S1E3 - Exploring the True Passion for Innovation that Built FinTech - Roberta Profeta
I challenge anyone to meet Roberta Profeta and not fall in love. She is, as she admits herself, tiny but mighty and her might is one you would have noticed in financial services. We met when she was just a banker, let's say, and since we have travelled the road to a transformed industry together, whilst we'll build a new digital proposition of banks from both inside and outside the walls. We were also both mentors for Startup Podcamp and we invested together in the same people, ideas and hopes of the industry. Listen here to our chat touching on all these moments and look out for a contained exasperation regarding the speed of transformation and the lack of diversity.
Duena:But notice how we manage to land on a hopeful message of change nonetheless. Hello everyone and welcome back to Tales from the Fintech Crip. I have a really special person with us today, someone who's very dear to my heart and I know the heart of many of us back in the day. Someone who has left an imprint on both banking and the way we've been thinking back in the day. So thank you for attending this show, Roberta.
Duena:There will be an entire small intro, not enough of an intro for what good you've done to the industry. There will be an intro and your link to your profile so that people can reach you should they want to chat to you afterwards. So welcome to the show.
Roberta:Thank you so much, Duena It's great to see you and to
Duena:be So lovely to have you. Little do people know that fintech meant a lot of things to us back in the day. And in these few episodes that we've done before, I kept trying to get Nexarius to get me some hot takes and some hot tea and he wouldn't have, rightfully, good thing he didn't, otherwise we would have both remembered things maybe we didn't want to do. But some background for you guys, Roberta and I must have met called fifteen years, no, not quite, but twelve, thirteen years ago, it's been many, many years. And we were there when we started building this thing.
Duena:You were a banker at the time, were you?
Roberta:I was. I was a banker back in the days. And yes, we were still very young, but we were younger still. Those were the days where the words FinTech and startups were quite new. And those were the days when we actually had to translate these concepts in the banks because it just was not known.
Roberta:We had a lot of conversations around this and we were sharing our struggles. And yes, And many years hard
Duena:to because of the people that we've had on the show so far, most of us were from, I lied, there were some bankers and they kind of had a different view than those of us that were from the outside, but we were all constructing the same thing though. So if I'm not wrong, you're with an Italian bank at the time and it was one of the banks that were moving, but maybe not quite the first mover, I would say maybe, I don't know exactly how this exactly landed in the Italian landscape of the time, but I would have perceived them as maybe a second mover at the time. But I have seen you've made such amazing strides over there, by the time you are finished with them, their name would resonate these days.
Roberta:Yeah, so with regards to reach, let's say Europe, that bank came a bit later compared to others, slightly. Once they jumped into it, they just went, as you saw, they just went full. So actually they outshone the local competitors and had a great, great position regionally. And then also globally. I mean, it does have a global footprint.
Roberta:But they're actually doing quite well right now.
Duena:Yeah, that's good to hear about the So
Roberta:I'm proud I was there at the very beginning, at the very, very beginning actually. And everything that has been done has been What quite
Duena:it sounds like when you were trying to bring all of this excitement and innovation and new product in, and you saw all of these things. I think you were probably one of the first people to have went to Finovate, you are probably one of the first people to have been externally exposed to all of these product makers outside of Italy. I think maybe there were five names in Italy I could name over the years and yours was always first. I actually, there were a couple of around you, but you're first though. So how was it?
Duena:Yeah, was,
Roberta:so it was interesting. So I must say that back in the days, we had an amazing CEO at group level and he had that vision. He was the visionary person. And it was interesting because I remember that at the beginning when we embarked on this innovation and digital transformation, back in the days it was innovation journey, I would talk to my old colleagues from the business and they would listen to me because they respected me as a banker. But they were like, Roberta, what is this about?
Roberta:Is this real? Or this just fluffy, fluffy stuff? Does this anything? Does this have anything to do at all with banking? So I have to break it down.
Roberta:But honestly, after a while, once the trick was to find the champions, to find those people that you know would listen to you. And they would help you carry the message So further in the that super important. Those people could be top level people
Duena:or they could be
Roberta:middle management or lobbying. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But that was the key thing to do, to partner with these individuals to have their buy in and then work together to get the message through. But it was interesting,
Duena:it was I've seen closed doors. I've your amazing trajectory from the outside and I have seen the strides needed. And we all knew that each of these banks practically at the time had maybe two champions in total. Those were the two agents of one or two agents of change. It was never necessarily more than And I can almost track, you know, kind of big, big international banks' progress to one or two names and what they've done over those periods.
Duena:You were naming someone who was at the CXO level or you were not naming them and you don't need to. But I'm just curious, because I ask this of everyone, where are they today? Are they still in banking? Where are all the visionaries of back in the day?
Roberta:Oh yeah, so the then CEO, he's an exceptional human being. Actually established another bank. Yeah, yeah. So he left the bank because he was called by, let's say to cover governmental role or to help the government. Then he established another bank.
