Leaders In Payments

Talbott Roche the CEO and President of Blackhawk Network, is our special guest on this the 103rd episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast as we continue to celebrate Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express. Talbott grew up in Richmond, Virginia and attended an all-girls school from kindergarten through high school. She majored in economics at Stanford and was the first person to go to college west of the Mississippi from her high school. She co-founded Blackhawk Network which was at the time a subsidiary within Safeway. During a holiday season 20 years ago, they put 7 gift cards in the northern California division of Safeway stores and did about $9 million dollars in sales. Fast forward to now, and Blackhawk Network will do $26B this year in total load value across 28 countries. What a remarkable success story. Her guiding principles are simple; commit, create and connect.  Talbott has some very impactful phrases that she used during our interview such as “focus on action over perfection,” “turn a crisis into an opportunity,” and “know your own worth and ask for the opportunity.”

Sam Ettus, the Founder and CEO of Park Place Payments is our special guest on this the 102nd episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. She is our third guest in the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express. Sam grew up in New York City and played competitive tennis from childhood through college. She went to Harvard College and then on to Harvard Business School. Sam has devoted her career to advocating and supporting woman, in fact this is what led to her founding Park Place Payments. Her unique sales force is comprised of women with no payments background who are trained on how to sell payments to their doctors, dentists and other small businesses in their local area.Sam co-hosts her own podcast, has written 5 books, is a renowned speaker and makes regular appearances on TV. Given her extensive background and experience helping women succeed she provides some powerful and insightful leadership advice for all women in payments. 

Suneera Madhani, the Founder and CEO of Stax (formerly Fattmerchant) is our special guest on this the 101st episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. She is the second guest in the Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express. Suneera was raised by immigrant parents who were also entrepreneurs. Much of her personal and professional inspiration comes from her parents. She attended the University of Florida and after a short stint at a consumer-packaged goods company she started her career in payments. In 2014 she founded FattMerchant with her brother. They have recently rebranded to Stax and raised over $100 million. They process payments for over 25,000 merchants and are based on Orlando, Florida. Suneera has some great advice for women in payments including being bold, taking a risk, & being authentic and your true self.  

Kathleen Fiorello, the Head of US Partner Acquisition and Global Capabilities at American Express is our special guest on this the 100th episode of the Leaders in Payments Podcast. I’m honored to have her on this show as we kick off Women Leaders in Payments month sponsored by American Express. Kathleen grew up in Wayne New Jersey, where she had a paper route as a kid, after high school she attended Florida State University and has had a long successful career at American Express spanning 25 years.  From playing golf on the boy’s team in high school (because they didn’t have a girl’s team back then) to moving the Stockholm Sweden to run the Nordics market where she learned several powerful lessons to attributing much of her success to hard work, Kathleen provides some dynamic messages about listening to your inner voice, taking risks, believing in yourself and being bold. 

Brady Harris, the CEO of Dwolla is our special guest this week on episode 99 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Brady grew up in Salt Lake City Utah.  After high school he went into payments in Portland and Seattle. He also spent some time in Atlanta and now is at the Dwolla headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa.   Dwolla was originally a P2P product but about 5 years ago started to focus on B2B payments. Today they provide ACH transaction processing through an API to businesses and also power functionality for many other Fintechs. They recently launched real-time payments and are looking into things like FX and crytpo.   This year they are trending towards $40B in gross payment volume with approximately 100 employees.    Brady has a passion for giving people the opportunity to grow and flourish in their careers. He also thinks people coming into payments or fintech should start with a sales job which Brady says a sometimes controversial viewpoint. 

Vijay Oddiraju, the Co-founder and CEO of Volante Technologies is our special guest this week on episode 98 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Vijay was born and raised in India. After getting his bachelor’s degree he came to the U.S. where he got his master’s degree in computer science and went to work for Oracle. After about 6 years, he got the entrepreneurial bug and started his first company.  Vijay along with 3 other founders started Volante in 2001. Currently the company offers cloud payments and financial messaging solutions to financial institutions. They have over 100 customers in 35 countries. The first real-time payments transaction in U.S. history went through their platform.   In August of last year, they raised $35 million in capital from Wavecrest Growth Partners and other strategic investors – many of them are existing customers. Vijay has a professional passion to build and maintain a company culture based on trust. On the personal side he has a passion for space and looks forward to hitching a ride with Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos into space. 

Don Frieden, the President, CEO & Chairman of P97 Networks is our special guest this week on episode 97 of the Leaders in Payments podcast.  Don grew up in Fort Forth Texas, attended North Texas University and has been in Houston Texas for about 30 years. P97 is making payments at the convenience retail and fuel industries simple, fast, and secure. They are a global company with 175 team members with about 100 at the headquarters in Houston. Beyond payments they provide loyalty programs for fuel brands and digital marketing opportunities that can be delivered to the fuel dispenser, connected car in-dash screens, mobile devices and voice channels.  Don has some great insights into the future of mobile payments including the enormous buying power today and in the future of millennials – who are the first digital native generation.

Derek Webster, the Founder and CEO of CardFlight is our special guest this week on episode 96 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Derek was born and raised in California, moved to Washington D.C. and attended Georgetown University. He was an intern and then a product manager at eTrade before going to business school at Stanford. He currently lives in New York City where he founded CardFlight in 2013.CardFlight powers a product called SwipeSimple that is used by 80,000 small businesses in the United States. Their hardware and software products are distributed by over 80 different partners including merchant acquirers and ISOs. They are tech and customer-first focused and are partnership led.  During the pandemic CardFlight launched the weekly CardFlight Small Business Report – it become the source of truth for how small businesses were faring during the pandemic for both investors and small businesses themselves.  On a personal note, he loves sailing and still races competitively and more recently has taken up kite surfing. 

Will Graylin, the CEO of OV Loop and Indigo Technologies is our special guest this week on episode 95 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Will immigrated to the U.S. from China when he was a teenager. He got his undergrad degree from the University of Washington, became a nuclear submarine officer for 5 and half years and then went to Boston for grad school at MIT.  OV Loop is a connected commerce platform that has a solution for brands and businesses called a super messenger and a solution for consumers called a super wallet. We are living in a very fragmented environment when it comes to commerce and we need to get to a more connected environment – which is the problem OV Loop is addressing. Over the last 3 years they have bought 4 companies and are launching a minimal viable product next quarter to both businesses and consumers.  Will also touched on the other company he is currently running called Indigo Technologies which is creating a lightweight electric vehicle. 

Ron Hynes, the CEO of Vesta is our special guest this week on episode 94 of the Leaders in Payments podcast. Ron lives in Connecticut and was born and raised in Maine. He’s married and has three kids, two in college and one that just graduated from high school and one little dog to round out the family. Vesta uses advanced machine learning to access the validity of card-not-present transactions. They provide their customers a “thumbs up” if the transaction is good and obviously identify the fraudulent ones. The company has been around for 25 years and has 300 employees. The company has locations across the U.S. and Dublin Ireland, Mexico City as well as an office in Singapore. Ron and I have a great discussion about fraud in general as well as fraud in developing countries. We also talk about his passion for financial inclusion stemming from his journey in payments with Chase and Mastercard.