The Most Influential Women in Payments, 2022

March 15, 2022 7:00 AM

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

The modern payments industry is at the forefront of innovation, and two years of pandemic disruptions only accelerated that trend. For women leaders at payments companies, the last year created unprecedented challenges and opportunities.

This year's Most Influential Women in Payments honorees span the globe, demonstrating the universal importance of personal connections and career mobility, as well as the ways technology can connect a hybrid workforce and propel commerce.

They also had extremely varied upbringings, moving from country to country or serving in the military. All of these experiences shaped who they are today.

Looking ahead, these leaders must make sure that payment technologies and processes continue to adapt to a customer base with ever-shifting habits, while also keeping security in full view.

The honorees are presented below in alphabetical order. They will be recognized at Payments Forum, taking place this year in Phoenix, Arizona, from May 16-18. Click here to register for Payments Forum.

Abeera Aguiar

Senior vice president and head of U.S. payments delivery
TD Bank

Time with current employer: 3 years
Time in payments industry: 18 years

Digital trailblazer
As the Head of U.S. Payments Delivery for TD Bank, Abeera drives product strategies and builds payment innovations for the U.S. market. She leads a team of digital product owners who drive modernization. That includes the migration to contactless payments, and making it easier for customers to use debit and credit cards with digital wallets.

Helping out
As someone who has family both in the U.S. and South Asia, the pandemic has had a wide-reaching effect for Aguiar, who grew up in Pittsburgh as a daughter of immigrants. "In May of 2021 I was dealing with the demands of work and virtual school during the day in the U.S. At night I was learning about family members in Asia getting sick and needing hospitalization and oxygen tanks," she said, adding the experience led her to research philanthropies that could provide support, and rallied friends and colleagues to donate. "[That] turned my feeling of helplessness into a productive and proactive cause."

Kathryn Albright

EVP, global payments and deposits executive
Umpqua Bank

Time with current employer: 3 years
Time in payments industry: 30 years

Coast to coast
With a mother who worked in finance for the U.S. government and father whose job was with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at the U.S. Treasury, Kathryn Albright fell naturally into a career in finance and banking. She traveled across the country enriching her knowledge about treasury and payments with stints at several large and regional banks before arriving at Umpqua Bank, which caught her interest for its role in developing fintech solutions leveraging real-time payments and blockchain technology.

Going deep
A constant source of inspiration for Albright is her collaboration with other women to advance their careers. To prepare for industry discussion groups, she reads curated articles, case studies and listens to podcasts to compare and contrast different perspectives. Each discussion circle then breaks into smaller groups for coaching and mentorship. Alarmed by high numbers of women recently quitting their jobs at banks, Albright worked with colleagues and human resources experts to explore solutions. The bank subsequently updated its wellness programs and expanded virtual leadership courses with an emphasis on helping women find and develop their specific career strengths.

Cathy Beardsley

President and CEO
Segpay

Time with current employer: 16 years
Time in payments industry: 20 years

Risk-taker
Not every merchant can easily accept credit cards, especially in niches considered by various authorities to be high risk — such as cannabis marketing, online gambling and dating. Cathy Beardsley, who previously held roles at MCI and Intercept Payment Solutions, set out in 2005 to build a secure, trusted payment-processing company for these markets. Segpay is now one of a handful of companies approved by Visa for high-risk internet payments, and more than 600 global merchants rely on it.

Blazing trails
Beardsley advanced her career by being brave enough to explore unknown opportunities. Segpay was the first payments facilitator to “segregate” funds away from merchants’ operational accounts to guarantee merchants would always get paid; that practice is now the industry standard. Beardsley also advocates for merchants’ rights, pushing lawmakers to clarify legal online marijuana sales policies. She also serves on the board of the Free Speech Coalition. “Mentors early in my career took me under their wings and offered me unique opportunities.” Now Beardsley strives to do the same for her own employees, creating onramps through succession planning for men and women.

Brinda Bhattacharjee

Chief operating officer and head of partnerships, transaction banking
Goldman Sachs

Time with current employer: 6 years
Time in payments industry: 10 years

Cloud formation
One of Goldman Sachs’ key focus areas is building a cloud-based transaction banking platform from scratch for clients and partners. Bhattacharjee oversees the long-term growth and strategy of the transaction banking department, and supervises its risk, operations, finance, marketing and corporate development initiatives. She has helped form partnerships with payments companies like American Express, Visa and Fiserv, and driven multiple product launches.

