Innovation and Iteration: Creating a Path to Success

The pace of innovation is accelerating across artificial intelligence, real-time payments and embedded finance. That means leadership requires not only a dynamic skill set but also the ability to innovate and iterate constantly—both in your professional style and management of your business. The Most Influential Women in Payments honorees discuss their own career trajectories and how the ability to identify and capitalize on waves of innovation can determine what comes next in your corporate climb.

Among the things you'll learn:

How the rapid emergence of game-changing innovations can be utilized to enhance your business performance while also influencing how quickly your leadership expertise is recognized and rewarded.


Transcription:

John Adams (00:11):

This session is on the technology, on the pace of technology, how fast it's moving and how to keep your career up to speed. I'm John Adams. I'm a Reporter from American Banker and with me today, Kim Fitzsimmons, the CEO of Talus Pay. Jacqueline Sousa to my right Jackie. Jackie is the Managing Director of CashPro Payments Product team at Bank of America and Kristin Streett, Head of Banking for ServiceNow. When I was preparing for this, I came across some research from the Global Wealth Report that mentioned that 18% of the jobs that are being created now didn't exist 20 years ago and in the United States it's double that. So I thought we would start is with each of you go through the position that you have now, the job you're doing, and what parts of that job didn't exist or would not have existed 20 years ago, even if you had the job 20 years ago, Jackie?

Jacqueline Sousa (01:21):

Sure. I'll start. Hello everyone again. My name is Jacqueline Sousa, I'm Managing Director at Bank of America. I'm responsible for our CashPro Payments Product Team and CashPro is our a global banking platform for corporate clients. And so that's a very easy question to answer in that the internet is really what brought that along. I mean, it did exist before I joined the team, but the advancement of digital technology, particularly in the payment space and for corporates especially, is something that has evolved over the last couple of decades, but continues to evolve, especially in the last few years. So I think my job would not have existed a couple of years ago. No.

Kim Fitzsimmons (02:01):

So Kim Fitzsimmons with Talus, I think as CEO of any company, all of the responsibilities are still the same, but it's changed in the fact of how we actually execute on some of those. So it's a lot more automation. It's thinking about things in more of where things are going and how you can automate it. So it's really, especially with the FinTech side of things, I had one of my colleagues that lives out here in the bay area that said, no, and this is for my age, you have to think a FinTech. So it's like, oh my gosh, wait a minute. So it's not really that the role has changed, but it's how it's all technology has impacted.

Kristin Streett (02:49):

So I'm Kristin Streett. It's nice to be here. I think that technology for me inside ServiceNow is advancing so quickly that I spend a lot of my time just trying to grasp onto information and keep my skills relevant. So I'm constantly taking training online, I'm looking up new technology, making sure that I'm aware of what's out there. But one of the, I recently just went through a career change inside the organization and part of that change really was brought about, and Sarah in the last session really said it right. It's like find something really hard to do and really master it. And I did. I picked something that I knew from a leadership perspective was going to take me to the next level and it was being able to report on the business and how is the business doing. And I spent a lot of months trying to learn how to do that and have recently sort of hit the pinnacle of achievement of doing a good job in that regard. But it took me two years to do that. And so it's given me a new opportunity inside a rapidly growing SaaS company. So I'm really excited about that.

Kim Fitzsimmons (04:02):

So Kristin, you said reporting on things like how to report the different KPIs, that is a big part of it. So how do you do things differently?

Kristin Streett (04:09):

Yeah,

Kim Fitzsimmons (04:10):

How do you measure it? How do you report on it more real time,

Kristin Streett (04:13):

To an executive who really doesn't want to have, and also that was in the last session, just the nitty gritty details, right? It's like how do I bullet points? How do I report? Yeah,

Kim Fitzsimmons (04:21):

There's bullet points. Pictures are great too.

John Adams (04:26):

One things I've that I've noticed, I mean my job, what it's called is not different than it was 30 years ago. You have a reporter, it's the same job, but the way you do it is different. Not writing for a newspaper anymore, it's a website and you're recording on a phone and not writing in a notebook. How much of the change is about how you do the work and how difficult is or challenging is the training in that learning how to do something new? I can think of a dozen things offhand that I didn't know how to do 10 years ago and had to learn how to do a job that I'd had for 30 years. What are some examples of that, something you've had to learn or a skill that you've had to develop on the fly?

Jacqueline Sousa (05:13):

Yeah, I would think about that in two ways. On the more scale of the day-to-day and how you do the work. I think in product management there's a lot of project management involved and every other day there's some new tool out there to help you be more successful and how to figure out to make sure that you're being efficient and moving projects along and meeting dates and staying on budget. And so the day-to-day has certainly gotten more and more digital from that perspective, even in just managing it. And there's new tools out there all of the time and large organizations are always thinking through what's the most efficient tool to help us get the best reporting for senior management. And a lot of times it boils down to you still are going to need the humans to do the job. But I think on the macro scale, I would say that a lot of the things we're seeing now in the payment space, especially as a large bank, is a lot of the change and innovation in payments is being driven by regulators, believe it or not.

