Women Leaders in Payments: Gabrielle Bugat, CEO ePayments at G+D | Episode 341

Curious about the journey from a small town in France to leading a global financial platform? Gabrielle Bugat, CEO of G+D ePayments, shares her incredible story and the principles that guided her to success. From her education at MINES ParisTech to her international career across Texas, Mexico, and Germany, Gabrielle reveals how she navigated each challenge and opportunity with resilience and ambition. She opens up about her current role, leading financial platforms within G&D Group, and the strategies she employs in managing strategy, product development, and talent across continents.

Discover the guiding principles that have shaped Gabrielle's leadership style, emphasizing collective intelligence, being outcome-driven, and maintaining a business-centric approach. Gabrielle recounts her early days as a young manager, the pivotal experiences that honed her leadership skills, and the unique challenges faced as a female leader. Listen as she shares practical strategies for fostering teamwork, breaking down silos, and leading acquisitions with humility and respect. Her stories, from simple team-building exercises to navigating post-merger environments, offer valuable lessons for leaders at any stage of their career.

The importance of mentorship and career growth is a key highlight of our conversation with Gabrielle. She delves into stepping out of one's comfort zone, adapting to new cultural norms, and the value of informal mentorship and networking. Gabrielle emphasizes the significance of soft skills, self-belief, and continuous learning, particularly for women in the workplace. Her insights and personal anecdotes provide a powerful message of encouragement for anyone pursuing their goals with determination. Tune in to be inspired by Gabrielle Bugat's journey and the wisdom she's gained along the way.

Chapters

• 0:04 Women Leaders in Payments
• 13:48 Guiding Principles for Team Success
• 17:02 Challenges and Triumphs of Female Leadership
• 25:39 Navigating Career Growth Through Challenges
• 31:22 Informal Mentorship and Career Advice
• 36:31 Finding Inspiration for Career Success

Transcript

Greg: 0:04

Thank you for joining us during this special series running throughout the month of July, focused exclusively on women leaders and payments. We've got great content this month, focused on mentorship, career advice, getting out of your comfort zone, having your voice heard and much, much more. A special thanks to our contributing sponsors, stacks Payments, nuve and MAP Advisors, and to our episode sponsors, nmi, dailypay, g&d and Ingenico. As we continue our month dedicated to women leaders and payments today, I welcome Gabrielle Bougas, ceo of G&D ePayments. We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started. We've got a great episode ahead, so let's get started. Hi Gabrielle, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast and, more specifically, thank you so much for participating during the Women Leaders in Payments month. Hi Greg. So if you don't mind, let's start by talking a little bit about you.

Greg: 1:08

So tell our audience a little bit about yourself, maybe where you grew up, where you went to school, where you currently live, a few things like that.

Greg: 1:11

Yeah, sure, so I'm French. I was born in France in a very small town not that small actually, but very old and industrial town, and I lived in what I think in America you would call project. So a lot of difference, a lot of diversity in origins, in religions. Very interesting. And then for my studies I had a chance to move to Paris, from Burgundy to Paris, where I studied engineering in Min Paris Tech, quite a famous engineering school in Paris. And then I started to work. And in my work I went, I flew around the world. I started my career in Texas, then moved back to France, spent time in Mexico, moved back to France and now I live in Germany, in Munich. Apart from that, well, I'm 47 years old. I'm married, happily married, and I have two daughters.

Greg: 1:58

Okay, awesome. So tell us about your role today and a little about the company GND.

Gabrielle: 2:03

Yes, so I am today the CEO of GND ePayments and also the chairwoman of Netcetera, and combined Netcetera and ePayments in two divisions of GND Group and under the umbrella that we call financial platforms. So I would be referring to financial platforms. So financial platforms is part of GND Group. Gnd Group is a family-owned company specialized in security technologies, and financial platforms is one of the three pillars of this company, the other two being digital security and currency technology In financial platforms. In fact, I'm in charge of the holistic offering for contemporary payments and banking experiences. This is roughly 1 billion euro revenue and about 5,500 people and I cover on my day-to-day. I cover countries because we are truly, truly international. I cover country strategies, almost every country. I cover portfolio, lots of products, products, solutions, operations we have close to 30 factories throughout the world and, of course, talents and talent management.

Greg: 3:18

Okay, great. Well, before we get into the meat of the conversation, I want to do this little icebreaker exercise where I'm going to ask you kind of a this or that question so do you prefer early morning versus late night? And you just give me the quick answer and we'll go on to the next one. We've got 10 of them to go through, so tell me when you're ready to go. I'm ready.

