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Women Leaders in Payments: The Future is Human with Garima Chaudhary, Thetaray | Episode 509 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Women Leaders and Payments Month, where we highlight and celebrate the women shaping the future of payments in FinTech through their leadership, insight, and impact.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: A special thank you to Payrock for sponsoring this year's series and for powering the continued advancement of women across our industry.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on to the show.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Women Leaders and Payments Month episode.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm honored to have as our special guest Garima Shadri, the VP Financial Crime and Compliance AI at Theta Ray.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, Garima, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Glad to be here, Greg.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with a little icebreaker.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if you could instantly become an expert in one non-work-related skill or hobby, what would it be and why?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wish there could be more than one, you know, in your question.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say if I could be fluent in multiple languages, and I know I'm probably not answering your question exactly how you would like, but if I could be fluent in multiple languages, I would love that.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, in order to understand a culture, in order to connect with people, understand the humor, I think knowing the language is crucial.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can use all the good translation tool now we have available, but you just can't make those levels of connections, right?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I enjoy learning more about history, culture, meeting people.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say if I could be fluent in like many, many languages, that would be awesome.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, nothing beats human connection.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that answer.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk a little bit about your background and career journey.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So give us a quick snapshot of your background, maybe where you grew up, what you studied, and what led you into the world of payments.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I grew up in India and I'm an engineer by education.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I started my work career as engineer at Oracle, by the way.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Beginning of my career, I started as operational risk, by the way.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I was more focused on the technology and the business transformation side of it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Later in my career, I did move to compliance.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Once I discovered the financial clients and compliance area, I was intrigued because this is where I learned on, you know, you want to learn on how economies are growing, how people are moving, money follows them, how criminal networks are acting.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I learn the victim side of it, because many times when think people think about financial crimes and compliance, or especially financial crimes, they think it's victimless.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite the opposite, which is true, and it does impact the most vulnerable, the migrant population, the folks from the lower social economic, the women's around the world, it does impact them a lot.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I discover the intersection between compliance and payments, because you know, in order to understand how criminals are operating, how the world is moving, you need to kind of follow the money.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: So payments, I was intrigued.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also like a cat and mouse game, right?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the moment, you know, the as industry we put some guardrails, the criminals move to a completely new ways of gaming the system.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so you need to keep on catching up, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I enjoy the fast pace of compliance and the payment intersection.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: I do care about the social cost behind this as well.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that has kept me really going with compliance and the financial systems and payments.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, was there a person or an opportunity or maybe even an unexpected moment that helped shape the direction of your career?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Very early on in my career, I was asked to go implement operational risk application from Oracle.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, like I said, I did start my career as operational risk person at a very large bank in South America.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly, very less than three years in my career, I found myself in a very complex, very demanding timeline with a very large bank project.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this is where I moved from like a very engineering background to, I would say, the financial institution side of it, right?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very rewarding to see the product I was working on, you know, being used by the end user and how it was really changing the day-to-day for the business user.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very rewarding, but this is where I learned on how to navigate, you know, business strategy, aligning the business requirement with the infrastructure and also how the banks move.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I learned all the processes which a bank you know puts together to make sure they continue to safeguard their IT systems.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite a lot of learning for me, and it was like a masterclass for me on how to navigate both business transformation and technology.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that was that was a pretty important, a lot of learning for my career, I would say.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell us about your role today at Theta Ray and what part of your work are you most excited about right now?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: So those who are not familiar with Theteray, we do provide IT solutions to for financial institutions like banks, fintechs, digital providers to make sure they are able to comply with the anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the way our software, our solution is different than a lot of legacy and a lot of other vendors out there is because we use uh behavioral AI.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So let me give you a quick background on it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the legacy systems use are deterministic or rule-based systems to look for suspicious activity, right?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like anti-money laundering, drug trafficking.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that, as I talked about in the beginning, the criminals evolve all the time.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the rule-based systems are designed to just look for what you already know.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: There are many other problems with the rule-based system.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're hard to tune, they can't be agile with the emerging trends.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: But at Terrary, we do use this behavioral AI to look for the typology which is not known to the industry or to the regulator.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: So my responsibility is to work with the financial institutions to help them meet their compliance requirements and also adopt AI, especially for the growing market.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's extremely rewarding to see when the compliance team feels confident because that eventually leads the entire organization to get more confidence and growing their business.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's extremely rewarding to me and what keeps me really excited.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's pivot and talk a little bit about leadership and perspective.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So this year's theme is the future is human.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear that phrase, what does it mean to you as a leader in this industry?