Latest / Leaders In Payments / Women Leaders in Payments: Karen Xu, CFO of North America | Episode 417

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Women Leaders in Payments: Karen Xu, CFO of North America | Episode 417 · 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: Hello everyone and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Greg Myers, and this episode is part of our Women Leaders in Payments month, something we do every year in the month of July, and it's one of my favorite times of the year.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: This year's theme is redefining leadership, influence, impact and innovation.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: So those are some of the things you're going to be hearing about during the month of July.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: So first, a special thank you to our sponsors.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Our title sponsor is WorldPay, Our participating sponsors are VisiPay and PayRock, and our episode sponsors are the Clearinghouse, Ingenico and PaySafe.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: So special thanks to those companies.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Today, I'm honored to have as our special guest Karen Hsu, the Chief Financial Officer for North America at Ingenico.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: So, Karen, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Hi, greg, thank you for having me.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Well, let's start with a little icebreaker, if you don't mind.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: A little fun question If you could have dinner with any woman in history, past or present, who would it be, and why and what kind of restaurant would you go to?
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: I would like to meet with Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: She's an incredible woman leader.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: As an immigrant from Taiwan, she was able to stand out in a male-dominated industry and break the glass ceiling.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: She increased the valuation of AMD 100 times within 10 years since taking over, so that's really incredible.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: That shows the resilience, the courage, the tenacity she has.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: So I will be very interested to meet with her and probably take her to a dim sum place where she can try the authentic xiaolongbao.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Who can say no to that?
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: It's actually very difficult to find a xiaolongbao, you know, truly authentic.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I was in Paris last month and happened to find a Chinese restaurant offer that, and we ended up going there three days in a row.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: So I guess you won't be taking her anywhere in Atlanta.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: I haven't found any place in the US actually.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, that can remind me of the xiaolongbao I had in my childhood.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Only found that place in Paris.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, well then you guys can go to Paris.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: I'm sure she would be fine with that.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Close to Ingenico's headquarter Good.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: There you go, all right.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Well, let's talk a little bit about your background and career.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: So, if you don't mind, give us a quick snapshot of your background, maybe where you grew up, where you studied, and then kind of what led you into the world of payments.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Sure, I was born and raised in Shanghai.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: China Spent my childhood and teenager years living in the French concession in Shanghai, surrounded by tree-lined streets, european-style architecture and a unique atmosphere distinct from the rest of Shanghai.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: I had a curious mind when I was young and always wished I could explore the world when I grew up.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: So I had my undergrad in Shanghai, majored in finance, worked in the buy side in the banking in my early days and then, luckily, I got merit-based full scholarship for my MBA at Emory.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: So I told my parents it's going to be a free ride, I'm living to see the world.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: So that's how I came to the States in 07 and started my adventure.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: After graduation I joined in consulting, mainly with EY and Deloitte, worked on many strategy and operational projects with a focus on finance.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: So I was on the road for many years until I had a baby.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: I realized I could no longer travel extensively.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: So after my consulting career I joined General Electric and later on Honeywell Both are the leading industrial conglomerates when they were on the journey to transform from a traditional manufacturer to a technology company like the Tesla in the industrial world.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: So I was excited to work in this epicenter, in the growth engine to scale the SaaS business and the industrial IoT business, while selling the hardware and the services.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: So I was quite passionate during these roles and also at the same time, growing my career from original CFO to global CFO for several key business sectors.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: And then, after the pandemic, I learned a town from GE in Honeywell.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: I like the operation rigor, the operating systems.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: These are really like the West Point for corporate finance.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: But at the same time I also realized in these large companies, in the public companies, there's constraint.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: You have to wait for a long time to get certain approvals and as a CFO I always had to fight for the budget to fuel the growth of my business.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: Oftentimes there's friction among the business divisions.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: So I think, what if I work for a smaller-sized company maybe medium-sized, pe-backed and will I be able to make an impact more quickly?
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: So that's how I started to step into the PE portfolio company.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: So it was the group CFO for Opcom.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: That's a company used to step into the PE portfolio company.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: So it was the group CFO for Opcom.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: That's a company used to be listed on NASDAQ, an industrial IoT company, and now with Ingenico in the payment industry and backed by Apollo.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: So that's how I came to my job today.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, and I would assume there's a lot of similarities between Ingenico being sort of a manufacturer and then sort of your past experience with GE and Honeywell and others.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: I would agree, greg.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: I would say what's similar among these companies is they are all going through this journey to transform from a hardware dominant business to a business model providing integrated solutions.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: So it's not only hardware but also services and the software, both on-prem and the cloud.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: So I think I've been there.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: I've done that several times.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's something I can help Ingenico about.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: So another kind of little fun question If you were asked to walk on stage at a conference and you had to have a hype song, what would your hype song be, and why?