Greg: 3:38

All right. So do you prefer summer or winter, winter, cats or dogs, cats, apple or Android, android, coffee or tea, tea, books or movies, books, beach or mountains, mountains, chocolate or vanilla Chocolate, texting or calling, calling City or country, country and the last one, pizza or pasta, pasta. Okay, great, thank you so much for doing that.

Gabrielle: 4:03

Interestingly, the ones that are hesitating are the ones linked to technology, so I like both Apple and Android actually, and I do text and call at the same time, so I usually do it at the same time.

Greg: 4:14

Yeah, yeah, people have their own kind of. Some people can't choose one or the other, they say both or whatever. So it's always kind of fun to do that. Thank you so much, so let's talk a little more about you. So what was your life like growing up?

Gabrielle: 4:29

Growing up. If I would summarize, I would say first, my life was in motion Because my parents got divorced when I was quite young and they decided to live in different cities and there was a train between the two cities, probably like 90 minutes train. And, starting very young, like six, seven years old, I started to travel alone to see one or the other and then I started changing school to live with one or the other. So I was in motion all the time and it also helped me to be fast, adaptive and I can say also, when I grew up I was also very much in action. So I was a good pupil, no doubt, but I was also very keen on leading the pack, leading the group. So I was always elected head of class from young years to university and using this to do something. So, for instance, when I was in high school, I'm quite proud that I managed to convince and find a way to bring my whole class to the ski day and for a lot of people remember I was coming from the project that I managed to convince and find a way to bring my whole class to the ski day and for a lot of people remember I was coming from the project. For a lot of people it was the first day, the first time ever that they were skiing. So yeah, I tricked everybody into doing that and everything went fine. It was great.

Gabrielle: 5:36

When I was in university, first year of university, I managed to organize a humanitarian trip to Burkina Faso, getting it financed, finding people joining me, even finding ways to collect books. And then the books. I collected so many books that I could not carry them, even the small group we were. So I tried to find ways and I ended up in a very weird way. I got a call from the government French government and I got the books transported in a president's plane who happened to have a summit there. So that was an example. And when I joined after, that was my first, the last university. I was more specialized. I was part of the. I was the representative of the university when we created something called Grandes Écoles Féminins, which means more. It was engineering school, so it's more towards women in engineering schools, and that brought us to discuss also with the Ministry of Women in France. I was 23 years old at the time and I even wrote a testimony that was read at the parliament. So in motion and in action.

Greg: 6:42

Awesome, okay. So when you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Gabrielle: 6:46

I wanted to do something. So I was afraid of just having a lot of talks but not leader results. I was really clearly outcome driven and when I was young, when I was 17 years old, I won a national prize in geography and a journalist came and asked questions, as you're doing right now, and they wrote an article. So it's interesting because I can see what I said, what I was saying at the time, and at the time what made the headline is I said that I wanted to balance professional and personal life. So the career was one thing, but I wanted a career that would be balanced. I didn't want only to have a career, I wanted to have a career and a family. Okay, great.

Greg: 7:26

So what was your very first job? So, when I was still?

Gabrielle: 7:30

in university we had to do some internship and I was picked up by Schlumberger you know the oilfield company, oh yeah To do an internship in Texas. Wonderful experience and I really appreciate. I really enjoyed the company, the way everybody had a chance, especially women in this company. I really enjoyed the company the way everybody had the chance, especially women in this company. I think it was at the time one of the most advanced in terms of human resources and HR concepts overall. It's also for dual career and all that. So I said this is a very good company.

Gabrielle: 8:00

After I came back to finish my studies and I did a survey with the other women who had done the same engineering schools and I asked hey, tell me about your company, how you managed to solve all the challenges that women can engineers, women can face in life. And from all the answers and a few things that we organized in testimony sessions also in university, it was clear that Schlumberger was ahead, was really more advanced. So I said, hmm, I want to work with Schlumberger, but in Schlumberger there was a division on GSM, you know the telecommunication, and this is the one thing I had not learned in university. So I told Schlumberger I want to work with you. But I want to work in this because I like learning new things, so I want to work there. Learning new things, so I want to work there. This is where I started.