(06:07):

So it's less about what's this cool new idea that I have as a product manager? There's certainly space for that, but a lot of the innovation is being pushed by regulators around the globe. And in my seat, I'm lucky to get to see how it's being pushed in Europe or how it's getting pushed in Brazil or how it's getting pushed in India. And it's really fascinating how that is driving the changes that we need to make to our platform every single year and how that's really pushing the envelope. And so it's funny because people don't really associate risk and regulation with innovation, but in our space it's absolutely where it's coming from.

Kim Fitzsimmons (06:41):

I think for us as rapidly as things continue to change, as technology continues to take over everything that we do, we're using AI and ChatGPT and Snowflake and all these other tools to help us keep the SOPs up to date, to keep the complex learnings of bringing on somebody new when things are so much more complicated now. So using things like that and tools to just make it easier to onboard somebody and kind of throw 'em in the deep end of the pool.

Kristin Streett (07:18):

Yeah, absolutely.

(07:21):

So for me, I think trying some new, I'm an Xer, I don't know if there's any Xers here, but I kind of pride myself on my own IP and that I've learned things through my life and I bring them to my work and my work stands for itself and inside ServiceNow, it's really the teams have really normalized AI and ChatGPT, and we actually can use ChatGPT inside our organization, which is really helpful. But I remember, this is kind of a funny story. I was on a project where we needed a point of view and a perspective on a brand new technology. I literally had no idea what it was, and I had to kind of embrace the insecurity of knowing, hey, I actually don't know what this is.

(08:06):

And a colleague of mine who he's just lovely, did the initial legwork on it and kind of came in with a POV that we could take a look at and kind of perfect. And I was like, wow, Devin's done such an amazing job. This is incredible. I am learning so much from him. And darned if we didn't go to ChatGPT and type in the exact statement and it spit out exactly what he wrote for us, he had used ChatGPT to get us started on the task and it was literally word for word, it was just there and it was so hysterical because I thought he just brilliantly put this together and he's just the nicest, smartest person. So he sat down and actually taught me all the things I needed to know about this particular technology, but I just thought it was really funny that he had immediately gone to ChatGPT before even trying to waste any time. And here I was trying to spin on me coming up with my own internal brilliance, which was severely lacking in that moment.

Kim Fitzsimmons (09:07):

Yeah, I always think about it does save time business cases to help you prioritize things. Think about how much time we used to spend writing a business case, just a simple thing to be able to prioritize a product or a project is mind numbing. And now so much easier they'll write it for us.

John Adams (09:27):

With something like ChatGPT, how do you decide how you're going to use it? Is there a process given this is technology that largely didn't exist the way that it's seen now, it was recently two or three years ago, when something that big comes that quickly, how do you adjust to coming up with policy or best practices or how you're going to adopt it in your organizations?

Kim Fitzsimmons (09:53):

I mean, it's probably different for us because we're a smaller organization and we're not heavily regulated as my colleagues up here. So for us, it's not a matter of how we use it, but somebody go figure out and challenging people to go think of other ways to use it because it makes everybody's lives easier and simplified and the output that we've had have been tremendous.

Kristin Streett (10:19):

I think this term may be becoming a little bit more common, but our internal experts around AI and agentic and generative AI tend to use the phrase cognitive load. If your cognitive load is maxed out, it's probably a good idea to think about ways that AI might be able to help with that. And I've experienced it personally, just the pace of change and the scale at which I have to cover in terms of working with our banking customers across just a large space of geography. Somebody had come to me and said, I need to understand how this mortgage regulation is impacting one of our banking customers. I had had a really long day, I was exhausted and I had to be amazing in that moment for that person who needed my advice. And I literally, I just went to ChatGPT and I said, please explain this reg bulleted out with the top three, the top three things that are most salient and important for a bank.

(11:24):

And it just did it so fast and the relief that I felt is what keeps me going back to the technology and the idea just to take it a step further that now Agent Tech is really taking the step for you. I've kind of bragged as a mom, I wish I had somebody who was my assistant who ran around me and helped me do things for my kids, and now I have this ability to have somebody who's doing work for me at work and it's accepted internally. And so that's been a huge, huge relief for me.

Kim Fitzsimmons (11:57):

And it could be anything as simple as writing a weekly email to all employees, which I do to our engineers using it to help write code. They certainly have to go back and check it, but to do the initial code, we use it for that as well and everything in between.

Jacqueline Sousa (12:16):

Yeah, and I think I would add to Kim's point about the more heavily regulated companies such as a large bank.