Learning resilience
A native of India, Bhattacharjee's family lived in Kuwait when the Gulf War broke out, which prompted a move back to India when she was eight. "Amidst the uncertainty, we had to learn to be resilient, and the best support network I could have asked for was the sisterhood of classmates at my all-girls school, many of whom are dear friends of mine till today," Bhattacharjee said. Later, in her professional career at Oliver Wyman, Bhattacharjee worked with leaders at Goldman Sachs on a series of projects, where she built a new network of female sponsors who believed in her potential. "They took a chance on me, a non-practitioner, and hired me in 2016 to lead Goldman Sachs' asset liability management initiatives. Fast forward to today, and I now have the unique privilege of helping to incubate and grow our Transaction Banking business."

Kristy Carstensen

Payments CFO
US Bancorp

Time with current employer: 10 years
Time in payments industry: 4 years

High gear
The past two years have accelerated shifts in payment behaviors, presenting opportunities as digital wallets, real-time payments, buy now/pay later and embedded payments become part of the financial services mainstream. "The payments industry now encompasses end-to-end money movement. It's becoming part of an ecosystem versus a discrete service," Carstensen said.

Forging a path
Carstensen is a founding program sponsor of the bank's Women in Payments leadership program, which goes beyond what she calls the large-group format of career coaching to a program designed as a small, supportive group with sponsors that prioritize an employee's personal career path preferences. "With its success, we will roll this program out more broadly within U.S. Bank," Carstensen said.

Beverly Cole

Senior director, global treasury payment products and services
Walmart

Time with current employer: 3 years
Time in payments industry: 20 years

Center stage
Walmart's size and influence draw the attention of many payment companies and banks that keep a close eye on its shopping and checkout technologies. Cole leads the development and implementation of payment strategies, solutions, and programs for Walmart, and spearheads the strategic oversight of Walmart’s Government Acceptance, Global Gift Card and Associate Paycard programs. "I am responsible for integrating payment capabilities with the organization’s broader strategic initiatives while ensuring programs remain current regarding technology, regulation, compliance, and emerging trends," Cole said.

At first sight
"After college I was working with a [point of sale] company. Simply by chance, an opportunity presented itself in the payments space," Cole said. "It didn’t take long for me to realize this was something I truly enjoyed and before I knew it my journey began. I never looked back."

Carolyn Criscitiello

Head of consumer and business banking payments
Santander Bank (Santander Group)

Time with current employer: 1 year
Time in payments industry: 14 years

Holistic skills
Driving the overall payments strategy at Santander calls for a holistic view of the bank’s products and opportunities, which is an innate skill for Carolyn Criscitiello, a master networker who leans in to learning all types of new technology. Over two decades she went from urging companies to be first in web marketing innovation to embracing mobile apps and social media. She also held roles at M&T Bank and HSBC, where she became an expert in real-time payments, tokenization and blockchain, among other areas.

Face to face
Networking everywhere and attending conferences has been a key to her career moves. “I met people at these events who later recommended me for industry committee and board representation,” she noted. Criscitiello routinely helps new and younger colleagues gain exposure by inviting them to present new products so they rapidly gain knowledge while expanding their connections. During the pandemic, Criscitiello assisted with virtual support groups for female colleagues struggling to cope with remote work and keeping kids on track with school. “Moms could share stories, advice and even take turns creating educational activities for the children,” she said.

Alisa Ellis

Global head of innovation and emerging products
Discover Financial Services

Time with current employer: 10 years
Time in payments industry: 16 years

On the cutting edge
Ellis leads innovation in emerging products such as mobile wallets, blockchain and open banking. But her overall background is varied and includes experience beyond financial technology. "I'm a product and strategy professional with more than 20 years in financial services, but my career journey has taken many different turns — starting in journalism school, moving on to consulting, to roles in finance and strategy, and then landing in product development," Ellis said.

Home office
"As a wife, mother of two and a new puppy parent, I find myself constantly juggling the demands of work and family life while working out of the same space I live," Ellis said. "By talking about these challenges with my team, sharing my own stories and letting them witness real life overlapping with my home office, it helps to normalize this part of life."

