Latest / Leaders In Payments / Women Leaders in Payments: Carol Wang, Senior Leader Commercial Payments at KeyBank | Episode 244

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Women Leaders in Payments: Carol Wang, Senior Leader Commercial Payments at KeyBank | Episode 244 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: You know, the one thing I did want to anchor on a little.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many places I do think the industry could do better for women leaders, but one place I just thought would be good for this conversation was around information transparency.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: So I think because women, for example I mentioned, aren't always going to feel that's comfortable asking for that raise or that promotion.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: But if we have information like so, this notion where now people are getting more comfortable telling others how much they earn, for example, I think that's a place where that would be incredibly powerful, because then even you as a female leader, you could whether you felt comfortable or not, you could get yourself comfortable to ask for more compensation or more responsibility.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: If you had the information, that transparency of information, you could at least make a decision for yourself.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Either way.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: That was Carol Wang, senior leader of commercial payments for Keybank, and she is my special guest on this episode, episode 244 of the leaders in payments podcast, and I'm your host, greg Myers.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: This is the third episode in our series on women leaders and payments.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Carol has both an entrepreneurial and facilitator spirit.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Being born into a family of self starters and go getters that depended on their entrepreneurial ventures for their foundation, she started her career in marketing, but her intrigue with payments quickly changed her trajectory.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Why did Carol choose Keybank?
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: In a nutshell, she perceived the ability to build her career the way she wanted to within the infrastructure of a large organization.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: We go on to discuss her guiding principles and her most eyeopening career moments, including a corporate case study she participated in that had some pretty interesting results regarding the typical male and female response.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Hi, carol, thank you for being here and welcome to the leaders in payments podcast and, more specifically, thank you for participating during women leaders and payments month.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited to be here.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Great, let's start out by having you tell our audience about your role today, and then we'll rewind and talk about your journey and how you got there.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: I'm a senior leader at Keybank in our payments division.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I run a part of our middle market business that works with our banking customers on all of their money movement needs in and out.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: It's about 4,000 clients, about a half a billion dollars in revenue.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: I also run our solution engineering team across all our commercial clients and industries and that's really where we help to deliver really end-to-end complex technical payment services.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: It's something that enables banks to bring that type of service to fintech.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: It kind of bridges that gap between the two.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: So I also cover that team.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Well, let's start at the very beginning.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Where did you grow up and what was your life like growing up?
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I grew up in Corona, queens.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: I'm a native New Yorker.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: One of the things I was usually excited is that I'm very sheltered because I've lived my whole life in New York City.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I went to school here, I went to grad school here, but I am from Corona Queens.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: The oldest of three.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: First generation come from a family, a large family, of immigrants from China and Taiwan, and I think that's probably the best way to describe it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: And when you were growing up, were you more like the lemonade stand builder, meaning more entrepreneurial, or were you more the planner and organizer of the Friday night out with your friends?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Is it fair to say that maybe like a little bit of both in some way that you can be kind of both of these things?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: So I was mentioning that my family were first generation and we always had various businesses of our own.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: That was our means.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So we had like various retail storefronts, restaurants, and you know I always was a part of that.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: All the kids are in terms of like working.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So I was familiar with the notion of being an entrepreneur and kind of coming up with things to get by, but then also definitely a facilitator.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So I actually was just the middle of planning Friday night out with my girlfriends, and that's pretty common.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I'm definitely a facilitator by nature as well.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: So I tell people this story just to make sure everyone kind of understands where the first job comes from.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: And you know, my mother worked at a university small university in Birmingham, alabama, and during the summer, when I was 15, so not old enough to drive I was the pot and pan washer at the university.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: So from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock I washed pots and pans in the cafeteria.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: So that was my very first job.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: So I'm curious what was your very first job?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think my parents must have had a similar parenting philosophy to yours to put their kids to work.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: So in our various storefronts that we had, you know, we my family at one point owned like a luggage shop.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: We also owned a wig shop I mentioned.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: We had a restaurant.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: So I definitely was a salesperson.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I had to unpack boxes, I had to take orders, so I did all that but I never got paid for those.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: So really consider, my first paid job was I was actually a cashier at a really large sporting goods chain and then I was also a bookkeeper.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: So my first paying job, I always say, was a cashier proper.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Gotcha Gotcha.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's cool, and if I'm not mistaken, most of your career so far has been in the financial services or payments area, so was there something intriguing about financial services?