(12:23):

There's a limit to how much you can use that in the day-to-day. But I think what it does show in the industry is that I think prior to ChatGPT, there was probably a more negative association with chatbots, if you will. We've all probably had bad experiences with the service experience of trying to talk to a chat and it's really not that helpful, but ChatGPT showed that it really can be. And so that kind of raised the bar and on cash, our global banking platform for corporates, we have our version of chat where our clients can use that and it leverages the power of Erica at Bank of America. So the ability to continue to focus on that to say, no, actually there is value in this and it can be transformative. You just got to stay at it and do it the right way so that it's something that clients want to use and that's something that they're like, oh, it's not going to work. And I think ChatGPT and things like that have the ability to take a technology that maybe people were eh about and then transform it. And I think of that in the same way with what COVID did for QR codes. I feel like they were kind of on the decline and then COVID brought it back. So I think it shows you that technology when done really well, a specific type of technology when done really well can inform the whole industry.

John Adams (13:32):

How do you keep in touch with what's new? In other words, where do you find out? Where do you look to find out what's new sort of on your own, either for your work or what's next in your career or what are some of the best sources of information?

Kim Fitzsimmons (13:49):

You want to go first?

Kristin Streett (13:53):

Sure. Well, we have the huge benefit of having an investment in what we call ServiceNow University where you can go and just learn new skills. It's actually public and free. I mean anybody can go use it. And so sometimes when I have to be in a meeting, I'll just go take a quick class just to make sure I'm just remembering the technology, what does it do and how is it helpful? But when I was in banking, I remember very distinctly feeling like I needed access to information and ideas and data, and I was just on that treadmill, man. I was working hard trying to innovate and create new ideas and having access to research, whether it's from a American banker who puts out amazing research or even just searching for it through GSIs or partners that push out data and information, just having access to ideas to help spur your own creativity.

(14:54):

You're a smart person, your job, your field, sometimes you just need something to kind of give you the jumpstart that gets your idea going or it sparks your creativity. And I feel like that just comes down to access. And sometimes in your own organization it's licensed and it's you're not aware of it. So reach out, ask your IT business partners, ask your leadership team, do we have access to research at the top of the house in our organization that can help me learn more about ai? American Banker has an amazing AI report that I reference when I'm in meetings, so lots of great data out there.

Jacqueline Sousa (15:33):

Yeah, I would agree with Kristin. I think there's so much content out there that there's really no excuse to not be on top of it. I think now the challenge is more knowing which ones are going to take off. But I mean for me personally and in my last few years of my career, I have learned so much from either to Kristin's point reading articles of content that's out there that our company pays for and is just taking the time to read. People don't read anymore, but if you read, you'll actually learn a lot. And then certainly conferences like this, I've been very blessed to be able to go to a few and even just in the fall was at money 2020, and when you are in a room full of fintechs that are doing so well and you never even heard of them, it kind of opens up your mind to like, wow, there's a lot out there that's happening and you could never know enough. So you just got to keep staying hungry to learn.

Kim Fitzsimmons (16:18):

Yeah, the only thing I would add on that is besides research and going to conferences, which are all great, I personally love to do a lot of skip level type meetings and sit down with small groups. For me, it's easy to do younger people to have them tell me what am I not thinking of? What are we as a company not thinking of what are we missing and really get solicit feedback. So I use that one-on-one and small group interviews a lot to have people help validate what it is that I've read and researched. So.

John Adams (17:00):

How does it affect the product development? In other words, and that's a very broad question, but in terms of how ideas come into an organization of how they're brainstormed it and how a plan to act on those ideas, how is different than it might have been a couple of years ago and how does the speed of this new technology, how is it changing that, how you come up look at ideas or development if anything along those lines?

Kim Fitzsimmons (17:29):

So we're dealing with that right now. We've taken, the company's done a huge transformation in the last 12 to 18 months and the inflow of ideas and things that we should be working on and developing is never ending and it just continues to grow. And so now the problem is prioritizing with business cases, getting use cases and making sure that you really, I call 'em squirrels. You could be going in any different direction and all of a sudden somebody's got another new idea and it's like squirrel, let's go here. So keeping people focused and really deciding with a good business case and good use cases of what it is that you should be working on and developing that is the hard part because the inflow of ideas, because with technology you can build just about anything. It's how do you stay focused and how do you keep the team focused and really decide what are the top three or four things because you can't do everything.

(18:28):

What are those few things? And then when you're done, then go find the next three or four. We start the year off. In fact, we just finalized it a little bit late, but we call it a five by five and it's on one page and you got your top five priorities for the company. And then there's five activities that support each one of those priorities at the top of the house that the senior leadership agrees on. And then they each take that down and make it more granular and adapt it to their particular, whether it's HR or finance or operations or product, they take that same thing and make the activities more relatable to that particular division. So it really helps because it's on one page and we go back and reference it on a regular basis.

