Watching her parents display an entrepreneurial spirit and teamwork in owning a small business together, Nicole Tackett was inspired to move along a similar path.
The small-business part wasn't in the cards, but her attention and interest in the payments technology aspect of operating a business brought her into important roles in the industry.
After studying international business in college, Tackett started a career on the trading floor. Her path took her to roles at WEX Inc., First Annapolis Consulting, SAP America, Legg Mason Wood Walker and ACCUSHIP. She joined U.S. Bank in 2014 as a key executive in emerging markets and strategy for corporate payments systems.
Her role has expanded to reflect current times in payments and Tackett, a 2021 Most Influential Women in Payments honoree, now serves U.S. Bank as its senior vice president of strategy and commercial card management, corporate payment and treasury solutions.
"After getting my graduate degree, I worked as a payments consultant across geographies and ecosystems, and during that time, U.S. Bank was one of my customers," Tackett said. "I learned about the bank's dedicated line of business centered around payments, so U.S. Bank was an attractive next step for me when I joined."
In earning that executive role at the bank, Tackett points to two major leadership influences — her father and her athletic pursuits — that helped shape her approach and success.
"As a small-business owner, my father wore several hats, from head of sales to handyman," Tackett said. "I would watch the way he interacted with his employees. He often offered help in times of need, [and] gave guidance on life matters like going back to school or buying a house."
Sometimes her father would "just offer a hug" when a spouse or friend had passed away. "It was a lifetime of hard work, small acts of kindness and humility that built trust and respect in him as a leader," Tackett said.
When she became an elite swimmer at a young age, Tackett took the same hard work principles and applied it to her training and the encouragement of others to pursue excellence.
"I became the captain of a national collegiate championship team," she said. "I was fortunate to see leadership modeled and gained confidence in my own skills during early adulthood, which fortunately transitioned well into the corporate world."
She has put that leadership skill to work in helping U.S. Bank shape its digital approach to payments and B2B technologies.
"From a business-to-business perspective, the industry was heavily reliant on paper checks and manual processes," Tackett explained. "While consumers have navigated to more digital tools, businesses have lagged. With limited ability to go into offices, manual and one-off processes needed immediate remedies."
U.S. Bank's Instant Card is one example, she added. "We took a product created for travel and pivoted it to work as a solution for companies to pay digitally and in real time for purchases for remote workers who didn't have access to company credit cards."
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only strained the bank's business clients, it has made working as a team within the bank a little trickier.
"This year my team remained committed to getting to know each other better and understanding how we work together," Tackett said.
An understanding of how she and her fellow co-workers changed during the pandemic, done through a Myers-Briggs personality test, allowed Tackett to change her view on her leadership role.
"It's a challenge to balance workload under normal circumstances, but 2020 was infinitely more complex to balance work, childcare, eldercare, homeschooling and marriage," she said. "While I trended more introverted, my other traits evolved as well, especially how I make decisions and achieve my goals."
The experience gave her more empathy, compassion and humility, Tackett said.
"As we compared results across my team, we focused on the power of diversity of roles, strengths and preferences," she added. "Together, we can learn new things. We can do hard things, even while physically distant."
The pandemic changed a lot of rules and work habits, but the lack of travel became crucial for Tackett. Her father became ill and passed away in 2020, and Tackett was not on the road and able to be there for him at his time of need. "It was a gift, really," she said.