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: And if so, what was it?
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: And then second part of the question why Key Bank?
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: I have been primarily always in financial services, although I did think that I was going to be in marketing for pretty much most of my collegiate career.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And even when I graduated from business school I did want to be in marketing and so I did do a short stint upon graduation at an ad agency.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: But my first really big corporate job was at American Express, which is a payments company but also very marketing driven.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: So that's how I ended up there.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: But that's really where I fell into financial services.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting because I was just at this other American Banker Women's Forum and we were all talking about how nobody really decides when they graduate they're going to be in payments.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: You know most of the women who are in payments.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: We kind of find ourselves landing in payments for different reasons and falling in love with it.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: So I would say it was really similar Ends up in AMX to do marketing, but really got sort of taken by all the different ways you could pay and then, if you think about it, even the last you know six, seven years with Apple Pay and PayPal, it's just gotten even more interesting.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's probably how I personally landed in payments and financial services.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, and then did you go from AMX to Keybank?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: No, I actually went from AMX.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I spent about 15, almost 16 years there, pretty much, where I feel like I got most of my corporate training, all of my sort of fundamentals.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: When I think about it is from that great experience.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Then I actually was at Worldpay briefly, which is now FIS, and I think back to Worldpay and FIServ.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: And then I've been at Keybank, most recently for about three years now.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: What was intriguing about Key Bank?
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So there were a couple of things I started I mentioned.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I've been here for three years at the height of COVID.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: A couple of things caught my attention about Key Bank, honestly, was the way at the height of COVID.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: This is like before stimulus checks came out and a lot of uncertainty about the economy.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: I think unemployment was at rates I think that people really couldn't even digest.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: At that time.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Key was very opportunistic and doing still a lot of heavy recruiting, which I took to be like a really good strategy, as a good sign.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Then, when I met the folks at Key, I have to say ultimately it's why I ended up at Key, but it's also why I'm still at Key is the people and the culture and the amount of talent.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: The people at Key are not only incredibly adept at payments and financial services, they're just really talented and the culture is super collaborative, low ego, and it's a place where I've always felt like it was big enough but small enough where I could feel like I was making a difference.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I could really build my career and build a business the way I wanted to, but with the infrastructure of a large organization.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those are all very good reasons to be attracted to a company.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: I think that brings us to today and obviously you've been very successful throughout your career.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: What are some of your guiding principles?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: I think that guiding principles in some ways I would say one of them hasn't changed at all and then on some of them I would say, have changed as I've matured in my career, the one that's been pretty steadfast, I would say, is, someone told me early on is always think about when you choose what you're going to work on or where you're going to work, who you're going to work with and for, versus the job itself, assuming you have the ability to do the job and all that.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: I think that's really true because at the end of the day it's funny at Key Bank we say we are a relationship bank, which we certainly are.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: But I think about that for my career as well.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: My career is really relationship driven and so that's always been a guiding principle is who I'm going to work with and who I'm going to work for.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: It's always been really important.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Then I think, in terms of another guiding principle that's really been more in the last 10 years of my career that I didn't necessarily have in the first 10, is really around where can I really bring the experience I already have and actually have a voice and feel like I'm making that scalable difference?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: I think that's been something that's been really important to me in the last 10 years, I would say, whereas in the first 10, it was probably more about how to build my career.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: What is it that I'm trying to say about myself in terms of my career trajectory?