Kim Fitzsimmons

CEO
Talus Pay

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 33 years

By her bootstraps
Kim Fitzsimmons’ path to becoming a CEO began humbly when she answered a classified ad to handle inside sales at a Tennessee-based payments processor specializing in gasoline stations and convenience stores. Fitzsimmons impressed her boss there — future First Data executive Ed Labry — with her vision and drive. His mentorship helped her advance to increasingly challenging management and leadership posts at other payment companies, including First Data. Fitzsimmons eventually became head of global merchant services at JPMorgan Chase before landing the CEO role at Talus Pay, a small-business payments processor.

Strength from self care
Taking charge of teams comes naturally to Fitzsimmons, who continues to pay her own mentorship forward. Fitzsimmons is always working with several young payments industry professionals to provide guidance and advice, and encourages others to do the same. She also rises early to exercise and prepare herself for the day, avoiding any meetings before 9 a.m. “It’s my time to take care of me, and I trust the Talus Pay team looks at this as an example,” she said. One of her first moves at Talus Pay was to add five days of self-care paid time off to the employee benefits.

Valerie Greer

Chief commercial officer
Alliance Data

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 25 years

Powerful truths
While pouring her heart and soul into her first consumer lending job at HSBC Canada, Valerie Greer was shocked when the CEO — a woman — sat her down with a list of 30 things she needed to improve. While 85% of what Greer was doing was right, her boss told her to focus on the other 15% to succeed. “Only by being open to feedback could I grow in my career,” Greer said. She now encourages pairing women with mentors around specific development areas for six months at a time. She also recommends short-term apprenticeships as a way for newcomers to rapidly advance at a company.

Learning curve
After 17 years at HSBC, Greer sensed career stagnation. She moved to JPMorgan Chase and then Citigroup, where she was energized by learning new skills in cobranded payment card operations. Then Alliance Data hired her during 2020 in a move Greer said “pulls all my skills together.” Many Alliance Data retail clients struggled and some even shut their doors during the pandemic, but Greer has played a key role in expanding Alliance Data's opportunities by integrating new installment lending tools and the buy now/pay later platform Bread, which the company had acquired. Unlocking insights from data is the next frontier in payments, Greer believes. “One in every six households has an Alliance Data card, and we’re using that data to determine key payments trends.”

Sherri Haymond

Executive vice president, digital partnerships
Mastercard

Time with current employer: 12 years
Time in payments industry: 15+ years

Opening doors
A Mastercard survey found that during the pandemic, 63% of people tried a new payment method they would not have otherwise used. But with that growth, it's critical to address the digital divide, Haymond said. "Small businesses struggled to overcome challenges brought on by COVID, including finding new ways to grow and retain their operations," she said. Mastercard has pledged $250 million to support small businesses and launched programs like Digital Doors, which helps merchants embrace new technology, Haymond said, adding Mastercard also launched the Strivers Initiative, which aims to give Black female business owners tools to grow their companies. "I am fortunate to say that I was not severely impacted by the pandemic; however, early on, I did realize the massive opportunity that we had as an organization to enact and enable change for those who were struggling."

Network effect
Haymond joined several trade associations to build her network early in her career. "One of these connections ultimately led to an opportunity at Mastercard," Haymond said. "Once I arrived in our law department as counsel for Global Debit, Prepaid & ATM, I was able to grow my role through the relationships I forged, ultimately leading to opportunities to create new teams in product and strategic relationship management. My partnerships have led to moments of innovation, which in turn have become standards and scaled solutions in the payments industry."

Gali Heichal

Director and global head of payments partnerships
Klarna

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 14 years

Learning from experience
Heichal supervises Klarna's relationship with the partners that power the Swedish company's payments infrastructure such as networks, issuers, processors, banks and digital wallets. Her past experience includes work at financial services technology firms across Europe. "[Klarna] doesn't just rely on ourselves in achieving this mission. I have the honor and privilege to collaborate closely with subject matter experts at organizations such as Visa, Marqeta, JPMorgan Chase and Apple to help us rethink processes and procedures in order to make them smarter, friendlier, and smoother."

Airborne
Heichal was born and raised in Israel, where she was exposed at a very young age to technology innovation and to the positive impact it can have on people's lives. "Being drafted to the Air Force at 18 and assuming the immense responsibility of managing the operations of an Apache Helicopter squadron at such a young age instilled the spirit of entrepreneurship in me, and afforded me a strong sense of belief that if I truly devote my mind and energy to something, anything is possible."