Gabrielle: 8:44

I was a product manager in charge of 3G SIM cards. At the time, 3g was just the very start of it and I remember that the telecommunicators, the telco of the world, were telling me well, what's the killer app? Why would people need data on their phone? That's funny. 25 years after, it's a no-brainer. Now, what's the killer app? To have data on the phone? That was my first job.

Greg: 9:06

Okay, okay, so maybe walk us through your career from that point until where we are today.

Gabrielle: 9:12

When I look back at my career, I think that in a few occasions I had to jump in a pool and try to learn how to swim fast. So two years after I started with Schlumberger, that in the meantime changed name, there was spin-offs and so on. But years after I asked the company whether I could have a work experience abroad. So after two years they sent me to Mexico and in Mexico I had the challenge to create a really kickstart technical team to serve the business. So I was the technical director for Latin America and I stayed there three years and at first we were like seven people when I started and when I left we were more than 70. So it was high growth. Spent a lot of time scanning universities, trying to find people, growing people, and I was almost no one to help me because HR was in the US. So it was really jump in the pool and find a way and find who can support you, how you can learn fast and have good mentors to do so. Then I came back to France after three years and it was just at the time where my company had merged with another company and they had decided to create an organization, and so I had to almost start from scratch, because I was running an organization in R&D that was the combination of the two teams from the two companies that were merged and so, yeah, rediscovering all the culture, working culture. And, yeah, it was quite intense, especially in the first days when you do an acquisition and you have to create a new organization from an Excel list of people you've never met, you have no clue who they are, but you have to put together an organization and there's still some confidentiality. So quite an interesting experience.

Gabrielle: 10:55

And I stayed there for a few years and it was mostly doing some telecommunication. And back in 2010, I said, or my management said, gabrielle, it's time that you change, you do something new. So from one day to another, I moved to product and R&D in Telco, to sales in payments, and I was in charge of Africa and Southern Europe business. So sales field expertise, customer service and also strategy, country strategy, so leading, also acquisition in Italy. And after the acquisition, the integration, because it's very easy to take a decision. It's a bit more complex to implement it. So wonderful experience.

Gabrielle: 11:37

And after that, as it was a successful experience, I said well, we're going to go from one part of the world to the whole world and I was in charge of payment services for another company the same company, but not the one I work for today. So I was in charge of payment services for the whole world and that got me to travel to the US quite intensively, because we've done a new acquisition in the US and actually two acquisitions in the US in the payment world. It got me to travel to India where it was the start of some very advanced biometric solutions that would be the seed for a totally new way of paying in India. I traveled to China. It's not a payment ecosystem, not a payment scheme. It's not Visa MasterCard, it's Union China payment ecosystem, not payment schemes. It's not Visa MasterCard, it's China UnionPay. So it was very exciting and quite new to see the diversity in payment.

Gabrielle: 12:31

And after that I decided to change company.

Gabrielle: 12:33

So I was turning 40 years old, I had seen a lot and I decided to join GND.

Gabrielle: 12:39

So moving from Paris to Munich, and I chose to work for GND because payment is really the DNA of this company. The company is 170 years old and serving for I mean, the very first business of this company was to serve central banks with banknotes, so with currency technologies, banknotes, with machines for banknotes and now a digital currency. So the company really has payment in the DNA not only the banknotes and central banks, but now the retail banks, and this is what the part of the business I'm in charge of. And with this holistic, totally transversal view of payment, I think that we can bring very fresh and powerful solutions to the world and to any country, because, in any given country, either you use cash or you use card or you use mobile payments. One way or another, there's a market there. So, as you can see in my career, whenever I enter in an area of comfort, it's time for me to change. It's time for me to get on new challenges and to learn from there.

Greg: 13:42

Great so that brings us up to today. So obviously you've been very successful throughout your career. So that brings us up to today. So obviously you've been very successful throughout your career. So what are some of your guiding principles?

Gabrielle: 13:50

So I've been successful because as a team, we have been successful. I'm only as good as my team. So that's why my very first guiding principle is work on the team and create this collective intelligence. Really, who is where, what kind of? And it's like when you have a basketball team Some people are tall, some people are fast and it's about how the team moves on the playground. So it's, how do we create this super collective intelligence? And a good example of that is you know, we had a few crises recently, so a chip crisis or pandemic and we've been very strong as a team, where country A could help country B or function A could help function B, and because it was about acting as one body, not as a sum of individuals. So this collective intelligence really, I think this is a fundamental guiding principle for me, and then just the fact that we work together. There should be an objective for that. So this look for results. So I'm really outcome driven and this is a guiding principle.