Jacqueline Sousa (19:14):

And I think the best thing you can do, and in my case with the product team is get the ideas from your clients, the people actually using your product. And probably nine times out of 10, it's not even some really advanced technological thing. They just want you to do this one simple thing that they've been asking for years. And that's really the best way to build a business case because there's more direct impact and value to the client and they know how they often know your product better than you do. Hopefully they're using it every day and they're seeing the ins and outs and they can spot the things that would make their life simpler, which I think hones in on the fact that the best products or the best new ideas solve a problem. If you're just innovating to just have some cool new gadget, I mean there's a place for that.

(19:56):

But if you're not actually solving a problem or helping the clients day to day, then you could argue that maybe that wasn't the right priority. And I think we've probably all been in that place where you prioritize something and oh, that wasn't the right one. But if you go back to the users of the platform or the product, then it'll be a lot clearer that that's the direction you should go. Now in some cases you have to do something else first, whether it's infrastructure or meeting a mandate somewhere and following some law that you have to do something a certain way or in a certain priority order. But the best ideas, you could read all the articles and go to all the conferences. The best ideas are in your clients' heads and minds.

Kristin Streett (20:36):

You took the words right out of my mouth. I mean that is exactly what we do. I started my career in FinTech before I went to banking, and I remember if anyone who's been in a startup knows it is heavily product management focused and the development of the product is you're constantly iterating with customers and you're doing focus groups and putting things in front of them. And what I learned from that experience was two things. One, never assume that you know what your customer wants. You may think you do, but until you actually really ask them, you really dunno, you're guessing. And I went toe to toe with a leader who I was in marketing at the time and I was certain that this was the right thing to do. And he said, well, how do you know? And I just said, well, I know.

(21:24):

And he said, no, you don't. You need to ask the customers. And you know what I did and I was young, I was just right out of college. I really thought I knew everything. And the reality was is it taught me a very valuable lesson very early, which is stay close to the customer, understand them, understand what they want and deliver that and that's what makes you successful. And when I took it to banking, it actually became a force multiplier for me because I actually, I was asked to build a technology roadmap based on where we needed to be in three to five years and I was absolutely overwhelmed. And then I realized, wait a minute, I just need to go ask my customers and I need to ask our employees. And I just dug in, I did the work, I got into the trench and what I learned was the customers guided us in the right direction. They know what they needed from us. And it was just a good lesson from early in my career.

Kim Fitzsimmons (22:16):

It starts with the good use case. What is the use case? The customers are going to use it, so how are they going to use it? What's going to be the benefit to the customer? And then follow it up with a good business case. Are we going to make money? Are we going to save money?

(22:31):

And then that's got to get added into a budget. There's got to be dollars and cents unless it's regulatory or something like that. But there's a good use case and then there's a good business case that follows it.

Jacqueline Sousa (22:43):

And the only other thing I would add is that sometimes it's really about listening. The clients may not always specifically say, I want widget X, but you have to listen to what it is that they're saying kind of between the lines. So a great example that we had was as all of us, we all struggle with remembering passwords. So signing into something and you constantly forget and then you have to get reset and the whole thing, it's such a pain point. So we ended up developing something called QR sign in where we could use the CashPro app, scan a QR code, and with biometrics get into our CashPro platform. You don't have to type a password, you don't have to answer security questions. No client said, Hey, I'd really a QR sign in. That's not how it goes. But we did hear them say, I'm annoyed that I constantly forget my password and then I have to answer all these security questions and I'm in and out of cashflow all day, so I have to go through this five times.

(23:31):

Can you make the sign in experience easier? And that's very relatable for any platform that any of us use. So then we took that and we actually worked with clients directly on the design and how it would look and what if we click here and what if the process was three step or four step or two step and eventually built something that it was immediately widely adopted because it actually solved a problem. So you do have to listen to clients, but you can't expect them to hand it on a silver platter. You just kind of have to listen between the lines and build with them.

John Adams (24:03):

I guess that question the other way, how has communication changed in terms of the learning curve either for professional colleagues or for clients or for something like ChatGPT, which is in some ways a very mainstream bubbles to be pop culture, how do you localize that for a professional corporate use? In other words, is that harder than it may have been five or 10 years ago?

Kim Fitzsimmons (24:35):

I think there's got to be a good balancing act, right between using tools like Snowflake or ChatGPT or whatever else is out there and actually sitting in a room and talking to whether it be customers or employees, really balancing the technology and the human aspect of things. We can't get away completely from the fact that we're all still people. I think technology certainly has helped us get and deliver things faster, but man, if we stop communicating with one another, that's part of the foundation of everything that we'll continue to build on.

Jacqueline Sousa (25:16):

And I think from a product management perspective, we are in conversations all day every day with either other product managers or technology teams. And what I've found tends to be the hiccup whenever something doesn't go quite as planned is the definition of the words that we're using. And what do you mean by what you're saying?