Sharon Kean

Senior product director
Wise

Time with current employer: 3 years
Time in payments industry: 6 years

Listening with empathy
Kean’s career has spanned different industries including government, nonprofits and fintech startups. Her problem-solving skills lead her to a role in product development at cross-border payments firm Wise in London. One of her central beliefs has always been that leaders should get to know employees personally to better assist them in taking on new challenges with the confidence of knowing they’re supported, even if they fail. “It fosters collaboration by leading with empathy and a growth mindset,” she said. The pandemic intensified these practices and left an indelible mark on workforces, Kean said. “Now I make a conscious effort to understand how my team is feeling and to hear them as individuals.”

Salary transparency
Payments traditionally was a male-dominated industry and Kean wanted to do something about that. Not long after arriving, she helped transform the company’s hiring strategy, boosting the gender diversity on her team by 40%. She also introduced transparent salary bands for product roles, which most of the company’s other departments have now adopted.

Natalie Kelly

SVP, global head of risk strategy, innovation, ops, execution, MIS and ecosystem security and integrity
Visa

Time with current employer: 21 years
Time in payments industry: 25 years

Rolling with the punches
As the senior advisor to Visa’s top global risk officer, Natalie Kelly thought she was a master of managing fraud when the pandemic came along and upended all norms. Transaction volume suddenly surged as consumer purchases migrated practically overnight from stores to online and mobile channels. Kelly and her team helped thousands of restaurants and other small businesses stay afloat by providing quick solutions to accepting payments via digital channels. Fraudsters also seized the moment, attacking card payments in high numbers. “We faced the worst actors head on. In more cases than not, we won,” Kelly said.

Carving out space
The constant crisis atmosphere took a toll on Kelly and her colleagues. Frazzled and losing track of her own health, Kelly laid down some boundaries around work and got herself back into good physical shape. She instituted two daily 30-minute “mental health breaks” where no one could take meetings. “We’re taking the space we need to remain productive,” she said. That includes sharing responsibilities by giving younger, greener employees the chance to take on challenging tasks with mentors. “I make my world a safe space for future leaders to learn.”

Silvija Martincevic

Chief commercial officer
Affirm

Time with current employer: 3 years
Time in payments industry: 19 years

Flying solo
Immigrating alone to the U.S. at the age of 17 from Croatia, Silvija Martincevic was hungry to explore new opportunities as her home country emerged from communist rule. Following her college trajectory in finance, Martincevic ran investment management firms focusing on socially responsible companies. After obtaining an MBA, she landed at Groupon in 2011 during its meteoric growth phase, and rose to manage operations in 14 countries.

Riding the wave
Affirm hired Martincevic in 2019 on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the buy now/pay later fintech saw strong growth in its interest-free point-of-sale loans at thousands of merchants. “The pandemic caused e-commerce to jump ahead three years overnight, fueling consumers’ preference for flexible and innovative digital payment solutions,” she said. Managing more than 350 people in the U.S., Canada and Australia, Martincevic draws on lessons learned from her Croatian grandmother to be “tough and kind.” She also leads mentoring programs for other women at Affirm, hoping to pass on what she learned from her own mentors about facing challenges. “I want to do the same for others.”

Read Silvija Martincevic's full profile here.

Silvia Mensdorff-Pouilly

Senior vice president, banking and payments, Europe
FIS

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 22 years

Continental power
Under Mensdorff-Pouilly's leadership, the European team of one of the world's largest payment processors devivers products for a range of customers for whom payments and banking are core to their business. This includes banks, processors, central infrastructures, fintechs and other payment services. Beyond FIS, Mensdorff-Pouilly is also an advisory board member of the Payment Association UK and one of the founding members of the European Women Payments Network, which was created with the aim of influencing change in the industry and to drive diversity.

X-Ray vision
Mensdorff-Pouilly's European background — her ancestors are from France, the Czech Republic, Austria and Italy, and she has lived in Germany and the Netherlands — has led her to develop a love for working with multicultural teams and clients across the Continent. "The incredible story of Paris-based Polish scientist Marie Curie, who won two Nobel prizes and invented the X-ray, inspired me to study organic chemistry," she said. "But conscious that I didn’t wish to be confined to a laboratory as I love [interacting with ] people … I obtained an MBA. Inspired by the developments in chip cards, I entered the world of payments and never looked back.

Attie Muse

Director of payment strategy and operations
Verizon

Time with current employer: 26 years
Time in payments industry: 15+ years

Winning converts
Muse hopes to convince more banks to adopt real-time billing through request for pay (RfP), a feature that allows consumers to receive a bill and pay instantly, potentially avoiding overdrafts. "We need to get bank ubiquity if this is going to take off," she said.

