People First: Mentorship, Inclusion, and Leadership in Payments

0:07 - Hi, I'm Melissa Desjardins, a Director with Protiviti.

0:10 - I'm thrilled to be here today with Genevieve Dozier, a payments leader with over 20 years of experience.

0:16 - We're here to talk today about putting people at the forefront of payments.

0:21 - So would love for Genevieve to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your experience.

0:27 - Yeah, well, you did a great introduction, Melissa.

0:29 - Genevieve Dozier, as you mentioned, coming up on my 20th year in the business, went right out of college, right into banking and merchant services and now what has come to become fintech, you know, financial technology and happy to be here discussing people and payments with you.

0:48 - Awesome.

0:50 - First wanted to talk a little bit about your Money 2020 journey.

0:53 - What has your journey been like and how has Money 2020 impacted you?

0:57 - Yeah, it's been a, it's been a great journey.

1:00 - I was when Money 2020 first came to fruition, I wasn't in a place in my career where, you know, my company would send me, right?

1:08 - They would send more top level leadership.

1:11 - And so in 2019, they was the second year of a program that they started called Rise Up.

1:19 - And someone that I knew told me about it and they said you should apply.

1:23 - And I was like, I'll never, I'll never get in, right.

1:26 - And but she said, but you know, what's the worst that can happen is you don't you don't get in.

1:30 - And so I said, OK, And so I applied and I was accepted.

1:35 - And I didn't know at the time I was one of 40 selected out of 400 global applicants.

1:41 - Amazing.

1:42 - I thought it was just US based because it was here in Las Vegas.

1:45 - But when I got into the room, you know, with the other 39 women, there were women from Brazil, Brazil, Germany, Nigeria, I mean, Mexico, Australia.

1:57 - And what really opened my eyes to now kind of what I've been doing the last seven years is I heard from all these other women in all different aspects of financial services.

2:09 - And we all face similar struggles, even in different continents, in different countries.

2:15 - And so it really brought us together in a very human way.

2:18 - That's awesome.

2:19 - What a great journey, and it's wonderful to hear about it.

2:23 - Tell me a bit about how you're putting people at the forefront of payments in your own career journey and how you're perhaps helping others or mentoring others or guiding others in their career.

2:34 - Yeah.

2:34 - And so it became very intentional for me, but it was a light bulb moment.

2:39 - It was about 10 years into my career and I sought guidance from a mentor that was outside of my company.

2:47 - You know, I felt a little bit lost, like I'm not sure what's next for me and my career.

2:51 - I'd I'd done really well.

2:53 - You know, I kind of moved up the ladder, which is what I thought, you know, you were supposed to do, right?

2:57 - That's kind of what everybody tells you in movies, right?

3:01 - But I was just so she helped me ask questions and like self reflect on really what it is that I like to do and why.

3:10 - And so it wasn't just so much based on the task.

3:13 - I mean, that was kind of the initial questions when you think about a role.

3:17 - And for me, when I reflected about that, it was that I really like to help people.

3:23 - And so for the 1st 10 years of my career, it was helping businesses, but it was really because I wanted to help people in some way.

3:31 - And so I focus on that.

3:32 - Of course, I still did the business aspect of my role always, right?

3:37 - Because that's what, you know, companies pay me to do.

3:40 - But what I found so valuable was I took any free time I had, and I created time and prioritize time to your point to give back.

3:48 - So I started volunteering for different organizations and in my own community as well.

3:54 - So I became a mentor.

3:55 - I created a mentor program in my small hometown to educate middle school, high school and college students about the financial technology industry and opportunities for them.

4:07 - But then even within our industry, I created spaces for it started out fully focused on women, but then with Rise Up and then the creation of Amplify, which open it up to any gender, people of color, and now even just underrepresented to people with disabilities, right.

4:23 - And so it really opened up my eyes of, you know, the difficulties that all people can face in the industry and having real conversations.

4:32 - I mean, even just yesterday, you know, I kind of touched on, oh, hey, how's your book going?

4:37 - You know, this, this woman just wrote a book about AI, but the real struggles that we're having on top of just our day jobs and the amazing technology, right, that we're creating in the space.

4:48 - But so that's why it's important to me to put the people because it really is focused on relationships and to have these authentic relationships that will add then to naturally and organically the business aspect of the partnership.

5:02 - That makes sense.

5:03 - And that all sounds wonderful.

5:05 - Since you mentioned AI, would love to double click on that a bit.

5:09 - How can we as leaders in our industry continue to keep people as our focus with the advancement of AI?

5:17 - Yeah, yeah.

5:17 - So I think it's, it's been important to me and I've been on a few panels in the last year on AI.

5:22 - And so it's key to me with with the, you know, of course, the influx of AI, I mean, AI is not new, right?

5:29 - It's just more of a more of a hot topic and more, more people are using it.

5:33 - It's really about the awareness, the education, the training on use cases, I think.

5:39 - And then really it's about for me, you know, just then for the future is thinking of it as just another tool in your toolbox and not replacing it, especially as you think about a writer, maybe like they're a writer for a reason, right?

5:55 - It's comprehensive thinking.

5:57 - It's creativity.

5:58 - And you don't want to take that from someone where you just say, oh, just throw that in a chat bot and let them create your content for you.

6:06 - So I think there's this line that we have to blur of where it's just a tool versus letting it completely replace an activity.

6:13 - Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

6:16 - What's one key take away from this conversation that leaders who are watching can keep in mind as they're looking to inspire the next generation in payments, in fintech, in financial services?

6:29 - Yeah, I would really urge people because there's there's lots of pressures, right?

6:37 - There's pressures to, you know, do things faster to get things to market, you know, speed to revenue, right?

6:45 - But I would say even with those pressures, just to don't forget about the people and make sure you know, you're being inclusive as far as you know, hearing everyone's ideas right and balancing that.

6:57 - Supporting people where they need support.

7:00 - Because when people, I think there's a few things that I always like to highlight recently is people have to feel there's a mutual trust, respect, support.

7:09 - They have to feel that they have the tools that they need to be able to be successful.

7:15 - Or else you're just gonna kind of even potentially mentally set them up for failure and create an ineffective environment.

7:25 - So I think that's that's core.

7:26 - And that's kind of part of my, you know, mantra now is, is really getting, you know, the business tasks done, but focusing on the people aspect of it.

7:36 - I think it's a great message and I really appreciate you sitting down and talking to me about these important topics.

7:42 - So thank you so much.

7:43 - Thank you for joining us.