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love this theme, by the way, right?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I touched on how in financial crimes and compliance rule-based systems are extremely inefficient and they lead to a lot of false positives.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there are a lot of volume of alerts in the cases which compliance teams are supposed to clear.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where the army of people are literally just sitting there and clearing those cases, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: In the current situation where we have like we have access to agentic AI and different types of AI, AI can really help perform that investigative task on behalf of humans.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: They can look for red flags, customers or entities, historical behavior, they can look for their KYC, perform all the steps a human would perform and make a recommendation.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you may ask where the human element comes into play, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And something to keep in mind explainability is crucial in financial time.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: So this is where humans are the center of it to make sure the recommendations made by the AI or the agent are being reviewed by the humans because we cannot have agent make decisions on our behalf and for the explainability purpose.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they are going to be in the center to make sure they continue to provide feedback to the agents so the AI gets better.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're also crucial to make sure the all the steps taken by the AI is explainable to the regulators and they're able to defend it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So humans are absolutely in the center of everything.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: AI definitely provides scalability, I would say, but sustainability will only come from keeping humans in loop.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they are going to be extremely crucial in adopting and getting to this journey of modernization, I would say.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we've kind of talked about, payments is becoming more digital, it's more embedded, it's more intelligent, especially with AI.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you think leaders need to keep front and center as this industry keeps evolving?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question because you know, many times when I speak to the leaders, especially uh, you know, in the in the payment space, in the you know, institutions who are growing, emerging market with bringing up different payment rails, they do see compliance many times.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they do see compliance as a roadblock, so to speak, and as a hurdle for them to grow the business.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would say leaders must see compliance as a weapon for them to expand business more confidently.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to be crucial that they keep compliance in the heart of their product architecture.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So as they grow the business, they do have advanced AI or AI embedded into their product for them to grow their business into the new market, into the new payment rails much more confidently.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm saying, so I think I would say that leaders should see compliance as a way for them to grow the business sustainably rather than a roadblock.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can only move, grow as fast as quickly you can put the brake safely, right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's going to be crucial.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So compliance should be the heart of it.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is something that you have learned about leadership that you wish you had understood earlier in your career?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think um earlier on I thought, you know, maybe leadership is about just not just being vocal, but just being there and trying to fix everything by yourself, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I thought.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you were just stepping up for your team, trying to solve things for them and trying to get things done for them.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now, at this time of my career, I would say I see leadership completely differently.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: It should be about empowering your team, uh, creating a safe environment where everybody feels they are able to obviously, you know, do their job well, come up with the ideas, are ready to are okay, and as a team, we are okay to fail because there is so many new things happening, and we are not gonna be successful in all the things we are trying.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's important to create that safe environment where everybody feels that they're supported, they're able to experiment it safely, and then and as a team, we are okay to say uh fail early on as well.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I I would say a lot has changed from in my perspective on how leadership should be.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is specifically crucial in the current time because if you see there is so much emphasis on uh leveraging AI, as rightly so.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're gonna, as a leader, if you're gonna continue to push top-down and for our teams to use AI, I think it might create a lot of anxiety in the team.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say creating that safe environment, giving them opportunity to experiment with the tools available to them to make sure they're finding ways to make use of the AI to just do their job better, I think that can open up completely lot of new avenues.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm already seeing with uh with our team on how they're coming up with newer ways to use AI to make lives of our customers, our teams better, I get amazed.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say creating that safe environment, empowering everybody is for me leadership.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So as you lead a team, like maybe as strategically or tactically, however you want to address it, how do you create that culture that does all those things that you just said?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think the most important thing is going to be that we have empathy and we listen to our team, see things from their perspective.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's very easy to just judge if someone's not, you know, somebody in the team is not providing the output or, you know, as per your KPIs you have said and the measures you've said.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's important to understand where they're coming from, number one.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, supporting them as well, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And not just your team, like all other teams who are involved, creating an environment where they're able to share when they don't feel confident, right?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they should be able to come back for to be able to ask help.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to make asking help as a red flag or a negative thing in our conversation, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I think they should be able to ask for help.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: They need to be able to go out there and do their own thing.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And feeling that there is, we as a leader have their back.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the most important thing, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Them knowing that there is somebody as an organization, as a leader, we are there to support them no matter what they're doing.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, we need, you know, I think that just empowers people to do.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: They just go above and beyond to bring all their self on whatever they do.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say definitely listen to them, have empathy, create an environment where they're able to ask for help.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's okay.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: We have to make failing okay, failing, right?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh we are human, we all make errors.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to fail as long as we're able to learn from them and get better.