Roberta:So he's doing great. And within the innovation ecosystem of that bank, they're all in the banking system, still very much doing innovation and digital transformation. That's amazing, that actually,
Duena:that says a lot. Says a lot, because it's, as you know, very rare around the world. Of us that started in a certain place have completely moved six times over. And, you know, all of those visionaries from back in the day, don't know if people know this, many of them, let's be honest, are not necessarily active anymore. They're, yeah, they're not out there.
Duena:I mean, they're big names that I probably can name because they're in the public domain. Like you had your hero stories of the Michael Harteys of the world that had made those big changes, and we could kind of armed with those stories, could tell other people and so on. So, for those listeners that are young and don't quite understand what was happening, practically, let me just paint a picture a little bit. You had, this was circa 2010, 2011 and onwards. And so what we had were established enterprises in banks that were attempting to figure out how to then become digital, how to make their money digital.
Duena:So that made obviously, gave us the twenty years that we then went through to figure out how to do. Whether or not we got to the right place, whether or not we've advanced quite as much as we'd like, The listeners of this podcast know that we end up inadvertently moaning eventually because there's no other way. But there have been amazing things done over the years, right? And that meant that someone inside, an amazing entrepreneur, these agents of change were capable of be doing amazingly courageous things, meaning go outside, understand the dynamics of the market, see where other things are going, not be blinded by the internal human death of the organization and then be able to bring this innovation back in. I think I'd love for you to give us your definition of innovation, because there's many things that we can say about it.
Duena:But what you believed in must be the very opposite of innovation theater these days. So what was it at the time?
Roberta:At the time innovation was the ability to change perspective or have multiple perspectives. The ability to see things through different lenses and actually find opportunity in constraint. That was, at the time, innovation. The reason why we specifically founded the Innovation Department, which I co founded back in the days, was because of the credit crunch following the Lemon Brothers, etcetera, disaster. So at the time, the banking group I was working for, which is the largest in the country, had a lot of loans for all of the companies.
Roberta:I was in corporate investment banking back in the days. And so the visionary CEO said, We have to figure out a way to support enterprises, entrepreneurs and companies in ways that are not simply giving out loans. There's no more money. We cannot ask them to reimburse because otherwise the economy goes south. So we need to have innovative ways.
Roberta:Think of startups, think of alternative financing, think of so this is what triggered it all. Hence, it was the moment of constraint and the ability to look at things through different perspective and thinking out of the box, that famous old sentence Absolutely. We
Duena:think that is really crucial to realize that one, there was an absolute stringent need and that's something that you can attempt to ignore like people are doing these days with the insane insistence on getting people back into the office and any other number of measures that just are trying to keep them coming back to this imaginary set point of BAU that they have in their imagination. You can do that. That's not going to work for you forever though. Or you can look to the situation in the eye and say, now we have this here, we need a new way to deal with it. So I think the fact that you gave
Roberta:us
Duena:the origin story, right, really of the innovation bed is I think really important because one can't do it, should say there's nobody really likes it. One can't just do innovation for the sake of it. You can set up a goal of being as open minded as you like and as progressive as you like but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to move forward in that fashion. So I love that. Do you remember your first fin of it?
Duena:Old ago was that? God that
Roberta:was too long ago. I would lie, I can't remember the first I can't. You reckon you've been to my first
Duena:one in London in twenty That eleven or would have been that first one in London. Yes. That first first Finnovate in London. Menika won. We won.
Duena:My little one was three months old. I went I'm gonna go do Finnovate. I think we may have all met exactly at that point in time.
Roberta:Yes, yes, yes, yes. But it's so long ago and things changed so much. I think going back to the question about innovation, it's all about, still today, it's all about a very dynamic environment when things change constantly and you have to have that flexibility and adaptability. So you need to actually look at things and embrace the change, but have that mental flexibility to do things differently. I think it all boils down to that.
Roberta:And another thing I would always say is, which you mentioned, you can't do innovation for the sake of innovation because we do have a bottom line it has to enhance the bottom line, whether it be optimizing costs, making processes more efficient, increasing conversion rates, having a new way of working or new products and services, leveraging technology. Every thing has to have a real and pragmatic impact
Duena:You absolutely don't have a business case that shows how it moves the needle and you're not going to be able to be getting anything anyhow. So you're not going to be attempting anything. Exactly. Absolutely. That's a really good point.
Duena:Think it's really interesting for people to kind of remember that that one, there was a super need. And then in a sense to me, and this is controversial, and you can feel free to be upset by my sense. I don't even necessarily feel like we need the word in itself, because to my mind, it's wrapped up in the idea of agility, you cannot possibly have an agile view of life that does not involve constant experimentation and new things that you're creating. So to to a degree it almost rolled into that, but not quite because and is this do you think a function of the fact that many of these big banks we've worked with, let's call it spade of spade have immense what I call human debt. They have all of this organizational culture that it's hard to accuse any concept, it's hard to get anywhere.