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: I think most people.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you've had a few eye opening moments in your career.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Maybe could you talk about a few of those eye opening moments.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: There was one that I was thinking about that I've definitely reflected upon many times.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: This was probably earlier on in my career at AmEx.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe I was in there for about five years or so and I had been selected to be in this development program and I was then learning that it was for women of diversity.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And because I was sort of five years and I was super naive at that time my career, I still felt like I didn't want to be recognized as like for my being a female or for being diverse.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: I was one of those Individuals who felt like the work should speak for itself.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: You know I didn't want it to be like.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: You know my other label, other than my hard work, which of course now I can say Is super naive, and but I understood.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: You know, when you're early your career, you have different kind of perspective.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: So I was a little bit, almost more on guard when I took that and so when I got there it was really rewarding because it was with women who are also call it around five or ten years early in their career in other industries.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: So, aside from American Express, there were women from Pepsi there, they're women from Pfizer, bunch of the companies that were headquartered in New York City, which is where I'm based out of, and we had to do a case study, as you would imagine in a program like this, and the case study was Pretty straightforward.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: You know, you're given a project to lead for the first time.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: It's gonna really help your career, but things aren't going well and you're being asked now to kind of report out to senior leadership on.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: You know what's the next steps.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So each of us women, we all kind of got up there I try to, you know, break this as much as possible but we all got up there and talked about you know our action plan or next steps and how we're gonna make this, know what we're gonna do next and our game plan.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: And we're done.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: The woman said to us you know, I want all of you to know that when we do the same exercise with men, at least half of them talk about being set up for success by their leadership.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: They talk about what they're gonna need to bring this project to completion successfully.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: They ask for things, they ask for resources, they ask for money, and I will tell you that none of you women asked for anything.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: You all, all you do, all of you basically said how are you gonna fix it, how are you gonna make it better?
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And that was really true and that was one of the most I opening things early in my career.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: So I'm very grateful for that worry, because I do think about that often that you know, as women we're not as good sometimes, that you know, asking for that promotion, asking for that, that raise, and so that was, that was certainly one of them.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Any other eye opening moments to share?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: No, I think that I think I'll, I think I will leave that one there.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, I think that's a very powerful one if you peel back the onion on that one, there's there's a lot to it that we could, we could, dive into, but let's let's talk broadly about women leadership in financial services.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: So if you had to give the industry as a whole a letter grade, what letter grade would you give to the industry and why?
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I feel like right now, the industry probably fluctuates somewhere between like a B and a B minus.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: I think it's pretty neat to see.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: You know there's a lot of conversation around.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: You know more, more women.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: You know, as a population, I think there are a lot of women in financial services, certainly more women that I think sometimes I find in certain segments of banking, for example, which is also a part of financial services.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: But, but, I think there's a conversation around are there enough women in the sea level?
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Right, well, I think I thought it was pretty cool when FIS named a female CEO recently.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So I do think you'll see more of that.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: You know the CEO of Citibank being a female.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: I think you are.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: We are seeing more of that and that's that's pretty good, but that continues to be, I think, something that industry needs to work on.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: But I also think you know, beyond the most visible, most senior positions, there is a sort of just the day to day, what's called it senior leadership to middle to middle management and even entry level, that we all could definitely be doing a better job to like, think about how to get more women into the industry.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: So, like, every time I meet a female banker.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: I often ask them because they're sometimes they're in the minority.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: You know what got them into banking?
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: And I always ask them why do they feel like maybe there aren't more women?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: And I think it really is just a function of making sure that we're grooming and like encouraging women other women to follow in the footsteps of what we might be doing in financial services.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I feel like that still doesn't happen enough.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: That's interesting because your answer to the question earlier about you know why did you get into financial services, and you know your answer was you know, I kind of fell into it and that's what most people do, I think you know.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: What's interesting is where to point, where I think maybe and maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you know the the I call them kids but the people coming out of college and you know, grad school or whatever Maybe they're a little more intentional about what they want to do.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: So I think I totally agree with you that getting more women involved early on, any any ideas on how we do that, like what could we do as an industry to promote financial services more, to get more females interested early on?
