women who aspire to be in leadership positions? What is the biggest takeaway you want to leave with the reader?
Dr. Kurt encourages women not to measure themselves solely by titles or CV milestones, but by alignment with what genuinely matters to them.
Leadership takes many forms – building a business, raising a family, leading global organisations or combining multiple roles. There is no single blueprint for success.
Define achievement on your own terms, choose the path that resonates most deeply, and commit to it with conviction. Authentic commitment, she believes, ultimately creates both impact and fulfilment.