Guest Post: Mentorships in Payments: Thoughts on Developing the Next Gen
By Sarah Brown-Campello, Manager, Industry Affairs, ETA
How did you get into payments? With few direct paths via formal education — I haven’t seen any university courses on interchange optimization or identifying high-risk merchants — those who work in the digital transactions industry each have a unique story about their entry point and the players who contributed to their journey. Many have cited mentorships within or outside of their companies as being pivotal to their development and success as a payments professional.
The definition of a payments professional runs the gambit from a technical engineer working on the latest mobile solution to a marketing pro, from a fintech business development director to a cybersecurity analyst, and everything in-between. As the leading association for payment and fintech organizations, ETA represents members whose employees serve all of these functions and hail from different cultures and diverse backgrounds.
Today’s dynamic and competitive environment requires organizations to develop leaders who bring a strong foundation of payments knowledge as well as a wide variety of professional and personal experience to the table. For these reasons, ETA has established and hosts the ETA Young Payments Professional (YPP) Scholars program, sponsored by Discover. Open exclusively to ETA members, the yearlong program has several components — personal goal-setting (strengthening public speaking, positioning oneself for increased responsibility), production of two industry deliverables created with fellow YPPs (webinars or white papers), and access to educational opportunities through ETAU and ETA events. The most exciting part of the ETA YPP program, though, is the mentorship, where each YPP Scholar is assigned an industry mentor from outside their companies.
Executives like current YPP Mentor Kevin Jordan from Discover cite mentorship as being valuable not only to mentees, but to mentors as well: “At the start of your career, especially in payments, there are many areas to choose for a career path. The YPP mentorship program provides mentees with access to many perspectives and industry knowledge, which has a positive impact on their future careers. Participating in the YPP program allows me to pay it forward while also benefiting and learning from the time spent with the mentees.”
Andrew Cohen, a current mentor, describes the program as an investment in the future: “These talented young payment professionals are the next generation of payments leaders who will drive the direction and growth of our industry. There is no better way to embed knowledge than through teaching and mentoring. Passing this knowledge on enables you to clarify and embed those lessons within yourself. Participating in this program is extremely rewarding, and it allows me to provide an ETA YPP with an outlet to use me as a soundboard, where I provide them with advice and different perspectives to help them successfully navigate through the complex and fast-moving payments industry.”
All 10 of the 2021 ETA YPP scholars have each been paired with an industry mentor with whom they will work on professional development over the course of the year. By pairing YPPs with mentors from other companies, the program introduces YPPs to new perspectives and connections from outside their day-to-day network. Mentors come from a range of backgrounds and experiences. As current mentor Chris Bucolo says, “Mentors can be very effective in describing how we have survived and even thrived in fast-changing environments, including at start-up or early-stage companies.”
Mentorships in the business world have proven to be both popular and effective. According to research by ETA member Kabbage, 92% of small businesses agree mentors have a direct impact on growth and the survival of their businesses. In the same study, 89% of small business owners who didn’t have a mentor wished they had. A study at Sun Microsystems showed that retention rates increased significantly (to about 70%) for individuals in the company who participated as a mentor or mentee. According to University of Miami Professor Terri A. Scandura, 71% of Fortune 500 Companies have some type of mentorship program. Senior business leaders like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sheryl Sandberg are on record explaining how mentorship was critical to their development. Finally, 89% of those who have been mentored go on to mentor others.
We here at ETA are happy to support these dynamic relationships, and we are grateful to our 2021 mentors for volunteering their time and sharing their personal payments journey with our 10 scholars.
Read more about the 2021 ETA YPP Scholars here. Applications for both 2022 ETA YPP scholars and mentors will open in November. If you have any questions about the program, email us at [email protected].