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: I think my hype song is going to be Bon Jovi's it's my Life.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: It's such an inspirational song.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you've heard it many times.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: I feel the passion every time listening to it.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: It's about taking control of your own destiny and living life to the fullest.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: So make your own choices, take some risks and be resilient.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Don't be held back by fear or self-doubt.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I think that's a very encouraging song.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I listen to it when I'm in downtime or feeling, you know, there's not much energy inside me.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure, no, I love it.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about your role today at Ingenico and maybe what excites you the most about what you're working on.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: My current role is the CFO for North American region at Ingenico.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: I think what excites me is I can make an impact and create value in a relatively short period of time, and that probably can only happen in a PE portfolio company, not a public company where you have to report your earnings to Wall Street every quarter.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: So, for example, I joined Ingenico last August when the company was in transit because it's PE backed it's typical PE going to come to flip the house and the industry was also in transit.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you're familiar with that.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: This industry has plenty of disruptions and a fierce competition, especially in recent years.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: We see a lot of players from Asia being very competitive, especially in the emerging market, and also you know companies like Stripe Ardian.
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: These companies 10 years ago were still startups, but now they are taking a larger market share and being quite successful.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: So when I joined Ingenico, I think the company at least my region was missing numbers and struggling to achieve the business performance and outcome the board requested.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: So I joined and I quickly identified where are the problems, where I can put my fingers on right.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: So cash is the oxygen.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: I was trying to improve the financial performance and the cash position immediately.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: So by the end of the year.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: So that's about four or five months out.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: So by the end of the year, so that's about four or five months out.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: We were able to hit our numbers for two consecutive quarters, both Q3 and Q4, across all metrics, if you look at revenue margin earning, ebitda, cash position all much stronger, we've been hitting the numbers for four consecutive quarters and is the number one region in terms of earnings.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: You know the financial health at Ingenico so the board was quite impressed with this.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Financial results, the outcome so I feel you know it's meaningful, like the efforts you put into the work can lead to good business results.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: Okay, okay great.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about leadership and maybe some lessons learned.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: And, as you know, leadership is evolving and has evolved a lot over the last maybe 10 years or so.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: So what does modern leadership mean to you and how do you try to embody that on a daily basis?
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: I think modern leadership means leading a group of people and driving accountability to achieve good business outcome.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: That hasn't changed over the years.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: It's about giving people the opportunities to grow and thrive.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you are not 100% sure if this person will be able to do the job.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: That means you surround the person with lots of support to help him or her get up to speed and grow.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: And I think nowadays there are more young people coming to the workforce right, especially in the finance and accounting career.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Sometimes they might feel it's not that interesting or the job involves a lot of tedious work.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: So if you look at Big Four, for example, it's actually become a lot more difficult these years to hire graduates from school.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: It's different from 10 or 20 years ago.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: It was much easier.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Now it's getting harder and harder.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: So the way to lead my team is I often help them understand what will be the outcome.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: How will your work, your job, affect the eventual outcome of the business?
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: So this way it will make them feel more meaningful.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: What I'm doing can make an impact, and oftentimes I give them opportunities to rotate among different roles within the finance and accounting sector, because even for finance you have many different roles.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: Right, it can be ARAP.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: You know this.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Back office Functions can be treasury, tax, fp&a, accounting, audit, internal control, etc.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Even commercial finance for someone who's interested to get close to the customers, the sales team, etc.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: So I would say more than leaders need to make business work and also always pay attention to people management.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: That's what I learned at GE, because I was fortunate to work with great leaders at GE who used to be my mentor and told me he spent 25% of his time managing people.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: So I learned from that.
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: In my day-to-day work, I also pay attention to spend more time coaching my team.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, great, I know we're going to touch on mentorship a little later no-transcript.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Up, up and up until I would say probably early last year, when my son was in his first grade and his teacher told me.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: She said do you know, your son's new year wish was he hopes mommy can be happier.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Because he noticed mommy has been very busy lately, too much work and I was lucky my parents were here helping me take care of the kid doing the chores, but still I realized I was kind of burning out.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: I was working for 70 hours per week every week consecutively for many months Because the previous company, when I joined it, I noticed it's literally running out of cash which was not shared with me during the interview process and cash is oxygen.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: So as a CFO, I need to spend a ton of efforts at a time raising capital, dealing with the lenders, managing the board and then internally need to manage all the global financial operations.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: So it's just a very demanding role.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: Making me realize in order for me to be successful on such a role, I have to invest at least 60 to 70 hours per week at least.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: So then I had a conversation with my son.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: I said do you want mommy to earn more money or spend more time with you?