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's going to be crucial to creating that environment.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk a little bit now about the human side of payments.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: We've touched on it a little bit, but you kind of alluded to this on the financial crime side.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But behind every payment or behind every transaction, there's a person or a business or a specific need.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you think about the human side of payments in the work that you do every day?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is very close to the motto we have at Tetheray, right?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I touched on how legacy financial crime provider, they have these rule-based systems and they're they may just have some learning from industry and regulators, and they just look for some simple typology.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I can give you some examples, like looking for maybe a payment more than$10,000 going to a high-risk country, right?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very simple rule, yet it can't fit on all the humans and the businesses you're dealing with, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said at Terrary, we do have this behavioral AI which looks for suspicious or anomalous behavior based on the customer segment you're dealing with, based on the specific market you're dealing with, and based on in comparison to their peer group, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is much more dynamic, much more agile in terms of how you're looking for anomalies.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because many times you have seen, not many times, but you know, there are some instances where if you're trying to use a one fit-size-all system risk framework, uh, there are many folks or you know who can be kept out of the you know the banking system.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they cannot get the loans they're looking for.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: If they're coming from you know, zip code or the counties where you know there are probably some more suspicious behaviors have been reported, they might get penalized for it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so at Terra ARAI, our model looks for anomalies going many, many levels below based on the customers, where they come from, the peer group, and their customers' behavior, the businesses they are in to look for anomalies.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we are not penalizing the human.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Also, it's very agile.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So making sure that the payments are done on time, it's obviously crucial for everybody to keep doing their businesses and continue to support their businesses and the work they're doing because you know AI could be very agile.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: It just looks for those uh red flags very quickly.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It helps you clear them very fast if you're using AI.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's definitely the heart of what we do.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal is to make sure we continue to empower all these communities, uh, safeguard them, keep the bad actors, criminal out of our financial systems and obviously out of our communities.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, trust is obviously a very critical part of payments in fintech.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you think companies can build and maintain trust as the industry becomes more automated and more technology driven?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trust is the heart of compliance, you know, regulations.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say the transparency is key for trust.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: So making sure that whether you're using, you know, a legacy tool or AI or AI agent to clear those cases, it's important that every output or every decision which is made by the system is fully explainable to you know all other business users, to your auditors, to your regulators is important, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you should be able to explain everything.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Number one.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, it's also important that you're taking that learning back and your, you know, your agent are continuing to get better.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: So and documentation is also a big part of financial crime.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Those who are familiar with financial crimes and compliance are fully aware that you know documenting the systems in place and when that was tuned, providing all those evidence to regulators are extremely crucial.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say in payments and in leveraging AI in financial crime, keeping that human in loop, which I touched on that in uh you know previously, is extremely crucial to make we continue to build trust as we are adopting some of these technology.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna repeat again what I said in the past AI can bring all those computational energy into our system.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: It can make us scalable, but in order for us to grow sustainable, we need humans.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: So explainability piece, leveraging human in loop is going to be crucial in building trust.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is one trend or change in payments that you believe will have the biggest impact on people and businesses over the next few years?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would say agentic payments is one of the biggest trends I'm seeing.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's obviously a simpler way to where the agents are basically buying things on your behalf, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: So for obviously individuals, you know, instead of them making all those bookings and transactions, they would be able to just provide their goals and the budget, and the AI is going to make all those reservations, all those travel reservations on their behalf.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: For businesses, it's going to be completely different because earlier the businesses were marketing towards human, and now they will have to market towards agent, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to completely change on how payments and the financial systems have been operating.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: It also has a major impact on how compliance works because in a traditional setting, the way you look for suspicious behavior, you know, again, could be money laundering, could be human trafficking, or could be drug trafficking based on what is an expected human behavior, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when you see an anomaly, you, you know, that's a suspicious.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: But in the agentic payment world, now we need to look for what a delegated activity looks for the financial system.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then we need to have systems in place to look for anomalies for those specific areas.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And again, this is where the AI and the agents come really handy because they're much more agile to adopt to this emerging trend, these new ways of doing businesses and doing financial services as compared to what was before.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely the institutions who have AI as part of their embedded into their risk framework will have upper hand going forward.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have no doubt about that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a fascinating topic because we talk about agentic payments.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's a huge thing that's on my show all the time that we talk about.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the financial crime side, the compliance side, the risk side, you know, the identity verification, all of those things for agentic payments, I don't feel like is like solved yet.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's a huge opportunity for, you know, companies like yours to come in and really make a difference there.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think the way forward is definitely the agentic payments side.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going to be a fascinating future and it's coming up on us pretty fast.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just to close the loop on that, you know, one of the, you know, big part of what we do is also help, like I said, institutions adopt AI well.