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: So this might seem kind of silly, but you know there's also a lot of chatter, like in entertainment around, like representation, you know, like you see, like a lot of actors and actresses talking about like growing up I didn't see anybody on TV or in film that looked like me.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I feel like it's just basically this very similar notion, and so I think those of us you know, and even myself to some degree, who have any degree and I think actually we all have influence to some degree, right, but the and we have social media, so we have much more of a platform that I think we did even five years or seven years ago to put people out there that look like us, whatever us, whoever us is, and so whether it's your reposting someone's link or you're giving someone a shout out, or you're giving them that opportunity to take a meeting with someone or inviting them to a dinner to help better network, I feel like it is around being that being more inclusive, like that's a deliberate intention of being more inclusive but also promoting, within whatever ability you have, people that look and have totally different experiences, right, so not only look different or grow up in different places, but also have different types of experiences and I even think about that from folks outside of financial services.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: You know, we I mentioned I have that solution engineering team.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: We have a number of engineers who actually didn't grow up in payments at all.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: They were engineers for totally different you know, one was for like legal software, and our ability to kind of transfer certain skills to get people into payments is also really important.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: So I just feel like as much as we can do it in different ways and we show people there's a lot of different paths and all of this could be you when we put them more on a pedestal and we promote it, I think that kind of pays dividend that tends to cash fire a little bit, I feel like.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: We've all heard the terms embedded payments or integrated payments and of course, it's a huge trend in our industry, but the truth is there's so much more to the story.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: So, in collaboration with NMI, the fully integrated payment solution built to scale, we've launched the be solid campaign, where we're exploring embedded finance with guests from leading companies like Keybank, bain, capital, ventures and more.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: To listen to the latest episodes, visit leaders and paymentscom or NMIcom slash resources, slash podcast.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: In a world full of squares and stripes, be solid.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: If you're hiring someone, or someone in a networking group comes to you and they're a young woman coming right out of college and they do say they want to enter financial services, they do want to build a career in financial services.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: What do you tell them?
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Or, if they asked you, what do I need to do to be successful in this industry?
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: What would you tell them to do?
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Well, I would probably first ask why they would like a career in financial services, because, again, I feel like it's one of those things where you have to really like certain aspects of it.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: So I'd be curious to motivation always.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: And then I think I also would probably.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: I think it's advice that you would give anyone coming out of school, which is to say that you shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes, right, but I think even more so for women.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: You know, I feel like women sometimes when we make mistakes it really sets us back emotionally and I think I learned that I wish I would have learned that a little earlier, I guess which is that you know I'm going to make lots of mistakes and you know, the faster I can move on and, of course, be accountable if that makes sense.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: You know, it's something that I'm thinking about a lot more than everyone else around me and to not second guess my intuition, you know, I think all those things kind of go hand in hand.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: So I would certainly advise most people coming out of school to just have that confidence.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: But I also think that people coming out of school, the further I get away from school, the more I feel like I need to plug in with those that are starting in earlier, to remind myself of how are they thinking about work, and I actually think I source a lot of like wisdom.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I actually think the other way around as well.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: So I would encourage anyone who's listening to do that also, because that's been really helpful to me, because I definitely speak with lots of people and keep relationships with lots of people that are just coming out of school.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there's a lot to be said.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: I think, kind of your initial answer around what is their motivation.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I think that people who are further along in their careers maybe don't think about the things that the younger generation think about.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Right, so they may be thinking about you know work from home, policies, and you know other things that you know growing up, having always had to go into an office.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: We don't think the same way they do.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: So I think you're right in like understanding you know what is it about the industry, what is it about a specific company?