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: He said I want you to spend more time with me.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: I said, okay, I will seriously consider about it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: So when this opportunity from Ingenico was brought to me, at first I was thinking that's not a global CFO role, that's like the CFO for the Americas.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: But then I thought maybe the career growth is not linear.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you need to have one step down and two steps up.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Eventually and at this stage of my life, like my son was in first grade, I noticed he needs help.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: You cannot just easily send him out to have some tutor and then have your hands off.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: That's unrealistic.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: And I saw other kids' mommy, my friends.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Basically they are able to spend more time with their kids.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: That made me feel guilty.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: So I would say that's a hard moment.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: I made a decision to have a concession in my career.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most of those defining moments in these conversations I've had.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: They're usually not all business right or they're not all career-related.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: They're usually a combination of personal life and career because they're so intertwined that those defining moments are typically like the one you just described.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and thinking back, I had no regret because my expectation was very low, was not high.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: I was thinking, okay, what's going to happen to me?
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: You know, taking this job it's kind of a different trajectory from what I had expected in the past, but it's good.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Ingenico had a great culture.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: People here are genuine and friendly.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: I don't need to worry a lot about dealing with a lot of politics in the company.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: It's a different environment.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed it and I was able to spend more time with my family.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: So I think that's good, not bad at all.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Well, what is something that you believe female leaders bring to the table that the payments industry needs more of?
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: I would say you know, coming from the manufacturer industry, I would say payment industry is much more friendly to women.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Right In my old world at like GEO, honeywell, these are really male-dominated industry.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: I still remember at Honeywell when we had the meeting with all the divisional CEOs and CFOs, with Darius Auer, the CEO of Honeywell, and all the top leadership team.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: I would say there are less than 10% women.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: I would say probably roughly 5%, and I was the youngest one there.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: That's a different environment versus in payment industry.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: I see a lot more females and women leaders and I think women naturally are more empathetic and collaborative, which is good for employee engagement and team building and also, oftentimes women will bring in diverse perspectives and they are good for innovation and creativity in problem solving.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: So all these are great in the payment industry and honestly, I think there's no dull moment in payment industry FinTech.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: You see there are just plenty.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: No dull moment in payment industry, fintech.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: You see there are just plenty of moving pieces in this industry.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: You see these things coming every day.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: You know crypto, payment, stablecoin, etc.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: So I think there's a ton to learn.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: So there are plenty of potential for women leaders in this industry.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Not to mention we have many girls these days.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: They have major in STEM right and AI is the future.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: I think today we are still talking about like SaaS, you know, software as a business Going forward.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: We're going to see even above that layer.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: We have digital products as a service, probably.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: So with a lot of AI right, machine learning, these new business, I think women can play a great role Okay.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: That's a great segue into the next section, which is about innovation and influence.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned it.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: The payment space is changing fast.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: It has been for many, many years.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: So how do you stay innovative as a leader?
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: I would say in today's world, you can easily get access to information within the company or externally.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Right Even within Ingenico, our marketing team did a great job sending us a lot of information about what's going on in the industry.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: Externally, you have these trade shows, these events, like the woman in payment industry you mentioned the other day, greg.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: I think these are all great opportunities to stay in front of the industry to know what's going on.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Also, in my day-to-day work, I found it super helpful by listening to the customers and even talking to our account managers.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: So for me, for example, I spend one day every week on the sales call.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: The entire day, like every Thursday, is the day for my.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: We call it a rev course.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: So we literally review every deal, every key account with our sales team.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: So this way we can understand really what's the customer's preference, their behavior, what's the trend from the historical trend, what kind of products they like to buy, why.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: What's the seasonality?
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: What volume do they buy, which products do they choose and what's the seasonality?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: What volume do they buy, which products do they choose and what's the competitive landscape?
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: What's holding us back from closing these deals?
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Do the customers have any budget constraint or they have a lot of stock in their warehouse, or their outlook changed, or what's their preference in any verticals Can be restaurant, can be retail, hospitality, etc.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: How about their reaction on the tariff, etc.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: So I think by talking to the people who work on the front line, very close to the customers, is super helpful for me to understand what's going on in this industry.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Well, what's one trend or change in the industry that you're watching closely right now?
