Of the many leadership skills Martina King has put into play during her long career in media and payments security, a sense of humor is one of the most critical.
When asked how she first learned she had the skills to be a leader, King — who has been CEO of Featurespace for the past 8 years — shared a story. When she was attending a team visit to a car manufacturer as part of a training course, all of the delegates were gathered to start the tour.
"I decided a visit to the restroom was required before the tour commenced," said King, a 2021 Most Influential Women in Payments honoree. "Much to my surprise, after a few steps in the appropriate direction, the team stood up and started following me."
More seriously, King points to her time operating a radio station to help her fully understand the art of delegation, talent management and teamwork.
She views her career in three phases, the first being an executive career in which she worked for The Guardian Newspaper Group for 10 years, followed by Capital Radio PLC before joining Yahoo in 1999.
The second was non-executive in which she chaired remuneration committees for Capita PLC, Debenhams PLC, Cineworld PLC and Johnston Press. The third phase brought her back to executive roles, as managing director of augmented reality startup Aurasma, and then CEO of Featurespace, a job she considers "the best of all" because she works alongside what she considers the world's brightest minds in combating fraud and financial crime on behalf of the global payments industry.
King oversees a U.K.-based company that delivers payments, card and anti-money laundering fraud protection through its risk hubs that provide multiple machine learning solutions to spot suspicious activity and prioritize alerts.
That role took on even more critical meaning during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has created a new flood of fraud and attack vectors.
"One of the worst things the pandemic has revealed about the payments industry is the impact that unpredictable global interruptions can have on the volume and value of transactions," King said. "Many systems were unprepared to identify the new scams perpetrated by opportunistic criminals. Financial institutions should be able to rely on technology to help protect their customers, particularly at a time of crisis."
The pandemic also revealed one of the best things about the payments industry, because the digital transformation of payments led to minimal operational downtime, King noted.
"Card-present transactions switched to not-present and consumers were able to keep spending," she said. "During a period filled with uncertainty, it was inspiring to see how quickly we all adapted to working from home and how many businesses continued to flourish."
Because the pandemic will make remote working environments common for at least the coming year, company leaders need to think about culture changes. King has made Featurespace ready for those developments.
"To ensure we maintained a strong company culture, we held virtual social activities like weekly pub quizzes," King said. "We even planned a virtual Christmas party, with a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire hosted by Chris Tarrant. We are all set up for a more flexible work future and I welcome it."
King wants to maintain feedback channels and keep all of her colleagues comfortable in approaching her with ideas or to voice a critical opinion.
"One of our company-wide values is 'to tell the truth, to do it kindly and if in doubt, just tell the truth,'" she noted. "Our leadership team meets twice weekly for a call during which we address issues and tell the truth. Anonymous employee surveys are also a great way to extract honest feedback."
A boost to King in her role as a female CEO is seeing a woman become vice president of the U.S.
"I am thrilled to see the milestone of a female vice president achieved in my lifetime," she said. "Only one more milestone to go!"
It has also been an honor, King added, to witness so many women progress in leadership roles across many sectors. The election of Kamala Harris as vice president is an opportunity to "normalize the idea of having women in critical and powerful positions," she said. "Role models like her are vital, especially for young people."