Gabrielle: 14:52

So sometimes I use the example of bees. You know, bees they're good at communicating together, but at the end of the day, all of this, all of what they do, you have honey, so it's all for the honey. So sometimes in the team we say show me the honey as a catchphrase, just to say it's good that we are together. But what comes out of this and another principle that I have it's constant working on this is how to create a mindset of entrepreneurial freedom within the team. I usually I use the jazz example. So in jazz, in the jazz music, not every note is written, but we have strong musicians and when one of the musicians starts to play solo, there's a feedback culture and then there's recognition from the group and it's the solo is only as during the instant period, but it's. It's also everyone has its own creativity of emotion. So this is something I try to have in the team.

Gabrielle: 15:47

So my job is to provide the framework. It's not to write everything. It is also to put the, the musicians in the best condition that they can express their own selves and expertise and that they know whether they are in harmony with the others or not. So in modern organizations, this is the key, so that the contribution is not a hierarchical contribution. It's really a very decentralized contribution. And maybe the last guiding principle for me is business centric, or client centric, but I would more say business centric. So it's about the next thing. It's about understanding those pain points, understanding what could make a difference, and even up to co-creation. I'm super proud of the products that we can get out there and even more proud when we when they meet, when those products or solutions meet the objective or resolve the problems that were there in the first place. So those are guiding principles and, yeah, I couldn't say better.

Greg: 16:43

Great, great. Well, thank you so much for sharing those. So I think we've all had these sort of pivotal moments or experiences in our career that helped kind of shape our career paths. So can you maybe give us some of those pivotal moments in our career that helped kind of shape our career paths? So can you maybe give us some of those pivotal moments in your career that kind of shaped who you are and where you are today?

Gabrielle: 17:00

Yeah, I'm going to share a few. So remember, I started as a manager when I was 26 years old, with almost no training or support on my own, and I recruited a few people and I remember very vividly having recruited someone called Luciano and Luciano was great, was a fantastic, fantastic young employee and I tried to lead. I mean almost like in stereotypes or this is the job, this is how it works, and Luciano was more than the box I had put him in and at some point even he was my best employee. He came to see me and said I'm sorry, I do not fit in your box, I'd rather leave.

Gabrielle: 17:37

That's been very tough for me, but it helped me learn that it's not about how I see the world, it's also how my own staff sees the world and how I adapt and how I care. So I learned to care and I'm still in contact with Luciano from time to time because he helped open my eyes at that point. So that was one pivotal moment on developing people. Another pivotal moment is well, I told you this experience of the job I have, the responsibility I had at the turning point of a company during immediate post-merger integration, and I remember vividly that I had been announced as a senior vice president in charge of R&D XYZ and I was entering the room where the R&D of the company we had acquired was sitting and waiting for me. And then, when I entered the room, I was younger than everybody in the room and they were all looking at me like where's?

Greg: 18:31

this person.

Gabrielle: 18:32

Where does she come from? What did she do to deserve the job? And you need a bit of courage in this case to have 80 people in front of you looking weird. Just try to own the crowd with no background whatsoever. So it's, I think, courage and daring to do the things. It's back to my jumping in the pool Sometimes yeah, you have to, yeah, you go on stage and let's get it started.

Gabrielle: 18:56

When I started at GND, GND was very decentralized to a point where it was almost a lot of silos. And the pivotal moment for me was when I said well, you know, I have a job description, but if I stick to my job description, we're all going to stay in silos and we're not going to do anything better. So I started to say why don't we work together on one thing, one small thing, where we have product ops and sales around the table? And he looked at me weirdly at first. I said, no, no, I'm sure we can do that. I've done this before, trust me. So I put those people in the room who had never been in the same room. It was in summer and we brought ice cream and the ice cream made the trick, because suddenly it was hot. We were all suffering from the heat and the ice cream started us working together. Maybe one more thing I would like to share on those pivotal moments.

Gabrielle: 19:49

I've done a few acquisitions Italy is one, US is another and with GND we've done recently a few in the US, in Turkey or in Switzerland.

Gabrielle: 19:59

And when you do an acquisition, normally as a leader I get myself very much involved.

Gabrielle: 20:04

Of course we have lawyers and financials and due diligence and auditors, but what makes the difference is to have a team that's highly functional after the go-live day, and it's about meeting with the leaders on the other side and trying to understand how the culture works and also who they are and how can everything fit together.

