Women for Girls: Carol Juel

Thank you so much, Betsy. I'm so happy to be here.

Sure. Thank you. I maybe I'll start with I know you guys are a national organization but have a start in Boston. So I was born and raised in Boston, grew up in Roslindale, was the youngest of seven kids, so grew up in a house of chaos, but always had role models to look up to. I always wanted to be one of the big kids, you know, I wanted to get to do the things that my older siblings were doing. I had a chance to attend Boston Latin School in Boston, and I still remember when I had that chance to go to that school, convincing my parents that I was ready to do this. So this was a test of maturity: am I going to be able to get up every day, get on the bus, get myself there across the city on a bus and a subway at 12 years old? And so having to write my first pro-con list for my parents, and that sort of set me on this trajectory of hey, when you want to do something, if you explain it and ask, and you know ask people for their help and support, you can achieve anything. So going to school there was transformational for me and it opened my eyes to opportunities. It also was a really diverse environment and it was different than the neighborhood that I grew up in, so I think it was really important in the formative years for me. There was one point in high school that when I think about looking back on parts of my life that sort of become, it's hard to believe for the students sitting here that they're experiencing things now that they will look back on when they're 40 years old, but believe me you will. There is this time in high school where I was studying math and science and computer science specifically, and I had an interest in an aptitude in my junior year. I walked into an AP computer science program at Boston Latin School and I was the only girl in the class. And I just, I think I lasted till Friday, and I remember going to my guidance counselor, I remember her name Miss Cousins, and saying I can't do this, I need, this is not going to work. And that sense of not fitting in, not belonging, but knowing you could do the work, it just was not an inclusive environment. And I opted out and I ended up taking, interestingly enough, an AP physics course which probably was a lot harder but it had more girls in it so it felt a little more camaraderie working on those labs. And so I've taken physics, man that's, I think I'd rather take computer science. But what I think is interesting is when you think about choices you make, it set my career in my college career probably in a different direction. But what it taught me is that your interest can ultimately drive where you take your career. So I entered into college and I had an interesting background. I studied classical languages and literature and mathematics, which sounds like what would you do with that, but interestingly enough the intersection of those two things is computer science. And so when I was graduating from college, it was one of the first tech booms that was happening in the US, and the ability to think logically, be very analytical, and be a very good communicator, I was able to land myself a job in a consulting firm. And every day I felt like I had the biggest imposter syndrome, like what am I doing here, how did they hire me? But I think when you look at how you think about what you study in school, everyone has to make a decision about where you go to school, how much it's going to cost, what the outcome is going to be. Those are all very big decisions. My guidance to anyone that ever asked me is when you follow what your passion is, it will lead you to the job that you need, and you just have to study something that you love in a way that will help prepare you for whatever field you're in, because ultimately over time the jobs you will do will change. The ability to adapt and be this lifelong learner will bring the opportunities for you to take on different roles, have the courage to jump into a field you might not be confident in. You know what we're talking about here, financial services, women are as Betsy explained massively underrepresented. And so how you can have the courage to want to enter an organization or a field that is challenging for women, I think you need to be willing to stand by your convictions, have the confidence in what you know, and seek out really strong mentors and support. And for me, just to bring it back to the career, I worked in consulting for about nine years, which was a great opportunity to learn a lot of different financial services business. I worked exclusively there in financial services, so I saw a lot of large banks, a lot of small banks, and ultimately then was able to tune my interest in a specific area of financial services and consumer finance, and then specifically technology. It's probably interesting for this group to understand in financial services, technology is the glue that holds it all together, the underpinnings of everything you do. So you think about some companies, we all think about companies like Apple, they make phones, they make TV, the streaming services. You think about consumer packaged goods, Coca-Cola, or clothing companies. But in financial services, we are creating experiences, we are allowing money to move, we are allowing the financial systems to work, and that is all built on technology. The interesting thing is there are more technologists in financial services than there are in Silicon Valley. Everyone thinks about technology, you think gosh everybody that's in technology has to work in California. There are more opportunities and more technologists that actually work in financial services companies, and it's a really interesting place to work in financial services because of the fast pace, because of the expectations of consumers, and because of the other good piece about working in financial services is there's a very significant level of investment of dollars in technology, so you have an opportunity to explore and learn. I worked my way up and became a CIO, which is the leader of the technology organization, in 2011, and then had the interesting opportunity in 2014 to actually take that division that I was working in through an IPO into a public company, so taking a consumer finance business that was part of the General Electric company and bringing it through an IPO to a Fortune 175 company, which was a monumental amount of work. The rewarding nature of that was the most exciting career thing I've ever done, but would never want to do it again. Ever, ever.