(25:33):

And because it's very easy for two people to hear the same word and have two different interpretations of that. And even just an example from this past week on our homepage, we have widgets. So you can customize your homepage with things, but the word widget in business has long been used as to say a thing, we're going to build this widget. So I remember I was reading this email and my colleagues were saying, oh, we're going to build a widget, but they were set it in a way that hinted to me they didn't mean on the homepage. So I was like, do you mean widget like our widget or widget? Like widget widget? What does that mean? And so I think this is the potential pitfall of things like that where I can type up meeting notes for you, but did the people walk away from the meeting having heard and understood the exact same thing? And so there's really no substitute to Kim's point on human communication and being very clear and very specific about what you mean when you use certain words. And I don't know that we have a perfect robot yet to solve that one for us. So you got to keep that in mind that even though maybe some thing can take notes for you, that doesn't mean that the outcome of the meeting was well understood. So you still have to, that's why we are all still employed. We still have that job to do for sure.

Kim Fitzsimmons (26:44):

Yeah, we did an acquisition in the fourth quarter of 2023 and bought a SaaS-based company loaded with engineers awesome thought that they came in and understood payments. They didn't have a clue about payments. What they knew was how to build great software and nothing about payments and the communication and the time that we wasted until we started to use our video conferencing and recorded the calls to where people could go back and listen and hear each other talking past one another. It was astounding. I sat down and listened to hours and hours and hours of calls. I'm like, why are we not making any progress? Well, it's because everybody was talking past each other and assuming that they knew what a widget meant or they knew what each other was saying and they had no clue, they just assumed. And so did I.

Jacqueline Sousa (27:40):

We all do. Yeah,

Kristin Streett (27:41):

Internally the hiring within our organization is moving at such a pace that we're constantly having to speak in a way that everyone understands, right? It's like never assume that someone knows what the acronym means. And we have plenty in our organization every day. I am like, what does that mean? And I'll stop a conversation and say, I am so sorry. I actually don't know what that means and I can't participate in this conversation because I have no idea what that GT five four thing is. And so never assuming is great. I think everyone in the meeting appreciates that and from a communication perspective. But one thing that has never changed, isness matters. Getting back to somebody quickly, a customer, an executive, a partner, a peer, a colleague, it matters because they're all trying to do a job and they're all trying to get something done and they may be waiting on you.

(28:34):

So in your own stress and your own busyness and when you delay, you're delaying others. And so it doesn't have to be just a thesis statement, it just needs to be, I got your email. I know that you are trying to reach me and I will be in touch. I'm, I'm working on these things and I feel like those are human things that have never changed and they just get accelerated. Now with these new technologies, you're just able to do it more quickly. I take notes still in meetings and it's funny because someone else is just sending out the generative AI summary right after and it's like soon as matters, they can get it out just as fast as I can look at my notes and send it as well.

(29:17):

The other thing too, the last thing I'll say is I lead an internal cross-functional team that spans a variety of different disciplines, but we all support banking inside ServiceNow and our need to be able to communicate very, very quickly and make sure we are all clear on what we're doing. It's like a well-oiled machine. It started as a bunch of people coming together not really knowing why they were being pulled into a room to work on just internal strategies that benefit banks and over time being able to be aligned around a vision and a mission and being in the same meeting room to be able to just get answers very quickly. Everyone knows when they come to this meeting, it's very quick. They can get in, they can get out, they understand where we are on the strategy, they understand where they can get questions answered from each other. And I actually joined the meeting late one time and the meeting was going on without me. I mean it was literally they were like, oh, we're getting stuff done. So I think bringing people together in an environment where they are all interdependent with each other on the success of a project or a program or something internally that you're working on, never underestimate the value of bringing them together even virtually to just quickly be able to get the work done.

John Adams (30:40):

I had somebody tell me once that one of the challenges in your career is to figure out where your industry is going and then what skills are required and then to lean into that. How do you do that in your careers? How do you figure out, well, here's my path and here's the technology that's changing and I either need to learn that or to adjust somehow. How have you done that and how difficult is it or how have you been able to find success in doing that?

Jacqueline Sousa (31:11):

I'll start. Yeah, I think that's especially common with young people like, oh, I want to be where the action's at, whatever's the hot new trend, that's where I should be. And there's some value to that for sure in that you do want to be a bit where the action's at, but you got to be careful about where's that action going. A couple years ago maybe crypto was the hot new thing and where is it right now? Right? So you do got to be careful about that. But one thing that I always think about too is the most important thing in your career or deciding where you go to me is are you still learning and being challenged where you are? Because it's really hard to predict what's going to be the case five years from now, 10 years from now, we could all sit here and put out predictions, but five, 10 years ago, we probably wouldn't have thought there'd be a Brexit or a Covid or geopolitics or wherever the world is going.

(31:59):

So you can only predict so much. So I've never actually been a huge believer of a five, 10 year plan. I think it's more about are you being challenged? Are you learning? And I think you can learn from anything and then apply it to other things. And I think a lot about your first job out of college, probably not the best job you ever had and definitely most likely not where your career ended up. And I think about that even for myself, I've always been in banking and the common thread has always been sort of technology throughout the different ones and client experience and dollars in terms of the space that I was in. But my first job was definitely the most boring of all of them that I've had. And yet there are skills I learned there that I still use today and probably always will in terms of how to Kristin's point earlier, how you present something up to senior leadership, how you take a really complex story and put it on one page and simplify it.