Coaching
Verizon assigned a coach to Muse upon her promotion to director. "It ended up being extremely productive and helpful in getting me to think in new and different ways and to have a neutral and external party to discuss issues and ideas with."

Read Attie Muse's full profile here.

Vidya Peters

Chief operating officer
Marqeta

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 3 years

Surviving sexism
Armed with a degree in industrial engineering, Vidya Peters initially dove into an international consulting job working in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and India. “It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds,” she recalls, noting that she endured rampant sexism and inappropriate behavior that took her “to the brink.” Regrouping after falling ill, Peters discovered marketing and soared up the ranks at Intuit and MuleSoft, before Marqeta hired her to lead sales, program management and marketing for its fast-growing global digital card-issuing operations. “It’s the perfect mix of art and science.”

A triple challenge
The pandemic brought major personal and professional challenges. Peters moved to the Netherlands with her husband and two young children, and working remotely in an unfamiliar environment was isolating, as Marqeta experienced record growth from digital commerce clients — including DoorDash, Instacart and Affirm — where demand soared from the onset of COVID-19. “Navigating the constantly changing pandemic, the loss of family members, the ever-changing rules — while learning a new language and working toward my Dutch citizenship — forced me to push myself.” Mentoring other employees actually eased some of those challenges as she connected with other women to help guide and support them. “I often offer interim leadership opportunities as a platform for people to stretch and demonstrate they’re ready to take on more and lead.”

Tamara Romanek

Director, payments industry, networks, financial institution partnerships
Meta (Facebook)

Time with current employer: 4 years
Time in payment industry: 27 years

Portal partners
Facebook's best known payments project is the controversial Diem stablecoin project (whose assets it has sold off), the social media company, rebranded as Meta, has several other initiatives across different product lines — and third parties often use Meta as a means to enable payments or authenticate users. Romanek leads cross-functional payment partnerships supporting the launch of global complex payments and commerce initiatives with partners across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus, Portal and other Meta products.

Dialing up
Romanek's career in payments started three decades ago at First Data Merchant Services in Omaha, working with merchants to process digital card payments. "This was a time when only 20 million American adults had access to the web and it was via a dial up modem," Romanek said. From there, she joined a San Francisco Bay Area startup called CyberCash in 1996, setting her on a path to leadership in the industry that has included stops at Visa and JPMorgan Chase. "It’s been an amazing journey, working to envision, build and launch innovative omnichannel payment use cases and solutions … with different customer segments," Romenek said.

Paulette Rowe

CEO of e-commerce and integrated solutions
Paysafe

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 10 years

Healing through inclusion
London-born Paulette Rowe veered from mechanical engineering into payments when General Electric’s U.S. financial services arm hired her, beginning a meteoric career rise with stops at Royal Bank of Scotland, Tesco Bank, the U.K. startup bank NBNK, Barclaycard and Facebook. Rowe ultimately landed at Paysafe, where she directs acquiring and channel development for the global e-commerce company. Paysafe's online gaming payments technology this year is seeing strong adoption in the U.S. as more states legalize the practice. Paysafe’s tools for converting cash to online payments became crucial for some families' survival during the pandemic, and Rowe is working to expand those services at thousands of locations. “The surge in digital payments has exacerbated financial inclusion issues,” Rowe said.

Freedom to experiment
Rowe learned some of her biggest lessons at RBS, when she was promoted suddenly to oversee a 20,000-employee division with intense pressure to drive profits. She succeeded, while expanding the company's gender and cultural diversity “because I was given the freedom to experiment." Rowe deploys that mindset now at Paysafe by bringing younger employees enthusiastic about crypto, e-sports and online gaming into the midst of executives for “reverse-mentoring.” She's also sponsoring Paysafe in a Mayor of London program to increase the number of young Black men working in the tech sector. At home, as the single parent to her nephew, Rowe endured several “comical clashes” last year with his remote schooling and her own virtual meetings and town halls. This helped her shape helpful work-from-home initiatives and activities for other employees. Her favorite: Virtual disco bingo to close out 2021.

Rosemary Stack

Senior vice president of enterprise payments
Bank of America

Time with current employer: 18 years
Time in payments industry: 30 years

In real time
As peer-to-peer payment apps and faster processing become table stakes, Stack led the unit that launched real-time payments at Bank of America, as well as the design and delivery of Zelle-branded payments on the Clearing House's RTP rail — including work with two networks and another bank.