Sure. So Synchrony, so consumer finance is financial products that come to you and me as customers. So we have a business model where it is basically if you have a credit card of some type, so if you have a credit card with Amazon or a credit card with PayPal, or we recently launched a card program with Venmo. I'm sure many of the girls on this phone might use Venmo. So we have the ability for our products and services to be integrated into these large partners. So we're a partner-based business, and we need to build the technology to make all that... It sounds so simple, we all just think when you click a button, the money moves and everything happens. There's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes there that are about how do you make that transaction safe, secure, how do you make that experience so simple for that customer that they're going to want to use that over and over again. So in my role, I have an opportunity to build that payment ecosystem, to lead teams of innovation. And innovation for us is listening to our customers and figuring out how we want to continue to grow and build the technology foundation that we have, and to do that in a way that's going to meet our customers or to be market leading. And then the other thing, the other parts of my job, safety and security is really important. In the world that we live in in financial services, as you've probably heard from other leaders you've spoken to or in some of the projects, privacy of data is critical. You feeling safe and secure transacting with us as a customer is really, really important. So there's a role called the Chief Information Security Officer that's in charge of all of that oversight and ensuring we are doing it safely and securely, and that also is an area of responsibility that I have. The CISO reports into my organization as well.

I think in my role, when you look at folks that do this type of job, you have to be a lifelong learner. As much as you like to program, you have to love to read, because there's just a lot that you have. And I think finding curated sources of information, belonging to industry groups, because in cyber specifically in financial services, the industry has this concept of rising tides raise all boats. We are in this together fighting the bad guys, so sharing that information across teams is really important. I read the Wall Street Journal, and obviously there's a technology section in that that is well curated in terms of what's happening in the industry across broad technology. It gives you the broader sense of everything across the industry. I belong to different organizations that are CIO-specific, networks of folks. The other thing I read religiously and have for years is the Harvard Business Review, which is the macro trends in business. Because one of the things in any role you take in any company, whatever you're doing, doesn't matter what function, if you're in finance, technology, operations, you have to view yourself as a leader in that company. You're a part of the business. You have a role, but when you connect yourself to the broader business, and I think that is one of the things that I learned over the years, is learning to operate whatever you do as part of the business with the intensity of whatever your function is, but overarching, you're a business leader wherever you are.

Well, I think just adaptability and resiliency. I think adaptability is if you just even look at the last year what we've all lived through just as humans, the amount of change we've had to endure, the amount of things that have happened, everything from pandemic to racial injustice to challenges with the election, there's just so much happening. So being able to take all that in, adapt, respond. Within my company, we had to ask people to take on different jobs during the pandemic. The priorities changed overnight as to what we needed to do, and I needed to have people I could tap and say, hey, I know this is what you do every day, but for the next six months I need you to do this. And that ability to very quickly be open to just jumping in and learning something new is really important. I think adaptability, everyone that is here right now, we all should just be patting ourselves on the back for the resiliency that we've all built in the last year. I do think for this generation that's going to be entering the workforce in the next several years, the resiliency that you've learned through COVID to just keep at it, remote school is hard, not seeing your friends is hard, but that resiliency was built up. I'm an optimist at heart, over the longer term it's going to pay dividends in your career because you're going to face setbacks, but I hope the hardest thing you will face in your lives is the last year, and if you could get through this, anything else is within your reach.

