Joining me this week in the first of a four-part series on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is Monica Eaton, the CEO of Chargebacks911. Monica's start-up story in the fintech space serves as a beacon for aspiring women in technology and finance. As a pioneer in the payments industry, Monica shares her trajectory from being a merchant grappling with chargebacks to helming a company with global reach. Her story isn't just a personal triumph; it's a roadmap for other women who aim to shatter the proverbial glass ceiling in a sector traditionally dominated by men.
Monica's commitment to empowerment isn't confined to her corporate achievements. Her initiative, LIFT, is a testament to the potential mentorship holds in elevating women within the fintech space. LIFT connects female professionals with C-suite executives, fostering an environment where wisdom, experience, and guidance flow freely, thus nurturing the next generation of female leaders.
Through mentorship, education reform, and a commitment to DE&I, Monica is forging a path for inclusive growth and empowerment in fintech and beyond.
Joining me this week in the first of a four-part series on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is Monica Eaton, the CEO of Chargebacks911. Monica's start-up story in the fintech space serves as a beacon for aspiring women in technology and finance. As a pioneer in the payments industry, Monica shares her trajectory from being a merchant grappling with chargebacks to helming a company with global reach. Her story isn't just a personal triumph; it's a roadmap for other women who aim to shatter the proverbial glass ceiling in a sector traditionally dominated by men.
Monica's commitment to empowerment isn't confined to her corporate achievements. Her initiative, LIFT, is a testament to the potential mentorship holds in elevating women within the fintech space. LIFT connects female professionals with C-suite executives, fostering an environment where wisdom, experience, and guidance flow freely, thus nurturing the next generation of female leaders.
Through mentorship, education reform, and a commitment to DE&I, Monica is forging a path for inclusive growth and empowerment in fintech and beyond.
Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape. 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. We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
Speaker 2:Hi Monica. Thank you for being here and welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 2:Great to have you. So this is our first of our four episodes in March on diversity, equity and inclusion and, as many of you know, Monica was on the show back in late January. It was episode 294. So to learn more details about the company and the industry and Monica's professional journey, I suggest you go back and listen to that episode. So today we're going to talk a little bit about you and the company and then we're going to dive in to the meat of the conversation, which is about lift, a program that Monica helped found. So before we get into that, Monica, just could you give our audience a brief overview, maybe a little about yourself and your professional journey and then, of course, about Chargebacks 9-1-1?.
Speaker 3:Sure, absolutely. So a little bit about myself. I've been with the company from the very start, started out in technology like many of us kind of fell into that role, was a merchant and then developed a solution to solve Chargebacks because I couldn't find a solution. Frankly, it was either that or go out of business and, needless to say, I discovered. You know what this is actually even a larger opportunity. There's Chargeback problems all over the world. So, fasting forward, that was in 2011.
Speaker 3:And now we don't just solve Chargeback problems for merchants. We have a full-fledged unified technology platform and we serve many of the world's largest financial institutions. We operate in 87 countries, have locations in the US, in the UK, in India, as well as Singapore and Brazil, and we're expanding. About 350 employees worldwide, just over two and a half million merchants on our platform and, I think, around 51 FIs. So large problem to solve, lots of challenge, lots of technology. But something about me I love a good challenge and it motivates me to consider we can do some good in the world to revolutionize this type of product.
Speaker 2:Great Thanks for sharing that. I really appreciate it. So today we're going to take a deep dive into a program that you started called Lift Elevating Women in Fintech, and I'm just going to read the official description. Lift is a mentorship program for women pursuing careers in finance, technology and payment sectors. Participants can seek professional advice, career guidance and industry insight from an impressive list of female C-suite executives, including those from Microsoft, uk Finance and Findexable. The mission behind the free initiative is to bridge the gap between established women in the Fintech industry and those who are still trying to find their way, ultimately helping create a pipeline for females in Fintech. So, now that I've read the official description, in your own words, tell us about Lift.
Speaker 3:This is a program. As you read it, this is really a culmination of a lot of conversations that I had with women that I work with and also looking at my own career path. I never really had a woman as a mentor. In fact, I didn't have the greatest mentors to start. I ended up finding great mentors and that made such a difference in my career path and it really gave me a lot of confidence. Motivation pointed me in the right direction and I've just seen so much amazing opportunity out there that I thought you know, actually I want to create a grassroots foundation and effort that really helps connect mentors with mentees and create it at a level where I take people that have clearly figured out how to get to climb that corporate ladder and create a level of success and then connect those individuals with women that are aspiring to excel and they would just like to talk to another woman and find out hey, you know, what did you do different? What should I do? And really just kind of bridge that gap.