How things work
Stack's team has roles that are designated for recent college and MBA graduates to gain job skills and expertise in the payments industry. "Associates in these roles are provided extra coaching and education on 'how things work in payments' to accelerate their progress, and are given expanded responsibility and independence as they gain knowledge, demonstrate expertise and can navigate in a large organization," Stack said.

Colleen Taylor

President, merchant services, U.S.
American Express

Time with current employer: 2 years
Time in payments industry: 30+ years

Read the paper
Taylor has spent more than three decades in banking, retail and B2B payments. At American Express, she acquires and manages relationships with millions of merchants in American Express' U.S. Network. Taylor has also held top merchant and payment positions at Wells Fargo, Mastercard, Capital One, and JPMorgan Chase. "The B2B payments space has been fraught full of friction, and ripe for innovation," Taylor said, adding the Boston Consulting Group reports 41% of U.S. B2B payments are still made with paper checks.

The best fit
"Every day I try to allow people to show up differently, without the constraints of the system so to speak," Taylor said. "'Paying your dues' is a way of the past and it’s not helping us get to the future in terms of talent growth and retention. I try to let people fill the role they are best suited for, regardless of their experience or level and outside of a constrained hierarchy."

Aleksandra Teichman

Senior director, payments
Cross River Bank

Time with current employer: 1 year
Time in payments industry: 15 years

Fintech focus
One of Aleksandra Teichman’s passions is seeing fintech innovation in action. Living in the intersection of fintech and payments, Teichman uses her knowledge of payments technology to envision business solutions and brings them to life. “We bring forward products that democratize financial services to both consumers and merchants,” she said.

Woman to woman
Teichman “stumbled into payments” at Japanese card network JCB, initially thinking she would be working with luxury brands. Plunging into technology instead, her opportunities rapidly expanded. At American Express, she worked with a series of mentors and adopted a mindset of “intentional leadership” she's brought to Cross River. “Being confident and believing in what you are doing are keys to rallying others behind your idea and bringing your vision to reality.” Now Teichman is putting that concept to work with a women's leadership and networking program Cross River recently established.

Mary Uslander

Senior vice president, head of GBS commercialization and client experience
Fiserv

Time with current employer: 8 years
Time in payments industry: 8 years

An unexpected detour
On the verge of considering joining the Peace Corps after studying psychology, Mary Uslander took an entry-level job at JPMorgan Chase where she learned how to code. She quickly advanced, and over two decades moved to various executive roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and other brokerage firms, landing at First Data in 2014. Her task there was to help First Data (now Fiserv) use Clover, the small-business point-of-sale platform it had recently acquired, to become more fintech-like. That paid off in a big way during the pandemic. “Many small businesses used Clover to pivot quickly to begin taking orders online, at curbside or in-app — especially those with brick-mortar storefronts.”

Building her own ladder
When a colleague at Smith Barney left the company, Uslander was tapped by a mentor in her network for an opportunity to advance internally. It’s an approach she still recommends to colleagues she mentors in various internal and external networking groups including Women’s Network in Electronic Transactions, where she held the role of president last year. “The thought of internal mobility resonates well with my own career and I look for every opportunity to open the same doors internally for my team at Fiserv."

Whitney Woyke

Division president, payments
MetaBank (Meta Financial Services Group)

Time with current employer: 7 years
Time in payments industry: 30 years

E-momentum
The recent acceleration of digital payments has reached many industries, creating an opportunity for the bank to expand its reach. "At MetaBank, we saw an enormous boom in digital banking and products sold through alternative channels, which gave consumers a wider set of options to manage their financial needs, forwarding our mission of 'Financial Inclusion for All,'" Woyke said.

Life changes
Woyke's biggest personal challenge came 9 months ago when her 13-year-old came out as a transgender boy at the start of 8th grade, a time that coincided with Woyke becoming MetaBank's head of payments. "The emotion of that journey as a family along with the intense stress of taking on an ambitious new role was completely overwhelming at times," Woyke said, adding she relied on what she calls a "tribe" of 10 senior female leaders for support, encouragement and empathy. "As a mom with a child who needed my support and attention, I understood why so many women have chosen to leave the workforce."

Kate Fitzgerald

Senior Editor, Payments

John Adams

, American Banker

Most Influential Women in Payments 2022

Payments

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