That's a great question because this is, in my lifetime I would love to solve this problem. And to the girls on this phone call, this is an area where you just have to advocate for yourself first of all. Because what happens, I've seen it happen where someone starts with an idea, before you know it someone else is finishing the sentence and all of a sudden there's a victory lap around and someone's ideas is just taken into a different direction. So I think you have to have the confidence in yourself and your convictions that when you have it, when you want to say something, if someone is either trying to add on or take it away, you can bring it back and say, well, as I said, let me make sure you understand what I said. There's just different tactics around how you can make sure your voice is heard. And it takes practice. I will tell you, in the morning when I am getting ready for work, and even though we're home we still have to have some routine to get ready for work, I think about the tough conversation I might need to have that day. It doesn't matter where you sit in an organization, there's always something that's not going to be easy in any job. And I sit there and it's okay, how am I going to say this? Be prepared, but also be really, really ready to state your mind. The other thing that I have a responsibility to is I have this tremendous sense of creating inclusion, inclusive teams, and making others feel like they belong, from having felt what it's like to be on the outside. And a theme through my career, so this idea that inviting others to sit at the table, making sure when I walk into that meeting, when we go back to offices sometimes you'll walk into a room, there'll be people sitting at the table and there'll be people sitting in the chairs on the side, and I can guarantee you there's more men at the table and there's more girls on the side. So you just say, hey, come on, you're coming up, we're going to invite someone to sit. Encourage them. There's just that informal mentorship that's really, really important. And I do think as girls, as you think about high school and into college, finding folks that you can relate to and you trust. All mentors and role models do not need to be women for your career. Over time, you need men in your court as well, because oftentimes the decisions that are being made about who gets the next job or who gets the promotion, there may not be a lot of women in the room. I've been blessed to work for a woman for my boss for the last 10 years, who's one of the 42 women on the Fortune 500 list. So I've seen leadership from a very strong woman, but that is very rare. And so part of as you grow and find those mentors, you have to find the ones you can relate to. You can have mentors that serve different purposes. You always have to make sure you're willing to get the feedback, because if you're going to enter into a relationship with someone for help, you want them to give you the truth. You want them to say, you know what, that meeting was okay, but I know you can do better, or next time you should think about this. And take the feedback as a gift because it helps you be better.

Exactly. That's the constant movie in my head for the last 30 or whatever year since, whenever you do the math on that. What I felt was that there was a group of folks there that had relationships that were different, they saw me as an outsider. They saw me as someone who was interested in computer science but I was not interested in computer games. So I love computer science but I was not a video game kid. I liked the science of it, I liked the logic of it. I did not, I still, no disrespect, I'm just not a big fan of computer games, it's not something I'm drawn to. And so that was what the chatter was at the beginning of class. So what I am very sensitive to is when new people join teams or any group, or when you meet new people because you move somewhere, or even when I'm going to school with my kids if there's a new family, that sense of 'we all know each other and you're new'.

Like I'm the one that tries to bring the conversation back to let's talk about something where everyone might be able to participate. Like let everyone be able to feel like they belong in this conversation, because that sense of not feeling like you fit in, because if you're not, it doesn't matter who you are as a human. If you don't feel comfortable someplace, you can't succeed. Yeah, and I know what that feels like, and the potential that's lost there. You know, I took a different route than many people that sit in my job today, and I like my rope because it's kind of interesting, and I'm really good at Jeopardy. But what happens is for those missed opportunities, how many people couldn't end up in the field that they have the aptitude for because they didn't have that sense of belonging?

Well, parallel when I started in finance, I was not allowed to wear pants in my early days. I had to wear skirts, you know. Obviously can't see now. I mean, even before the pandemic, I wore jeans to work every day in a financial services company. Admittedly, I don't work on Wall Street, but I do think the shifts that are happening. I think the generational shift from Gen X to millennials really challenged our thinking on flexibility, challenged our thinking on the expectations of work, and how teams want to engage. And that's really what helped drive our innovation processes, was a lot of the feedback we were getting. Obviously, millennials are now, you know, they're not... there's now Gen Z entering the workforce. But I do think the shifts that happened during the pandemic, the things that happened inside of companies, are now core of who they are. When you think about, I know for us, putting the health and safety of our employees first in terms of how we get everybody home. It was easy to send people home when you can pick up a laptop and go home. Had we had 12,000 call center regions globally, India, Philippines, that we had to figure out a way to make them work from home because health and safety was paramount for us. So that idea of putting employees first has shifted through the pandemic, and then the support for families with just the whole host of things that came on every family that had children, that had parents living with them, the stress of that. I think the flexibility that we've created with work at home, and that I think is going to be a long-term strategic differentiator for companies to build that flexibility. Because, you know, I will admit I didn't think every job in our company could be done remotely. I love admitting when I'm wrong, it's another thing I love. And I was wrong. Like, everything is working remotely, and we've given employees this opt-in capability to say, if you want to stay remote, that's fine. We know you can do it, you've done it for a year. So I think when you look at what will change over time, I think those are behaviors that will continue in companies because it will create a competitive advantage for them for the flexibility and the choice they're giving their employees. And the other thing I think is that employees need to know that their employers really do care and are looking out for their well-being. I just think, and what we've all lived through, the culture that's created in a company is what's going to get you through the tough times. And if it's strong, your company is going to be strong.