(32:51):

How do you communicate, how you perform in an office or behave to the panel we had before, how you should dress at the office. There are things that you learn even in the jobs that aren't necessarily where the action's at so to speak, that you can still apply throughout your career. So I think it's less about, and this is the advice I give to more junior talent when they're seeking advice. Don't just chase the thrill, chase the learning and then bring that learning back to your team. And if you have good leadership, they'll be like, wow, that person's hungry. Give you more opportunities to learn. And then it becomes this non vicious cycle of learning and growth that will give you more and more opportunities and then you'll find yourself in the action and that's a better mover of your career and will take you the places that you wouldn't have foreseen if you just tried really hard to have a five-year plan. I mean, that's my personal take. I know some people are very into in five years I want to be here and that's great. But I think there's more. You got to leave yourself some flexibility to kind of see where it goes and then let your career kind of take place in that regard. And if you do well, good things will happen to you regardless, is my view.

Kim Fitzsimmons (33:57):

Yeah, I'd say over my 35 plus year career that, and somebody said it in the last session, is looking not just up but sideways and down. You can learn so much from peers and from people that are on your team that are in different roles that it is about learning. Money is a necessary evil. That's why we all get up and go to work. Otherwise be on the beach having a margarita. So money is what is driving you to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head, but that thirst for knowledge and the more you can learn and challenging yourself, get out of your own way and don't be afraid to go take on a task or something that you just don't know. You really don't know. It's okay. Like Krista said, to sit there in a table and say in front of even peers and maybe senior people to say, I don't understand that. Do you mind backing up and explain it to me? That is so much more well respected than just sitting there and nodding and you know what you're talking about. And then you leave the room and go, oh my God, now what am I supposed to do? I have no idea what they were talking about. It's better to lean into it, admit it and learn just it's okay, learn.

Kristin Streett (35:13):

I would not say it any differently. It is learning. I think I have differentiated myself on the speed at which I can pick up things and learn and apply it. And that has becomes a skill I've perfected and it it's helped me to elevate and continue taking on responsibility. I've been at ServiceNow for four years and the reason that they hired me, I still have not really gotten to that job yet. I am doing so many other new things and it really, for me, it's about just not being intimidated and saying, you know what? We're all learning. This technology is changing so fast. Everyone's talking about it. Payments has changed all this. It's happening so quickly. Well guess what? We're all in it together and we're all learning and that's awesome. We're now in a community where it is okay to say, Hey, what did you learn about embedded finance or crypto or where are you getting research and information? The time is now. We can all help each other. So it's exciting to be a learner. I was a nerd in school. I used to be the front row person. I love learning.

Jacqueline Sousa (36:15):

Yeah, you did.

Kristin Streett (36:17):

This is yeah, front row. That's why we're here.

Jacqueline Sousa (36:19):

I keep nodding every time you talk.

Kim Fitzsimmons (36:20):

I'm pause in the back of the room.

Jacqueline Sousa (36:24):

No, but you're right. I mean, job descriptions are kind of almost, they never really pan out to be what they are, I would say. I mean, there's certainly smart decisions you can make in your journey. I remember when I was first applying at Bank of America, I applied to a couple different roles and I was actually offered either US wire or product, which was and probably is the most profitable in our business line or CashPro payments product manager. And I kind of thought, well, US Wire established makes money for the company, great place to learn digital payments is where the industry is going. So I made the digital payments choice. So you can still make good choices in terms of where the technology is headed, but I would've never foreseen at that point that six years later I'd be here. And actually it's to the day today's my six year anniversary.

Kristin Streett (37:08):

Congratulations.

Jacqueline Sousa (37:09):

So thank you. So some of those things you don't foresee. I didn't have my six year plan to be at an American banker conference, but I'm glad I made that choice. So I think you can make smart choices about where the industry is going, but at the same time, not be so caught up in I need to be in this specific place.

Kim Fitzsimmons (37:27):

I just want to go back and Kristin said something about not to be intimidated. So again, circling back of asking questions and not being afraid and intimidated by saying, I don't know what you're talking about. I've been at Fiserv, I've been at JP Morgan, I've been small companies, all the gamut. Name it. You cannot sit in any room with any, whether it's your board of directors or senior leadership and be intimidated. You can't do it. It's just not fake it.

Jacqueline Sousa (38:00):

I think if you're a manager or leader, all the more important to say, I don't know, especially in front of people that work for you. It gives them freedom to also say, I don't know, if you always present everything, then nobody else wants to say, I don't know. So

John Adams (38:16):

How common is it to get ideas or let's say knowledge of something new from younger staff or people who just all coming up time?