Speaker 2:You sort of answered this, but I wanted to see if there are kind of more reasons, but why? Obviously you saw an opportunity or something missing in this space and you created this, but were there other reasons that you created it beyond just that?
Speaker 3:I have another program that I started in 2013, another not-for-profit, called Paid for Grades, a little different, you know, focused on underprivileged high school kids, but it's really close to my heart and, I have to say, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you can't help but want to solve problems, and that comes with taking more responsibility. And so, you know, when I first started this business, then I was recruiting a lot of these high school graduates and even high school dropouts and you know, what I saw is there was the biggest problem was actually their confidence in themselves and their ability to see what they were really capable of. And I myself, I don't have a college degree, I actually don't really have like impressive accolades, but you know what I created my own self-worth. I work harder than anybody else. That I know. I don't quit, I'm tenacious and I believe that I have the ability to learn anything as long as I put my mind to it, and I've been super fortunate in being able to find like-minded individuals and the power of a team, you actually can do anything in the world. And so when I look at what we were able to create with that grassroots effort, with the Pay for Grades initiative and we took high school kids and then gave them an opportunity and really just built their confidence. Because these guys are super smart. They're basically writing code, but they're getting like Ds in class and thinking they're going to drop out and work at Burger King for the rest of their lives. But no, they're some of the smartest developers. And now it's exciting for me to see hey, elon Musk, doesn't care if you went a traditional route. If you're smart and you know what you're doing and you have the confidence to succeed, you can succeed. There's so much more opportunity now.
Speaker 3:I disagree with the belief that you can't have it all and there's not enough opportunity. There is 100%. So now getting to Lyft well, guess what? The same type of problem actually happens and it has a tendency to target women and women that are advancing in their career. But I saw the same type of indicators where I would see I have these amazing women that work in our organization, but the confidence isn't there.
Speaker 3:I meet people at different organizations and there's a lot of emphasis that's put on self-esteem. Self-esteem is something I believe that you only earn from others and it's all about what others perceive of you, and oftentimes women take on this mentality because of tradition etc. Of being people pleasers, and that doesn't mean that you have confidence in yourself. It means you're really creating confidence just by what other people say. That's not very strong in the corporate world and that's not something that you can build a career with and really what it takes.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day.
Speaker 3:You have to develop grit and you need to develop self-worth, and I think it's less about things being a man's world and it's more about pushing back on some of the traditional fixed mindsets that accompany the sexes and actually challenge that and really partner women that are pursuing a career with those who have been successful, because I guarantee if you talk to a C-level executive, you're probably going to find there's plenty of women who are just like me.
Speaker 3:You know what. We have families, we have great relationships with our kids, we find time to go to soccer games, we also can run a business, we also have a great personal life. You can have it all and the philosophy of hey, if you have a role, I guess, as a woman, then you're going to have to work here, you're going to have to make less, you have to sacrifice something in order to have something less. I think I'm interested in challenging that mindset, because I don't think that's true and I think Lyft is really a platform to help bridge that gap and really inspire others that can hopefully pay it forward and create even a larger, more positive effect.
Speaker 2:What would you say is the main thing you've learned from launching this initiative?
Speaker 3:Probably the biggest thing, that it's always the case with the, I think, even with any business, with anything right, you set out a goal and my goal was I really wanted to create a positive influence, but probably the most. There's a couple of things actually, so one thing that I've walked away with is just the incredible reward in being able to help someone else and also learning from others. When you think, man, I thought that I already had this figured out, I thought I already knew this, I'm an expert. And then you listen to some of these stories and you talk to different women at different areas and you're like you know what? Actually I need it to be a bit more humble. Actually I have more to learn and that's encouraging. You know, you never want to be in a place where you think you already know everything and you have nothing to improve upon. And there's lessons to take away from, I think, every walk of life and especially from speaking to others. You know, sometimes I find myself really inspired by the sheer ingenuity and humility of people that are asking me for advice and I think you know what, actually, walking away from this experience, I'm the one that should be thanking you for your inspiration and motivation and helping me see areas that I can be a better impact and that I can be a better person and influence more. And then the second is it's been great, of course, to see some of the network effects of bringing people together, also just taking into account some of the success stories and then also realizing, you know, as much emphasis as there is in creating a more diverse movement, making sure that there are mentorships, that women are seeing other women leadership, and you know, it's not just about women, it's really the whole diversity movement.