Decentralized finance, I think... there are a lot of non-traditional banks getting into financial services. I think that's what it means, so yeah. That's how I read it too, so you sort of, you know, this whole idea of fintech, which is the intersection of financial services and technology. And so you have these really interesting companies that have started to solve problems that are customer pain points, and they've been entering into traditional financial service markets with different sets of products and capabilities. You know, I think in some cases we see them as this idea of sort of frenemies. You know, they're a little bit of competitors, but what they do is they challenge our thinking to say, okay, they're addressing a problem that maybe we weren't really looking at as closely as we should have. So I think they cause a very interesting market dynamic for traditional financial institutions with fintech. I think, you know, there's a piece of them that is... one of the things that makes financial services what it is today, and why there is trust in it, is that we are regulated. We have very specific rules and regulations that we have to abide by. In the fintech space, that's quite a bit looser, so there's a little bit of risk there in my view. But our company, we in some cases partner with fintechs, in some cases we compete with them, but in all cases we use them as an opportunity to learn and see what we can be doing either better or different from what they might have brought to market.

Yeah, so I'll take the first one first. First of all, can I tell you I miss riding on elevators? I can't tell you the last time I was on an elevator. Like the strange things we're living through right now. So I think elevator pitch, what you want, the key point is you want to be able to get your story down to three bullet points. You want it to be quick, impactful, and memorable. So you know, what is it? Hey, you know, my name is Carol Juel, I work in technology, and I have a passion for ensuring that we create an inclusive environment for everybody that works here. Like if I were to sum up my life, that's kind of what it is. And you notice it wasn't what I do every day, it's sort of who I am that drives me to do the job that I am. And so a pitch is oftentimes more about who you are to give someone a sense. Networking is hard. And it's hard because you just have to get comfortable being uncomfortable because you're in a room and you're going to look around, you're going to say it looks like everybody knows what they're doing, looks like everybody knows how to talk to each other. Every single person in that room, I guarantee you, feels the same way you do. So just know everyone there is sweating a little bit, so just make sure you realize everyone there feels the same way. And you know, just set your expectation: hey, I would like to meet two new people. You don't have to work the entire room, you don't have to meet every single person there. You have to first of all do a little research before you show up. Generally, if you're going to some type of event where you might network, someone will let you know the type of people are going to be there, who might be there. And then you find an opportunity to introduce yourself. If it's an event that's sponsored by a group of people, the leaders or whoever, the folks that are there, their job is to help make the folks that want to network feel comfortable. So when someone comes up to me and says, oh, you know, hi Carol, my name is Mary and I work in operations, okay that's great, well tell me a little bit more, and how long have you been with us? You know, so part of it is just starting this dialogue to get people to be comfortable. I think asking people questions about, can you tell me a little bit about your career, or I'd love to understand what you do in your job, asking someone about their job is always in a networking event a safe topic. You know, I have an interest but I don't really understand what that is. And in asking sort of these questions that will allow someone to explain their role or their responsibilities to you. But I think in the back of your mind, you have to realize everyone there, when you're meeting people for the first time, it's not easy. There's no one that's really pro at this as much as people will tell you.

You know, as you look into your career, if you're interested in finance, there's a lot of schools that have sort of multi-disciplinary degrees. So to work in my field, everyone doesn't have to be a computer scientist. I'm not. I sort of joke, my husband works in marketing and he's a computer scientist. He's actually a propeller head, and I'm not. So I always joke that he's more qualified for my job than I am. But in theory, the path that you take, I think you have to look at studying something you love. So if you're interested in learning the world of finance, but then you can take into it by multi-discipline, it's like either minors or concentrations. So a lot of business schools, if you're going to be in the school of business, will have a minor in something called like MIS, management information systems. It sounds like 1980s, but it gives you an opportunity to learn technology in the context of the business. Because every technology organization, believe me, I need a lot of hardcore engineers, but I need just as many folks that understand the business connection of technology. Because every role in my organization is not fingers on keyboards. There's folks that want to be able to connect with all parts of the company to be those translator type roles. So I think exploring a class in high school in maybe a computer science or a field, or there's a ton of free resources out there. If you're interested, Girls Who Code is a phenomenal organization that's about bringing more women into technology. So they have a ton of programming, a ton of content to explore if you're interested just to see if it's something you would want to try. You can try it on your own, don't even tell anybody about it. You know, as much time as you spend in front of your computer doing your Zoom work for school, you can spend a half an hour a day just looking and reading and seeing if it's something that you would be interested in.