Kim Fitzsimmons (38:27):

All the time. All the time. In fact, I tell people I don't want people on my team. I call 'em Bobbleheads that just sit there and nod just because I say something. They're like, oh my god, that's great. No, it's not. I don't have all the ideas. That's why you're all here. And we need to able to be able to voice your opinion. A team full of bobblehead that just nod and agree is not going to be a successful team. So you have to put yourself in a position to learn from others. And young people have a lot to give. Right? ChatGPT.

(38:58):

There you go.

Kristin Streett (39:02):

I listen in every meeting. I'm learning from everybody. I mean, our executives are talking, I'm listening to what they're saying, how they're positioning. I'm constantly absorbing from the environment around me, and that includes early in career. I am inspired by them. I think their energy is infectious. It spurs me, my competitive spirit to keep going. We have a younger gentleman who runs our internal m and a strategy and activity, and he's so articulate and he's so thoughtful, and I listen to him and I just think, oh my gosh, he is going to be amazing. And I can learn from him and the way that he's communicating, because he's obviously drawing me in and his style and the way that he's talking and the facts that he's using. So I'm always observing style in other people and saying, huh, that's very effective. Should I be drawing those ideas from them? So yeah, I'm constantly trying to absorb from early in career and they have something, we have something to share with them as well, which is guidance, structure, advice, experience, ideas and sharing. So it works both ways.

Kim Fitzsimmons (40:15):

I have a 33-year-old daughter that has an executive coach with her doctorate in clinical psychology. I ask her all the time. So during COVID for a couple months there, we actually worked together at home because Texas, we didn't really have COVID too long in Texas, but here did, it didn't exist, but she was in DC and it lasted a lot longer in DC. So she loaded up and came to Texas. So we worked for a while together, which I'll never get that back. It was awesome. But I got so much free coaching from her. I'd hang up a call and I'm like, okay, if you're not on a call, could you listen to this? Because I'm kind of aggravated. I'm probably going to be come across a little bit tense, but give me some feedback. Would you? So I mean, it doesn't matter what age they are, who they are. I got all kind of feedback.

John Adams (41:02):

We have any questions from the audience?

Organizer (41:14):

Don't make the teacher call on you.

Kim Fitzsimmons (41:19):

I'll raise my hand. Y'all have fun at work too. That's so important. It's okay to laugh and have fun. I have a big stuffed Elmo that I bring into meetings and anybody's allowed to grab it out of the center of the table and just throw it at somebody. Not gently, of course, but it means enough. Let's move on. If you ever sat in a meeting where people, especially in a product prioritization meeting, are discussing it, debating a use case or business case, everybody's got an opinion, it's round and round and round. Pick up the Elmo. Alright, enough. Well, let's move on. It's kind of fun. Just got to have fun.

John Adams (42:02):

You mentioned coming up with ideas and communicating, and then a lot of that is meetings and just mentioned Elmo. How do you manage meetings in your, how do you keep them short and on point?

Kim Fitzsimmons (42:18):

Well, if there's more than five people on a meeting, in a meeting or even on a video call, there needs to be an agenda sent out in advance. If you're going to waste more than five people's time, at least we ought to know exactly what the agenda is and what are we going to try to accomplish. I learned that from my time at the big bank. There were all kinds of people on calls and I'm sitting there going, what are we trying to accomplish? We're planning for the next meeting. That used to drive me nuts. So if you're going to have a meeting and you're going to consume more than five people's time, this is just my own personal number. It could be 10 for you, it could be three. Have an agenda, know what it is you're trying to accomplish. Otherwise you're just having a call.

Organizer (42:59):

John, we have a question here.

Audience Member Kathleen Tobin (43:02):

 Hi there, my name is Kathleen Tobin and I recognize some of you up there. Great job. And I think really the spirit of this round table is that around collaboration and you all have such a great spirit of enthusiasm and moving forward in your careers. For the benefit of the group, do you mind just thinking, if you could just give an example, maybe each of a difficult time in your career and how you overcame it, what path you took? Did you have to have a conversation with someone or was it better just forging your own path? I think we would all learn from that. That would be great. Thanks.

Jacqueline Sousa (43:42):

I'll start. My first six years of my career were very different from the past six years. Always been in banking and I'll just give a very honest answer. My first two experiences at different banks, any organization, it's always going to be about the very specific people you're closest to each and every day. So fantastic organizations as a whole. But I had female managers and sadly some of the mentality was a little bit kind of like, sorry, I had it difficult. So you have to have it difficult as well. And I didn't pick up on that right away. I've always been kind of somebody that just tries to do my best at my job and put my best foot forward. And in my second role in particular, I really struggled with that because I felt like I was really being nitpicked on things that really just, I was like, really?