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: I watch a couple of things, right, because I think there are so many interesting things going on these days, for example, the crypto payment in a stable coin.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: You know, with the Genius Act just passed recently, I think crypto payments are going to catch a lot of attention going forward.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: It involves using digital currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum as a medium of exchange of goods and services.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: They operate on blockchain technology.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Stablecoin, for example, operates on Ethereum's infrastructure, so transactions using stablecoin are faster and cheaper, especially for international payments.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: So, who knows, we might use credit cards less often to avoid paying 3% to Visa, right?
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: So I think these are something interesting to look at and since I spent many years in the IoT space Internet of Things so I've been always paying attention to the trend of 6G and IoT.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: For example, if we look at the terminals we use to swipe our cards these days, right, the number one use case for the payment terminal we are using today is really to confirm a person's identity.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, so with the evolution of IoT, we probably don't need such terminals in coming years.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Eventually, I think we can use immersive tools like AR VR to engage customers and draw deeper customer insights, using AI to affect customer behavior.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: So I anticipate a lot of things going to change over the coming years.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: There will be further industrial disruption.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: So that's why we need to act fast.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: We cannot just say you know, in the past Ingenico has been selling these terminals and boxes for many years, have been successful, and we can't just wait.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: No, we have to catch up, develop new apps, new software, new services to meet customers' needs.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we could do a couple of episodes about some of the things coming up around AI and stablecoins and blockchain and just all those are amazing things to watch that are going on in the industry that are definitely going to affect payments.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: So one final question on this section so how do you think that women leaders can influence the future direction of payments in fintech?
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: I would say there are three things really critical for payments and fintech Trust, ease of use and scalability.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: If a business can win all three of them, the business is going to be able to scale and win the market share.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: So I think those who stay close to the customers and listen to the voice of customers will be able to grasp the market and be the winners.
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: So they say data is the new oil, right?
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: Whoever has the data and will be able to manage the data well and draw helpful insights will also set themselves apart.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: So I think women will have a lot of potential to influence the future direction of the payments and the fintech Women.
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: We are the consumers ourselves.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: We can tell Women are the ones who literally go to the grocery store right, do a lot of shopping, make the payments.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: We can tell Women are the ones who literally go to the grocery store, right, right, do a lot of shopping, make the payments, yeah.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: So I think women are sensitive about these changes, can often adopt new technology quickly.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: That sensitivity matters.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you can smell what's coming, what's in the market, and then take action sooner.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Then you can win this race.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it, and it's definitely been a common theme in this month, this Women Leaders in Payments month that we do, about the fact that women are highly involved.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I think there's some stats out there 70-80% of payments are either made by or influenced by women, just because of the nature right.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: So in this country you know specifically, I think it was related to in the US, I mean, that's a large number.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: So shouldn't women be more involved in development of products that are being used in the marketplace?
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: So totally agree with you there, absolutely.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: So let's move on to mentorship and impact, and you mentioned having a mentor at GE.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Are there women in the industry or in your past who've influenced you, whether that was like directly or from afar, and maybe how did they influence you?
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And I guess it doesn't have to be other women, it could be men.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: But I think the topic is really, you know, mentorship and how important that is to people's career success.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: Oh sure I would say mentorship is going to be very important and helpful for a person to develop his or her career.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: At GE I was very grateful.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: I had a great boss and even after he moved to another team he was still willing to spend time with me, probably once every two months, to mentor me and just talk through what's going on in my day-to-day work, how to act as a leader.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: So even today I'm very grateful for that, because sometimes talking to a highly experienced mentor can help me a lot, can help me understand where I can focus on.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: For example, at first working in finance I didn't have a strong sense to build the breadth of my knowledge, so I was spending most of my time in finance accounting, this traditional finance type of corporate finance work.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: And then I realized my mentor told me like Karen, do you notice, at GE we don't have COO, because at GE the CFOs are expected to be the COOs.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: So that means this finance leader needs to have extensive knowledge and even experience in operation.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: So luckily, I worked in consulting for many years so I had the exposure to different problems and issues in strategy and operation et cetera.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: But still I think it's after talking to my mentor, I started to be intentionally getting involved in a lot of operation work and run to the problems, for example, at GE back then I still remember we were not super clear about our SaaS cost right, the on-cloud software cost.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Because before joining GE I was naive, I was thinking oh, it's SaaS, it will naturally be over 80% margin.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: But then, as I dig deep, because our software was running on Amazon's AWS, I talked to the account team every month and I noticed, wow, we actually pay a lot to Amazon.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: They are like running a virtual real estate on the cloud.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: So I start to dig deep what are the drivers of that type of cost?
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, I found it's the data storage and data consumption.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Okay, then, how to control the data consumption?