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: I think that's a great way to kind of look at it.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I think that's very good advice, definitely.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Hey, would I be able to rewind just a second on another aspect that I feel like the industry could do better for women.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll talk a little bit briefly.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: The one thing I did want to anchor on a little.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many places I do think the industry could do better for women leaders, but one place I just thought would be good for this conversation was around information transparency.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: So I think because women, for example I mentioned, aren't always going to feel that's comfortable asking for that raise or that promotion.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: But if we have information like so, this notion where now people are getting more comfortable telling others how much they earn, for example, I think that's a place where that would be incredibly powerful, because then even you, as a female leader, you could whether you felt comfortable or not, you could get yourself comfortable to ask for more compensation or more responsibility.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: If you had the information, that transparency of information, you could at least make a decision for yourself either way, and I think that that's a place where I would love to see more progress.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I know there's already, in certain sectors, a lot of transparency around.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: You know what it takes to get promoted, or why someone got promoted, or what some individual is earning, but I think the more we kind of take the cloak off of that, I think that'd be really beneficial, especially to females.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I totally agree.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Well, let's wrap up with one final question.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: So maybe talk a little bit about what KeyBank is doing that helps to foster an environment where women can bring their full selves to work and be successful.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: This is sort of one of the reasons why I'm still at KeyBank, how I found myself here, which is culture.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: You know I mentioned KeyBank is very low ego, which it really is.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: So we're based in Cleveland, ohio, but I mentioned a native New York City person and I think, as an example, you know, even hiring a person like myself at a senior position to lead a team, you know.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: So when I got to KeyBank and I have felt nothing but supported by those around me to really be successful and on board.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: You know this is my first time at a bank.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: So I've been in payments for almost over 20 years but never been at a bank.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: So there are a lot of items around banking that I maybe was not as familiar with.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: But Key really looks at your potential and, of course, your aptitude, and so they invested in a person like me and I have to say it is a perfect example, because some folks were sort of like huh.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: So she's going to manage this payments team and she's got a lot of payments experience.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: But, you know, maybe core treasury you know, traditional banking services is not something she's that familiar with and that's a fairly inspired choice, honestly, because most of the senior folks at a bank you'll find did grow up to some degree, because banking that can be quite is quite complicated, quite regulated, has a lot of nuances.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: And so I think you know, even I believe, that a person like myself having a leadership position at Key has really been a great example for not only myself.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: I feel very fortunate to be here, but I think I've heard from even those around me that they kind of see that as an example where you really can be yourself.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: I also mentioned you know I'm here out here in New York City, and I think that's the other part too is that the more Key has been able to socialize that.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: You know we have a national footprint and we've been doing that through our talent strategy.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: That's also been really important in kind of highlighting how we have this very diverse background, and so I think that's one of the examples of what Key is doing to do that.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And you know, recently I actually got a stat from our talent team that we used to be 40% women and 60% men about 10 years ago and we are now.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: We're actually now the opposite.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: We're now 60% female, which is pretty empowering to hear how far the bank has come.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's definitely a powerful statistic.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Does Keybank have any specific initiatives or programs that you know what will help women you know coming into the company or already at the company, other networks or anything specific that you know of?
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely so.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can definitely elaborate that we have quite a few.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: We have a enterprise wide keys for women Program at our bank which is quite large across our entire bank, and then we more specifically have a key bank women in payments group, which I'm very active in as well, and we actually just held a great speaker series with some extra like really heavy hitters externally one of the president of North America for mastercard, for example, to kind of bring her wisdom to some of the other women in payments at key.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So we have we have that as well, and then we're separately really also doing a number of initiatives to do mentorship specifically for women in payments.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: So we have a mentorship program that's can be cross our lines of businesses but also within payments, and then we have been really active promoting our women.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier about making sure like women have a platform and you know he recently submitted me, for I mentioned american banker or, and so I was just on a list for most influential women in payments this year american banker and I really want to happen without the kind of investment that I, like I've been mentioning that the bank has been making.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: We've been doing that in a number of places for for female employees.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad you shared those cuz I think it's important for other companies.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, everyone's not a bank and everyone's not a bigger company, so To hear some of the ideas that other companies are using or doing, I think you know might motivate someone to say, hey, that's a great idea, might want to do that.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: So I think you know sharing that I really appreciate you sharing kind of what he bank is doing.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely no thanks for asking that.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were really active.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds like it.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: Well, we've wrapped up the show and I want to thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: I'm andrew speaking with you.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Thank you, and to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this week on the leaders in payments podcast.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Make sure you visit our website at leaders in payments dot com where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 24:58
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