(44:33):

You're telling me I'm doing a great presentation? All the work is good. You have literally nothing to say about my work. But then you're commenting on little things that it seems to me isn't really the point of the career. And so that was a struggle, but I think I handled it the way that you always should remain professional, still keep doing your good job, and then when the time is right, move on. And so you don't want to burn bridges. And I really try to understand from their point of view of right, people have gone before me, especially as a woman and have paved the path and sometimes you react out of what your experiences were. And so I didn't hate the person or anything like that. I just understood, okay, it's just a different style. I'm learning how I don't want to be a manager one day and I'm going to take this and do better when it's my turn.

(45:23):

And then when I came to Bank of America, I was very blessed that immediately I had wonderful female leaders and managers that showed me that it's not always like that. And that I had the manager that was willing to say, I don't know, and to laugh with me or to teach me everything she knew and push me forward. And then the next one, same thing. Now I've had a lot of great support from leadership, both male and female and colleagues as well. But I think often the tough part of a career is the people that you're interacting with. And you just got to find a way to recognize it for what it is and make a decision about what's the right thing for you to do in that situation. In some cases, it's to stick it out and stay. I wasn't in that particular role for three years.

(46:05):

I maxed out all the learning that I could have, like we mentioned before. And then when I felt like I wasn't learning anymore, it was time to go and I don't regret a day of it. So I think you are always going to have difficult personalities in a career. It's only a matter of time. I often say that I'm glad I started with the more difficult ones when I was fresh out of college and still learning my way. And that really taught me a lot that now as a manager, I keep that in mind of how I want to come across and how I want people to see me. So that's how I would answer that.

Kristin Streett (46:36):

Do you want me to go?

Kim Fitzsimmons (46:37):

Does either way.

Kristin Streett (46:40):

Well, yeah, this is a great question. It's a very sensitive question. A lot of times we work so hard, all of us, anyone to be at a point in our career and then have sort of a tough experience. But what accelerated my departure from banking, and to go back to technology I'd started in technology was that I didn't get the job. I didn't get a job and I was the name successor for a role inside my organization. And it was very clear that it was going to go to someone who was much more junior than me. I think they had eight years of experience. I had 25 at the time. And it was just very clear it was not Kristin's job to have. And I reached out to the senior executive who had recruited me into the organization and he told me, he said, Kristin, you can do anything.

(47:34):

He's like, just swing big, do something different. Go somewhere. What do you want to do? Swing big. And I just remember thinking, okay, okay, I can do that. But it was, what was most difficult about that experience is I had to report to the person that had took the job for about 10 months while I attempted to get the job at the next organization that I went to, which was a SaaS company. And one of my old colleagues is here in this room from that job and I wrote the job description to get the job at the SaaS company. They were like, well, we'd like your background, but we're not sure how you fit in. And after two weeks of that, I was so desperate. I basically said, here's the job description. This is what it looks like and this is what I can do for you.

Jacqueline Sousa (48:16):

Love it.

Kristin Streett (48:17):

And they hired me. And then I stayed there for two years and then I came to service now. But it was a really, really tough time for me. I was literally, I was physically sick 10 months I was away. I was just so stressed out and I realized it's like it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. There's plenty of jobs. And I left that company that I wrote the job description for during COVID. My mom was ill and I still took a risk and I couldn't believe I was doing it. Kind of a non-risk girl. I'm safety comes first person. And it was the best decision I've ever made, and I never looked back. I miss my friends in banking terribly. I miss the comradery. But my career, I needed to go and it was time and I didn't have any other options. So I did same as you. So hopefully that's helpful.

Kim Fitzsimmons (49:14):

I'd say it's similar, that decision point of I've been at this particular role or this particular company and I'm happy and I like what I'm doing and everything's great, but on more than one occasion, I've just pulled the ripcord and said, Nope, it's time for me to go because I wasn't being challenged. I tell people all the time, they say, well, why'd you leave JP Morgan? It's a great company. I'm just like, it is a great company, great culture, great company. But for me personally, after five and a half years, I missed exercising my decision making muscles. And so I could have stayed and it would've been great, and I had a great role and I worked with great people and they paid me great, but I wasn't personally being fulfilled and challenged and I left, and then it was covid. I was like, oh, great, now I'm going to do. I did that more than once in my career of just pulling the rip cord betting on yourself. Just believe it in yourself. And oh, by the way, don't look back. They don't always turn out the way you think they're going to turn out. Just make the most of it. Don't look back and keep darting and bobbing and weaving and choosing your next adventure, but never look back and never doubt yourself. I always say just bet on you. Who better to bet on? If you don't believe in yourself, who's going to just go for it?

Organizer (50:48):

We have more time still.

Kristin Streett (50:50):

That's okay.

John Adams (50:51):

We have time for if there's one more question from,

Organizer (50:54):

Okay. Any questions? Who should I pick on? No, I won't do that too.

John Adams (51:04):

So I think we are at time. I want to thank Kristin, Kim, Jackie for joining us in the panel.

Kristin Streett (51:13):

Thank you.

Jacqueline Sousa (51:14):

Thank you,

John Adams (51:15):

Thank you. Thank you for coming to our conference and we enjoy the rest of the event.