I think you're spot on, Betsy. There are skills you need for certain careers and domain expertise that you need, but it's not always required. So as an example, I think if you want to be a CPA, clearly you have certain accounting that you need to study. But just finance, really, as you know, this is very broad. It can be analytics, it can be financial planning management, it can be banking. There's just such a broad area that, to your point, there's a lot of ways into that that are not 100% having to be tied to business and finance. And I think we have a program that's called Business Leadership, which most big companies have these programs that they bring in their cohorts of college grads to run them through a two-year training program. And when we built this, when we became Synchrony, we were really clear: we wanted it to be an integrated program so that all of our new employees that are coming out of school are connected from a business perspective, and then they have their functional expertise and their domain expertise, and we support them in that. But we want to create this ability for them to move around. They do a rotation out of what they were hired into to get exposure to something they might not, so that we want to again have that nimbleness and flexibility to work in different areas. Because I do believe the way that our kids are growing up today and how they're learning, the adaptability to do different things, they're proving differently than even when I came out. So I think as employers, we have to be ready for coming in from a non-traditional, historically traditional path, but would be still a very solid candidate for a job that would then give them the opportunity to move in other areas.

What I enjoy most is people development. So when you work in an organization and you have the opportunity, because technology is beneficial, this is fast-paced, it's changing quickly. There is so much opportunity to give, to constantly evolve the roles and opportunities you have for people. And so I love, love, love when you have talent that you've brought in, you've seen them operating and doing well, getting them, allowing them to be promoted and to grow into their jobs. You know, I've been in my job long enough now that the ones I consider to be my kids, like my first class of college graduates, are now having children and they're married and they're in these management positions. So there is such pride in helping people to grow their careers that I find that so rewarding. And in doing that, everything from helping them develop technical skills to really coaching them to be good empathetic leaders, helping them to make those tough career choices, teaching them to be good coaches. I mean, those are the things I love about my job.

I would... I originally when I was growing up, I actually thought I was going to be a teacher. But if I were to wave my magic wand right now, and if I could just said differently, if I could win the lottery and didn't have to pay a mortgage and put food on the table like most people do, I would really focus on some of the systemic challenges we have with education in the US. Like investing in organizations that are really trying to help communities, specifically women, underserved communities, have access to education and to help bring the next generation of Americans into the middle class. I worry so much about the disparity that's being created in our country and the social fabric that is becoming problematic. So I would love to be able to help with some of those big problems. Two of my biggest role models are Bill and Melinda Gates. I just think the work that they do and how they approach really big, hard problems, I would love to be able to help solve one problem. Nothing on the scale of Bill and Melinda Gates, but they're huge role models for me.

I think exposure at this point... yeah, I think an internship in high school, I don't think it's going to give you an exposure to what a job might look like, so just knowing what a field looks like I think is the right place to start. I firmly believe in the concept of 'if you can't see it, you can't be it.' So as a student that's perhaps going to be the first one in their family to go to college, as a young girl, you will have opportunities that folks in your family may not have, so you don't necessarily know what those are. So having an internship and just really in a business and seeing, it doesn't have to be in a big company. Finance happens in every place that has a business. Every place that's incorporated, there is a degree of finance, even town hall. Exactly, you know, in your town. Even as an example, if you know someone that's a small business owner, if you know someone that's running a company out of their home, just asking them and understanding how, because at the end of the day, the way you run a company big or small, the fundamentals are consistent. You have to understand the cash that's coming in, how you're paying your employees, how you're investing for the future. All of those things, big scale or small scale, are part of a really important process of learning. So you can learn that in many places. And I think the last tip I'll leave you with: you just have to sometimes just have to really ask. Another mantra I'll leave you with: in our world, there's so much that's hard and there's so much that's not fun, you just have to sometimes just want to be brave and not perfect about it.

Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation. This has been the highlight of my week. It's been wonderful to be with you. And for all the girls and the folks on the line, you know, I think there's so much potential and possibility out there. Reach for the stars, work hard, and I encourage you all to just really go after your dreams and ask for help. There's lots of folks on the way that will help you.