PayPal Stories Archive

I have always been passionate about supporting women leaders, especially in product and technology. I am a strong believer that employees at all organizations, including women and men, need to play a more active role in eliminating biases and mentoring and sponsoring talented women.

 

I am extremely proud to work for a company like PayPal that values inclusiveness as a core principle – fundamental to enabling talent to thrive. I’m also proud of the extent of women leaders across all organizations at PayPal, who constantly inspire me.

 

Today, ahead of International Women’s Day, I am excited to announce the launch of PayPal’s Unity program, which brings together women and men with the mission of creating more opportunities for women at PayPal.

 

PayPal’s Unity group is moving forward with passion, dedication and focus to continue PayPal’s journey towards greatness. Ideas are richer and execution is stronger when everyone feels included. Through mentorship programs, shadowing and panel panel participation, the Unity program will help drive inclusion and exposure to a wider array of experiences and a diverse set of leadership behaviors.

 

As a mentor for Unity, this program is near and dear to my heart for several reasons.

 

I come from a family of strong women with academic and career focus. Like many, my own family struggles with being perennially-frazzled; we are dual-career couple with two young kids, running from one pick-up to the next drop-off while balancing late-night or early-morning work-related meetings from different time zones. But we love it! We have a sense of purpose at work and at home, feel professionally supported and are encouraged to take care of ourselves while we contribute back. We are engaged employees and even more engaged parents. So, the support and development structure a community like Unity provides really resonates.

 

I was recently listening to a Ted Talk on privilege and one thing that stuck with me was that privilege is never apparent to the privileged. As I unpacked that concept as a manager and as an employee, I realized that the inherent biases we see day-to-day are sometimes so subtle that it passes as being “acceptable.” Even after reading through numerous case studies from John|Jennifer to #likeagirl, we still carry these biases within us. And it is the responsibility of us as leaders, managers, mentors, men and women, to raise the level of consciousness and, in parallel, help our talent overcome this bias through positive reinforcement.  

 

Inclusion is critical for business. As a customer-champion company, we pay close attention to the wants and needs of our customers – they’re at the core of what we do each day. Women account for 85 percent of consumer purchases, the majority of online purchases and women-led SMB’s are growing at close to 50 percent year over year. The more monolithic we are, we lower our chances are of creating products and services that really resonate with our customers. As Warren Buffet said, “Why would we tap into only 50 percent of the brain and leadership power?” In my five years at PayPal, I have had almost an equal number of male and female managers and have learned immensely (and diversely) from each.

 

I’m excited that we’re launching the Unity program at PayPal, and am looking forward to creating more opportunities for women at PayPal. Unity is an outstanding community -- self-organized, independent, and communal -- all hallmark traits of tremendous leadership.

 

And speaking of inspiring women leaders at PayPal, tomorrow we’ll be launching the first in our series of Women Leaders at PayPal, highlighting the personal stories of women leaders at PayPal, how they got to where they are today, challenges they faced along the way and advice they have for other rising leaders. You can read about the inspiring women on PayPal Stories.

 

*The views expressed in this presentation are my own, and not those of PayPal.