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And a big part of it is to make sure they are able to explain all the output to their regulators, helping them with that, you know, model management and governance documentation.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: We are totally pivoting our uh, you know, uh transitioning some of the work we have done in the past to meet these agentic uh trends because now, as compared to a traditional AI output, now we need to be able to explain the AI agents' behavior and provide all those documentation.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we are also transitioning, not just the technology piece, but also the governance piece, the business, you know, the explainability piece as well, like I talked about in the past, to meet these regulations.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, it's a lot of learning for all of us.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we are also we are all learning, we are getting a lot of feedback from our customers as well.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: But this is definitely, we have a lot of work to do.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just say that.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very, very fascinating.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's talk now about mentorship and impact.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, who has influenced you along the way, whether it's been directly or indirectly, and what did you learn from them?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it may surprise maybe some of the folks, but I've been uh extremely fortunate to work on financial crimes and compliance where we have extreme high representation of women, believe it or not, right?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just in the US, we have, if I'm not wrong, more than 50%, 53%, I think, compliance officers who are women.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a very high representation of women in financial crimes and compliance.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And seeing them navigating this extremely demanding area, talking to their regulators, making sure that their financial institutions continue to keep the, you know, the financial entire ecosystem safe, keeping the bad actors out of it, continue to make sure that they are meeting the emerging threats and the trends and having the sound system in place while adopting to new technology has been just fascinating to me, right?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is also where you know some of my leadership learnings came from, because you know, when they I've seen them creating an environment where you know they were adopting AI, they were creating an environment for everybody to use some of these innovative technology because it could be just easier, not really, but it could be just simpler to continue to use some of the legacy tools and you know call it a day.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: But there is so much, I've seen some of the leaders who are who are ready to take uh, you know, the leap of you know, leap to get to that bons AI.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is a change on how you are having the model management discussion before, the discussion with the regulators, making sure your regulators are okay with you transforming to new technology, or making sure that you're still continuing to have a complete monitoring coverage to make sure you're keeping the bad actors out is where I've seen them creating an environment for everybody to adopt, try newer things, and obviously take their own auditors, take their own business team, their executive, stakeholders, board, and then regulators aligned has been just amazing.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes back to the leadership learning I've had.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would say working just around these incredible human women in compliance has been just amazing for me.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what advice would you give to the next generation of women that are entering the payments and fintech industry?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I would say number one, just learn the plumbing, right?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because payment could look very sleek on the top, but it's extremely complex framework behind, you know, as you go, few levels.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Below, so make sure you understand uh you know how the money is moving from point A to point B, different frameworks, different platforms which are being used.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the reason you know, when I talked about one of the incidents in my career, the reason I was able to navigate uh I've now that I look back, that very extremely demanding situation well is because I knew the plumbing of my tool very well, right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, definitely don't be scared, make sure you know you're learning as much as you can, you're learning the everything beneath the surface because it will just make your knowledge just brings more credibility.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, make sure you're taking time to learn as much as you can.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be a coder to understand technology, right?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Number one.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, there is enough research where we know women generally wait to get 100% ready to ask for a job, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would say be okay to be 70% ready, especially in fintech and payment where everything's so fast-paced, the technology is emerging, the industry is changing.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you wait to get 100% ready, things are gonna move on to the completely new thing.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: So be okay, you know, to go ask for whatever you need if you feel you're 70% ready.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's number two.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And number three, just make sure, you know, create your own personal board of director list to make sure you know who your mentors are, who your sponsors are.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: You wanna make sure, you know, because you wanna be there in the boardroom discussion where you are not there and somebody is watching for you.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think knowing some of these mentors and stakeholders in your career is extremely crucial.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've been very fortunate to have many in my life.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, this would be my advice to the young woman coming to payment.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's incredible advice.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for sharing that.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's wrap up the show with one final kind of fun question.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is one app or podcast or book, TV show, or hobby, or maybe even a favorite way to unwind that gives us a glimpse into who you are outside of work?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said in the beginning, I love learning about culture and travel.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I love traveling.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a youth of the name uh Drew Binski.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's I think they start off, I don't know, where he's a US-based influencer, but he has visited every country on the planet.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I just watching him because uh just because he doesn't create like uh typical touristic videos, he talks about culture and the human element of it.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there are many other influencers like that in the you know, now on the internet, but I just happen to connect with him, so I enjoy watching his videos, and even if they are like a lot of repetitive content he keeps on creating from his travels.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I really enjoy that.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And um, another piece I would say out of screen is I love cooking.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I cook almost every day.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's just an amazing way to bring people together.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's what I do when I'm not working.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Garima, thank you so much.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great way to wrap up the show.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today and being on the show.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed our conversation.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And until the next story,