Speaker 3:I think the world has made so much progress over the last decade from when I started this business, but then also approaching the reality that you know what we still actually have a pretty long ways to go, because there still are so many stories that I could tell you of women that I've talked to that it's like crazy. I'm thinking are you kidding me? How can you have this mindset in 2024? This is something that I should be listening to, this conversation as a woman that I'm talking to from the 1900s and I mean it's nuts. So, yeah, it's like I've told myself. You know there's this problem to solve. I know that it's this big. This is what I'm going to do and then it's like, oh my gosh, it's actually like there is still such an issue with some of the mindsets and obstacles and, yeah, lots of opportunity to improve across the board.
Speaker 2:I guess.
Speaker 2:Right, and what we're talking about this month is obviously diversity, equity, inclusion, and this is just a component of it. But I think, as you well know, the more diverse a workforce, the more diverse a board of directors, a leadership team. There are research reports that prove that the more diversity, the better the company performs overall, and there's metrics that can be used and all that kind of stuff. And I feel like one of the reasons I wanted to highlight this is because I think these kinds of programs and kind of the way you articulate it about empowerment and mindset I mean, that's not just like women, that could be anyone in the workforce. And when you talk about inclusion and diversity, I feel like part of that is you've got to bring your whole self to work, but you have to be confident, right? You have to have that confidence that you can be successful. I think that's a huge part of it. So you kind of gave a good segue into.
Speaker 2:The next question is like, if you step back and you look and you've been in this payments fintech ecosystem for a while when you look at diversity, equity and inclusion, do you feel like we're making progress? We have a long way to go, we've got a little ways to go and kind of what's your view on the bigger kind of broader environment that we work in? On a scale of one to 10, are we at a five as an industry, or are we at a two and need to get to five just to say we're halfway there? Are we a seven? And we've done a great job?
Speaker 3:So I am like an eternal optimist, unless it comes to targets and goals. And then I'm always like you know what, but we can do better. So I would say we can do a lot better. So, for example, you know what we've done a great job on a top down approach and, just like anything, you know what you're only gonna get halfway. So top down is putting pressure on corporate america, creating more recognition for success, mentioning there's lots of avenues now where a focus point is the benefits, as you were saying, with diversity etc. Totally dovetails into everything that is happening in payments technology. But you know where we can do a lot better and I'd say we are actually pretty bismill at this in comparison to the rest of the world. And I can say this because I spent quite a few years in the uk. So, getting that perspective, I've also spent a tremendous amount of time in india and really kind of getting a flavor of what goes on in the rest of the world in comparison to all right, what can we do in the us? And then what's focus there? First, and even in the uk they can improve. I mean, we can all prove.
Speaker 3:But bottom line, so top down, that's corporate america telling everybody. Hey, how are more women? Make sure you have things more diverse and, like you said, it's not just about women, but bottom up, we're not doing very well and I'll explain so. If you go to a primary school or elementary right, then you're going to find that everybody is taking pretty much the same. Courses were definitely challenging tradition, I think, in those areas, but in different ways on the social parameters, to create more diversity movements. Then, when you get into areas like high school, secondary school, this is where there's a missing opportunity. So, if you look at, how do we create payments and technology in some of the areas where we really don't have women that are participating here and we don't have enough diversity. Now, the way that you create diversity is you have to expose people to an aptitude that they may not know they have. You have to challenge the status quo.
Speaker 3:So, in other words, and I'll give you a personal example, if I never would have walked into a high school and confronted the fact that I couldn't take home economics, I couldn't take a sewing class and I couldn't take fashion design which, by the way, those are the only things I wanted to take Instead, I had to take one shop, I had to take a programming and then another coding class, cuz there was literally no other classes available, I don't think I would be here today. You know what I found in actually having to take those classes. I realize you know what this is not just programming and technology, you know. It's actually a form of art. It's creative. I'm good at it. I like math, I like to build things, I like to create things. I love this stuff.
Speaker 3:And you would have never convinced me to do it on my own ever like playing the piano, any person that plays the piano. I guarantee they did not do it because they chose to practice every day, because they were forced. And you know you develop an aptitude and you have to expose yourself to understand if you have talents. Kids that learn how to play a sport. They don't know how to play it. They're not experts. You don't ask them do you want to learn how to do this? Most kids would say no, they don't want to try something new. No, you get on the field and you say this is what we're doing and now we're gonna start practicing, and first they think I can't hit the ball and then they become an expert. This is what's missing in the bottoms up approach that we do not have in this country.
Speaker 3:What we need to do is we kind of need to force our kids to be exposed to all of these stem areas so that they have a chance to understand if they have the talent and if they have the aptitude, and they should be walking away from school with these core skills and they aren't, and that is a travesty. And what I see us doing is focusing a tremendous amount of effort On top down corporate politics, promotion, even penalties, making sure that you have diversity quotas. However, you know where this needs to start. It needs to start with our kids. Literally, it should be. Why doesn't my twelve year old have to take a coding class? You know it should be. They are all taking coding, they are all understanding programming. Every single person from high school should not be able to graduate without understanding computer science.
