Resiliency is more than just finding ways to endure — it's also about discovering new and better paths and building off an existing strength. Kara Kazazean's affinity for forging strong professional connections and collaborations has provided a new way of working in a world gone digital.
"One of my coworkers says that networking is my superpower, and I miss the opportunity for drop-in conversations with team members and spontaneous hallway conversations with other internal departments," said Kazazean, senior director of payment service at Walmart and one of PaymentsSource's Most Influential Women in Payments for 2021. "But leveraging technology with remote work environments provides opportunities for even broader connections … technology enables us to maintain and expand our networks, as long as we are intentional about dedicating the time."
Walmart's massive scale and penchant for
The big box retailer operates labs that develop new uses for artificial intelligence, robotics and the next generation of checkout, delivery and shopping experiences as the trends toward
"Retailers continue to leverage digital payments to enable touchless omnichannel experiences," said Kazazean, who has been with Walmart for 10 years and in her current position for three. "Many of these experiences had been launched or tested before the pandemic but have become crucial services to our customers in the current environment."
Collaboration and teaming — getting together to brainstorm and organize projects — are crucial to spotting new trends and building the future of retail. The mass office decampment of the past year at first robbed people of their ability to personally engage teammates and socialize with colleagues to build lasting connections.
But that ability to get together only appeared to be lost, as the closing of local offices opened virtual doors that had been less apparent before. With a lot more people working from home, the differences between Walmart's headquarters and outposts disappear.
"I have found that we are interacting more frequently with our remote colleagues, now that we’re all 'remote,' and they’ve expressed that they’ve never felt more a part of the team," said Kazazean. "Technology also allowed me to participate in alumni programming through Georgia Tech from my home office in Arkansas, an experience that was previously offered in-person in Atlanta."
It was at Georgia Tech where Kazazean earned an engineering degree and quickly launched her career in the payments industry, starting with a job at Radiant Systems, which is now part of NCR. "I learned how critical technology and payment systems are to merchants. The engineer in me was intrigued by the complex systems around payment processing."
An eight-year stint at RaceTrac Petroleum in Atlanta followed, where Kazazean learned all aspects of credit and debit retail payments, managed a co-branded card portfolio, oversaw ATM upgrades and launched several projects including a gift card. At Walmart, she has worked on the retailer's global gift card program, acquiring and network relationships for credit and debit card acceptance, among other leadership roles.
While in college Kazazean also learned early lessons in leadership and communications.
She was elected to a post at an organization she and a friend both belonged to, a job that included scheduling programs for members. But the job suddenly became much larger and Kazazean found herself running two meetings per month for the 100-person organization.
"Without any prior public speaking experience I was challenged to lead and organize meetings," she said. "People were looking to me for direction and answers to questions I'd never even thought to ask, let alone know how to answer. I learned the importance of trust, setting and communicating a common purpose — and that it’s okay to say that you don’t know the answer to something, yet!"