Gabrielle: 20:28

And at this very moment in time, it's about being very humble, because a lot of those companies have been put together, maintained together by great individuals. A lot of those companies have been put together and maintained together by great individuals. So sometimes the companies have been built by those individuals, by those leaders, and sometimes it's family business or they're just great leaders in front of you. And it's about being humble and learning. In this case, I mean right now I can tell you in the US we have a fantastic leader who comes from one of the companies we acquired. It's about, yeah, being in the learning. I mean being yeah, just not thinking that because you are where you are then you know it all. On the contrary, the reason why I am where I am is because I can still, at times, recognize that people are.

Greg: 21:17

What are some of the biggest challenges that you've faced as a female leader, and how did you overcome them?

Gabrielle: 21:23

Sometimes I forget that I'm a female, I'm just a leader and it takes a few moments to realize, or to sometimes someone to remind you that, oh, maybe it would not. This would not happen if you were a man, and those could be a reaction from some people, be questions from some people. So at first I tend to forget. Because, before anything, I believe we are teams. We are teams with diverse origins, diverse countries, gender and being a woman should not bring anything different. But as I do not always decrypt it the situation very well, on Saturdays I usually share a few things with my husband and he's the one who said you know what? This would not happen with men and that helps me take some one step back and maybe understand some situation, put some logic or rationale in a situation and get myself prepared better. That's one thing. Another thing is quite quickly so engineering background for me, what I knew, what I learned, so that the technical know-how was very important when I started my career and I discovered that appearances matter and also as a leader, how I physically embody the fact that I'm a female leader, because most of the time in the crowds people thought I was there to bring coffee or to organize. You know the assistant, and it happened to me several times that they had no clue. I was the one the highest ranked in the room, so I thought maybe it has to do with the way I behave or I dress or I comb my hair. So I asked the help of. It was 15 years ago. I asked the external view of a personal shopper and of a hairdresser and I changed my hair and I changed my style and it helped me get a different type of confidence so that I no longer ask myself in terms of appearance, I can focus on what I say and how I convey it. And I think at some point in time in my career it was necessary. Now, nowadays it's different because I have I mean, I have a CEO title. It's not exactly, I mean, it helps a bit more than other things, but at some time in my career I needed that to help boost confidence.

Gabrielle: 23:36

There was another important point in my career where I had babies. I had a first baby and 16 months later a second one, and when you raise very young kids, your priorities change. Your priorities change and when you go back to the shark tank, you have to get back to your old habits quite fast and I felt like I'd lost the notion of where I was good and where I was not good, so what was my strengths and where I had to pay attention. So the company he was working for was kind enough to accept that I would have a coach at this really moment of after the baby time how to go back to the sea level moment and this coach really helped me also find this balance. Or accepting the choices that I was making and accepting the social feedback on some of my choices. Because when you're a female leader, you always have someone asking you why are you here, why are you not with your kids and are you sure you have your priorities right? So having some kind of confidence on where you're strong at home, where you're strong at work, and not the same thing. And when I wake up and I look at myself in the mirror, I believe that I have my priorities right or my balance right. That was quite important and only possible for me because of this external coach, and you would not imagine how often I get those questions.

Gabrielle: 24:58

And not that long ago I was talking to a headhunter for a position I ended up having and the very first question of the headhunter and I was already a senior and quite experienced, having had international jobs and so on. But the very first question was, as you have kids, if something happens, how would you do to jump on the plane and go where the business calls you? It was a very fast question, before anything else. And so it shows that it's still there and that the people still wonder can you do the job if you're a female? And of course it differs from one country to another. Some countries are more advanced from others, but it's still there. I'd like to share on this one more story.

Gabrielle: 25:39

So when I was young, fresh out, working for Schlumberger Schlumberger being a bit modern Schlumberger was quite active on Women's Day, on the 8th of March, and there was a women's professional association with different companies. Schlumberger was part of it and they were organizing a one day for the female, high potential female already leaders and I had the chance to participate to this one day and in preparation of the day, they had asked me on TV, on camera, like a small video of two minutes or three minutes, just to share. So imagine 25 years old, to say how do you see your career? And very genuinely, I explained. Well, I just started to work. I believe that within two to three years I'm going to get married and then start to have a position abroad and then, after another few years, I'm going to come back and I'm going to have kids. So, very genuine, this was really my career plan and I had no doubt I could do it.

