“This cause is near and dear to my heart.” An oft-heard refrain, but for
PayPal’s Becky Pomerleau the meaning is literal. A heart attack survivor and heart transplant recipient at age 34,
whose life-changing saga was detailed in The Huffington Post, she is driven to educate others on the danger signs and the necessity of funding more research. Being young, female and athletic she was not someone who would generally have been considered high risk and having run track and cross country at the University of Missouri she definitely did not fit the profile. But then again, that’s part of her message: it can happen to anyone. We sat down to talk with her about her work and her commitment to raising awareness around heart health.
What’s your day-to-day role in PayPal’s Transformation & Enabling Technologies (T&ET) group?
As security and controls lead, I make sure new Finance projects have thought through all the risk and compliance-related implications, ensuring efficient mitigation of business risks and compliance with internal policies as well as external regulations.
You helped start T&ET’s Adopt-a-Charity program, how did this evolve?
I went to our VP, Rosemarie Sansone, last year to talk about PayPal supporting the Silicon Valley Go Red for Women lunch, an event the American Heart Association (AHA) hosts. She said she’d been wanting to start an Adopt-a-Charity program and so the AHA became the first beneficiary. We called it the “T&ET Adopt-a-Charity Olympics”. During the last 30 minutes of our T&ET quarterly all-hands we offered different events: duckpin bowling, a white elephant silent auction, and karaoke. We also promoted the AHA Heart & Stroke 5k Walk.
If you could take on any role at PayPal for a day, what would you choose and why?Something in customer service to hear more directly what customers are calling about. I’m treasurer with the
SCAD Alliance (a nonprofit focused on the type of heart attack I had), and we use PayPal to collect donations. I feel that I know more about PayPal through that than actually working at PayPal.
What’s the best part of working at PayPal?
The support everyone has given, not just to me, but to organizations like the AHA. It was exciting to see how our team came together for the T&ET Adopt-a-Charity Olympics. PayPal has been very supportive with my doctor visits and has allowed me to be a speaker at heart events.
What kind of music do you get into?
One of my favorites right now is “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again” by Danny Gokey – some of the lines say things like “yesterday is a closing door”. The overall message is that the pain and suffering you’ve gone through in the past is all behind you and the future is ahead of you, that every day is a new opportunity.