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: Because sometimes, for example, the customer can download many images a day and even videos.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Right, that can consume a lot of data and the cost can be high.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: So how to add the limit or control around that consumption?
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: Then we will be more sure about the cost on our side and not have the cost overage and the issue without margin.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Then I start to work with the product team.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Right, we start to have these sets of the limits.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: For example, mr Customer, you can only download how many images per day, right, and before we add a lot of features and maybe customers only need the 10, not 100 or 1000 features, right?
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: So we start to cut a lot of nice to have features.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: So that also drives a lot of cost savings and margin expansion.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: So these are just examples.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: I think I started to have a sense to dig deep to understand what's behind the numbers and how that can help improve our financials, because oftentimes when you see financials right, greg, these are really lacking indicators.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: It's because of the decisions made in the past that led to the financials we see today.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: So I want myself to be a forward-looking CFO, not just someone looking at the rear tail, the board, what's the current financial performance, etc.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: In order to make the impact, I need to understand the business in depth not only finance, but also sales, operations, supply chain, procurement really a lot of different things in order to make my role successful.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, that's what I learned from my mentor in old GE days.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, great.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: So let's say a woman's coming out of college, or maybe she's in another industry, and obviously you can relate to this and you had to give her one piece of advice to be successful in payments.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: What would that advice be?
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: I would say bloom where you are planted, because not everything can be planned right and sometimes the fresh graduates they don't have the best opportunity, especially in today's economy.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: I heard many fresh undergrads.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: It's actually challenging for them to land a job, not to mention a great job right.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: So I do believe opportunities favor those who are prepared.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: I would say, as long as a person has good work ethics, good attitude, you know, willing to learn, willing to work hard.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: So far I actually haven't seen anyone working hard and not having a good result.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: I think in this country, in the US, it's still a place.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: If you work hard you can have these opportunities to grow.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: And then, in terms of women, I would say when I was at Honeywell, q DeLera was the CEO of Connected Enterprise.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: That's the business sector I was working for.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Connected enterprise that's the business sector I was working for.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: She was also an Asian female who was originally from Vietnam and grew up in Australia Quite impressive because, again, that's a male-dominated industry.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: As a newcomer she was able to really break through a lot of things and establish this connected enterprise, basically the technology sector of Honeywell.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: And I still remember she told me she said in order to be successful as a woman, you need to work very hard, right.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And on top of that she said, don't be intimidated by, sometimes, the CEOs or someone whose level is higher than yours.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Because she said, in fact, the CEO job is a very lonely job because oftentimes people around the CEO are going to agree with his opinion.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Just support everything he says.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: He said actually, as a woman, if you can see something other people cannot see, that's good.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: That's how she operates at Honeywell and Darius, the CEO back then, I think, really respects her a lot because she has that capability.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: She can see things other people cannot see and have her unique opinion.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Of course, that's based on the facts, a lot of analysis.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: She has this kind of critical thinking.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: She can bring her value to the table.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: So I think that's very helpful.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: That encourages me to not only work hard but also always look at things from a different angle to draw really helpful insights.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: And likewise, even on my team, I actually favor the staff who can see my blind spots.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Maybe there's something I didn't pay attention to, maybe I was wrong, drawing some conclusion too quickly.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: So if someone on my team is going to raise her hand and say, Karen, by the way, I noticed XYZ.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Maybe we can have other alternatives, etc.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: I usually going to appreciate that.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Well, let's wrap up with one final kind of fun question.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: When you look at your phone, what is the most used app that is not work-related, and what does that say about you?
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, I think it must be WeChat.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Wechat is a super app in China.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: I think every Chinese is using it.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Now you can really use it for a lot of things.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: It's the combination of WhatsApp and the payment app, Facebook.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I would say it's really a combination of a lot of different apps and even TikTok, because in WeChat you can also see a lot of these funny videos, and even like TikTok, because in WeChat you can also see a lot of these funny videos.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: I think once Elon Musk went to China and he said he would like to develop a super app like WeChat in the US.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: I don't know if he's going to really do that, but that is an app I use every day.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, great.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Well, Karen, this has been a great session.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate your time.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Just want to kind of open up the floor.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Is there anything else that you'd like to add before we wrap?
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: up the show.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: No, thank you, Greg.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: I think it's really wonderful you have such a forum for women leaders to communicate with each other.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I think that's great.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: I'm interested to listen to other women leaders' sessions and learn from them.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Well, Karen, thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: It's my pleasure, Greg.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: And to all your listeners out there.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpaymentscom, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes.
• 32:36
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