Gabrielle: 26:41

And then, on the day, on the 8th of March, this video was shown to the audience. Like 50 or probably maybe a bit more, women, experienced leaders, and I was in the room and when my testimony was my video shot was put on the big screen, the woman in the room started to laugh To laugh in the sense of she's so innocent, she still has dreams. And I was like, wow, we are in this. There's so much power in the room and you don't believe.

Gabrielle: 27:07

And I stick to my dreams and I stick to what I said that day and I think two years ago, I wrote back to this association and I said on the 8th of March, and I said, if you go back to my video that day, it's possible. So please convey that to the ladies out there. Believe, because don't let anyone tell you it's not going to work. You don't know what's life out there. Just stick to your dreams and stick to your belief on the fact that it's possible to, when you're a woman, have a carrier boat even though you're married, or thanks even to the fact that you're married, because you can be an enabler rather than the contrary. So believe that you can have an international carrier, that you can have a dual carrier with your husband, that you can have kids. It is possible. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Greg: 27:50

Thanks for sharing that. That's a great story and it's interesting that you went back years later and did that. That's really cool. So we often hear this phrase that to achieve growth, whether it's personal or professional, you need to step out of your comfort zone. Can you share, maybe, an experience where you had to step out of your comfort zone to grow?

Gabrielle: 28:11

When I asked to go abroad and when I started on my very first day in Mexico, I was out of my comfort zone. It was different language, different culture and I didn't have any of the clues on how things were working over there. And when you come from abroad, especially when you come from headquarter, people look at you and say, hmm, maybe it's a spy or she's going to report to group. So they usually don't welcome you with open arms. And in that day, that time, it took me six weeks, I think, to have an office, eight weeks to have a laptop. It's just I needed to understand how the whole ecosystem was working. So learning that early, being out of my comfort zone two years after I started to work, I think, helped me adapt fast. Because there's always Mexico is an extreme. Whenever you start a new job. There's always this kind of reaction, or people observing or people wanting to make sure that you would be helping them and not the other way around. And sometimes you don't know. You have to pay attention to some details that you would not even notice if nobody tells you. For instance, in Mexico you can't see me right now, but I can tell you I have eyes and there's not a lot of blue eyes in Mexico and I'm blonde, so there's not a lot of blonde blue eyes, but the blue eye it's perceived as very cold. So when I was talking the very first impression was it's a cold person. And I had to compensate my blue eyes in many other ways to break the ice with my colleagues at the time. And of course, from there you know that there are many things you don't understand, that you should understand, and being humble and very respectful of how things work out there is key. I had the same when we very first M&A that we did in Italy.

Gabrielle: 29:56

You would think that between France and Italy same culture, so it should be easy. But it's actually not at all the same culture and it's a very simple thing. For instance, project management French people, italian people do it very differently. French like to very well plan this is Cartesian mindset and the Italian they like to leave room for some genius moment. They are very designer, you know this time. So if everything is already mapped, there's no room for genius moment. So it took me some time. But then I went back to Harvard's papers and trying to understand some of the fundamentals of the culture, because I would not have known and I would have tried to impose my own way. So yeah, most of the time I'm out of my comfort zone well, great.

Greg: 30:41

I think that's a great way to obviously grow, and if you can recognize you're out of your comfort zone, that's an important component too. So let's move on to mentorship. I think this is an incredibly important topic. You mentioned having a coach, but what are your thoughts on mentorship? Have you had mentors that influenced your career? How important do you think mentorship is for emerging leaders? What are your thoughts on mentoring?

Gabrielle: 31:05

I think that mentors are extremely important, whether it's in an official mentorship process or just because a mentor, because someone sees you and says well, the potential is here and I'm going to help. So, yes, I had a professional coach at my request and this helped. But I also got lucky. I was never part of a formal mentorship program, but I would not be where I am if there had not been a few people believing in me and telling me yes, you can do that. And telling me you are now almost getting in comfort zone. It's time you change. And when I was in the internship in Texas, this one person I was working for as an intern said, became in a way my mentor, helped me find a job but also, when I wanted to move abroad, also helped me again on what to do, what not to do. And then I think at every important step of my career it was I did it because someone said, yes, you should or you must.