Speaker 3:Look at where we are in the world and it's actually we don't know and we're not allowing women to even be exposed to the talent and the aptitude that they may have, because at the age when they're most impressionable, they're not gonna choose that, of course. They're gonna choose home act, they're gonna choose fashion, just because that's the mentality, and so it isn't about making it cool. I disagree with you, know. Let's create this coolness concept. Let's see if we can sell everyone into choosing.
Speaker 3:Actually, the world is changing. We're in an environment now where to compete. This is actually part of our standard curriculum. This is as important as math and literally we have every person take art in, if you think about it, in every single elementary school, every high school, art is a requirement. I guarantee there's a lot of people that just don't have a talent for art but they take art. Well, we need to be doing the same thing to compete and in order to bolster those diversity statistics that we want and have well rounded atmospheres and create the confidence, we really need to advance our curriculum and our thought process to get everybody up to speed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fascinating way to think about it is the efforts have been. When you step back and think about it, the efforts have been top down but there's so much more opportunity bottom up and Some what related. I met someone recently who he's a student at I think it was Indiana University and he said I'm the head of the fintech club. I was like, oh cool, there's a fintech club there. He's like, yeah, we have 250 members. I said, well, is there a curriculum? Can you get a degree in Fintech? He goes, oh no, no, we're just a club. Come again. Like you know, that doesn't make sense, right? Anyway, I mean, it's a different thing than what you're saying, but in a lot of ways, go from those high school days and then let's transfer that to college and then we think about our industry. You can't even get a degree at some places in Fintech and it's such a powerful.
Speaker 3:It's nuts. I'll tell you what is well, we're on subjects of RANS. So you know what is crazy. It's like okay, we have people graduating from high school. It should be that when you graduate from high school, you need to be prepared to actually go to work. Instead, they're only getting prepared to go to college.
Speaker 3:And the world is changing. We have kids graduating from high school today that don't know how to use Excel Literally. They don't know how to use Outlook. They know how to use PowerPoint. But if I think about it, like, is there any job today that anybody would get that doesn't involve an email application, understanding email etiquette and Excel? Probably not. And some of these most basic core skills are not even being taught to these guys. And then the subject of computer science. It's such an elementary subject but, man, it actually would expose so much interest. It would give people a great foundation so that, whatever job they get, they could learn analytics, they can understand how things work. It just creates a nice platform and you see this as a very required curriculum. In all the other countries and these are other countries that, by the way, have massively different diversity statistics they have women that are in technology. There's a terrific amount of engagement that is very, very diverse and I would say, if we look at that, this is the key differential.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would totally agree with you. Well, let's circle back to the Lift Program in women specifically. If you could provide women in payments or fintech, just one piece of advice what would that be?
Speaker 3:I would say, if I could provide women in payments or fintech one piece of advice, I would say don't be afraid of failure. I think too often times we hold ourselves back because we're so afraid of failing, and I think we need to recognize failure is finite, it's never going to last forever and you have to fail in order to succeed. Actually, success is really a lot of failures, because it's about trial and error and learning and progressing, and so don't get so concerned and don't lose your confidence because you failed. Actually, have more confidence because you tried and you're learning, and that's what progress is all about.
Speaker 2:I love that I recently saw something that said it was talking about what's the one thing that millionaires do, and not that success is judged on money. But that was the article and they said they're not afraid to ask. Is that fear of failure kind of that you're speaking to is don't be afraid to fail but don't be afraid to ask?
Speaker 3:Right, just don't be afraid. Right.
Speaker 2:Just sum it up, don't be afraid, absolutely so. This has been a great conversation. Can you please share with our audience how people can get involved in the Lyft program?
Speaker 3:Yes, so you can of course go to our website, and then I think we have a special link as well. So if you go to fi911.com, forward slash Lyft dash mentorship, you can sign up right there.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, great. Well, monica, is there anything else you'd like to cover on this topic before we wrap up the show?
Speaker 3:I've probably talked way too long as it is. It's always great talking with you, catching up and love the subject, and thank you again for having me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate your time, so thank you very much.
Speaker 3:No problem, all right, enjoy the conference.
Speaker 2:Thanks, and to all you listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments podcast. Make sure you visit our website at leadersinpaymentscom, where you can subscribe to the show and where you'll find our show notes. If you enjoyed listening, please share on your social channels as well.