Gabrielle: 32:05

The only thing where I didn't have a mentor is when I changed company, when I joined GND, but here it was more a dual career decision with my husband. So here I would say my mentor was my husband. But most of the time you need someone, you need a sparring partner, even no decision. I mean every time you need someone, you need a sparring partner, even no decision. I mean every time you need a sparring partner because we are fundamentally, we have a certain way of seeing things and we need to have to conflict or to confront our views with other views. I have for the important decisions in professional life or in career, whether personal development or in business, I always find a way to have spying partners individually with Tobias, to make the right calls. Confronting views has always been the best way to enrich. So mentorship, yes, and also, as now, as leaders, when we see people with good potential, telling them, encouraging them. It's our job.

Greg: 32:58

Yeah, I think one of the things I've learned from doing many of these interviews and talking about mentorship is is sort of exactly that it doesn't have to be this formal program where you sign up to be a mentor or a mentee and you meet once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever. It doesn't have to be that formal. Many times we're mentored and we don't even realize it. Right, People are coaching us. I think you've had that in your career. Hey, you're ready for the next thing? I mean, in a way, that's mentoring. So I think maybe don't overthink mentoring and make it have to be so formal. It can be much more casual. So we're in this payments industry. I've been in it for a long time, You've been in it as well. And let's pretend a scenario where a young woman's coming out of college. She looks at payments and fintech and says, hey, I want to. I was still in university asking advice from the older generations.

Gabrielle: 34:05

When a young woman approaches me today, the very first advice is believe in yourself. I mean, don't let anyone tell you you can't do it. The second is it's not only about hard knowledge, it's also about soft skills. Soft skills the way you communicate, the way you convey a message, the way you get to a decision, to a joint decision, especially for engineers. It's very important not to underestimate the importance of soft skills. When people come from marketing studies and so on, it looks obvious, but when you come from a technical background, we believe that one plus one equals two and that's the truth, and then nobody can go against the truth. But the real life is not like this.

Gabrielle: 34:46

My other recommendation is build up your network. We have fantastic tools out there. Linkedin is a fantastic tool. There's ways to start networking and invest in your network. Spend time meeting people Not immediately related to your current job. You never know.

Gabrielle: 35:02

The world is quite small and when you are in payments, well, this is not that big an industry, so it's creating those connections. This is, first. It helps you also building the best teams one day, because sometimes there are people that I've met on LinkedIn and then occasionally, when I was traveling, the people that I've met and then five years later, I called them and said, hey, do you want to join the team? Because it was the right time. So sometimes it's just scary and sometimes it's also because we're going to need each other to build something, to bring something new on the payment market. So, building this network of passionate people, of doers in my case this is one of the most important advice I would convey to a young woman, and it's respective of whether she's a woman or always a young man that would be the same.

Gabrielle: 35:48

But women sometimes, as we believe that the job is done, when the at the end of normal hours job is done, I go home. Ah, it's not like this. You know what? The beer that you take after the job is still the job and it's we think I have to fill up the fridge and I have to make sure that everything's fine. No, the beer is sometimes as important as the rest of the day. And this is probably this to young women we don't say enough. And also we don't say enough that ask for things, don't wait for things to happen. Probably you hear that a lot, but men ask for salary increases way more often than women, way more often, 99% of the time, it comes from men, not the women.

Greg: 36:26

Right, right, I think that's all great advice, so thanks so much for sharing that. Well, let's wrap up with one final question. Who or what inspires you to keep pushing forward in your career?

Gabrielle: 36:40

It's one of the most complicated questions because I think most leaders we have an engine inside, so we want this sense of achievement, this sense of purpose. So what drives me is really to have an impact, and so what inspires me is the people who have had an impact. It's how they've done what was the journey, the little thing to pay attention to to, at the end of the day, have an impact. So they inspire me and it's kind of a community of strong leaders and most of them people with an impact on society, on tech world, and I'm very humbled because there are great people out there and if I can just make my small contribution to this and learn a bit from them and try to reuse and adapt to the scale I am, then it's quite good. But indeed I still do try to find books or role models to inspire, to go to the next level. Okay great.

Greg: 37:37

Well, Gabrielle, we're coming to the end of the show and I just want to thank you so much for your time. It's been an incredible episode and I know your time is very valuable, so I really really appreciate you being here.

Gabrielle: 37:47

Thanks a lot, Greg. Thanks for your question. I hope the answers can help show many women that it is possible. If you have any new, nothing can stop you.

Greg: 37:57

Awesome. I think that's a great way to end the show. So Awesome, I think that's a great way to end the show. So, to all you listeners out there, I thank you for and Ingenica. To learn more, visit wwwleadersinpaymentscom.