Duena:So is it maybe because of that, that we haven't really sat down and thought, right, now let's wrap everything together into new things we're doing, things we're doing in a certain way and all that honest conversation between what is new, what's innovation, what's progress, what's agility. Do you not feel like maybe we jumped a little bit, we've outsourced innovation to some of the agile teams, we didn't quite discuss what's new and what's existing and some places then developed that way and it remained with two different strands. I see many organisations, I'm sure you do too, that still have this theoretical lab and then this practical side of things where they're attempting to do innovative things.
Roberta:Yeah, I agree with you. I do see that it should be much more, and in some places I actually see that happen and I have experienced it myself, luckily, because I always say I'm an extremely privileged and lucky human being. It should be much more integrated. I agree with you. Innovation is a term that I believe today we don't really need.
Roberta:It was breakthrough when we were doing it, or at least in our industry, it was breakthrough. Nowadays, it is more a matter of course. This is how our lives evolve, our personal lives. Look at you and I, I mean we've been all over the place in these years. Many places doing so many things.
Roberta:And it should be part and parcel of the normal way of working, the normal business. That's where actually I think Rather it's more than having these clusters as you call them, these labs or whatever, they are very distant from the business. There should be a lot of work with HR into changing that culture across the organization and probably, you know, with change management, so and so forth. But also you really have to work with people to have that change in mindset. And I'm talking about more traditional companies and possibly not so much the younger generation because to them it's normal.
Roberta:But yeah, I completely agree with you. If you live that mental agility, if you keep that with you every day and your entire organization functions around that concept, it's just just goes.
Duena:Right. That's exactly. I love that we've made that point. It's not a thing that we hear a lot. That's because so many industries are so incredibly fragmented.
Duena:I write about this continuously and every time I get. There's almost a very different vibe, if you wish in technology that exists today as compared to what we live then. I sound like those people in the rocking chair that are longing for the good days, but the drive and the hope and the very tangible change we could see happening is probably not going to come around. I feel super privileged that I met the industry, if you wish, at the time that Nectarios was asked if Fintech means Finnish technology. So that type of time will never come back again.
Duena:And we were very lucky and we were in the center of it all simply because we got there when these next steps for humanity needed to happen. Money needed to become digital, and we just happened to have the tools and the understanding of communicating this to the people around us. But now it becomes a question, I think, it's very much about the types of industries. I got out of fintech, I'd like to think and looking around it became very clear to me that the issues we were stumbling upon were never to do with technology and they were never to do with a specific process or never to do with any regulation. The most beloved excuse of anyone ever.
Duena:They were always to do with the organisation's ability of actually having the culture to deliver on these big promises. And the inability isn't necessarily special to banks, but I will say that the human debt I've seen in banking is probably greater to be very polite and calm than it is in other industries in the sense of if you look outside of financial technology at like pharma or retail or the focus there is on mindset, sometimes more. The focus there is a lot more times on the human itself and how do you move the individual in terms of development and the team and so on. So I've seen a lot more care about those cultural aspects outside of banking than I've ever seen inside banking. That very well may be me being impatient, but do you think that holds true that maybe banking is just not that big on understanding culture as other industries?
Roberta:So I would have agreed with you more years ago. Now my answer is it depends where you were geographically, funnily enough. I understand you're in Spain right now, is that correct? For example. So some Spanish banks are actually quite impressive the way they have worked on the culture of innovation and literal transformation within their organizations.
Roberta:I can say the same for The UK of course, Italy, Singapore, so on and so forth. So it really, France, it depends and it depends on the size of the banks as well. I think that nowadays there is a lot of effort into the culture change. If you take a look at investments the banks are making in hiring new profiles, tech, whether they be tech, data scientists, or profiles like ours, which are a mixture of business and technology, You can see there's a ramp up in investment and the hiring. So actually, there has been quite a huge change.
Roberta:And we are talking about one of the most traditional industries and the oldest industries in the world, right? For hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, seven hundreds of years, more, banks have had the identical business models that allowed them to continue to thrive, etcetera. Whereas now they're adapting to the changes and they are adopting digital business models. We think they're not quite there yet. But you know what?
Roberta:If I think back to where we stood when you and I met and with Natarius and all, when they said, Is this a Finnish, you know, I mean, Fintech? We didn't have It a was just a bunch of people brainstorming, sharing ideas, sharing intuitions and asking each other questions and or organizations who allowed us to trial and fail because nothing was there. So I think the advancements we thought we would have made like in 2015, I think we were very optimistic about
Duena:the golden era of everything's gonna be.
Roberta:Yeah, era. We were super optimistic but, you know, if we're realistic about things, things have changed quite a lot. And it was a massive change. And of course it took a lot of time and I agree with you, regulatory was an excuse for many and still is because actually regulation is changing and it's actually pushing in a sense
Duena:of for best, we are very grateful it's happening, but sometimes not.
Roberta:But I think there's that conversation going which is allowing changes. So I'm still optimistic, more realistic than before, but I think that we are in the right direction.
Duena:Things are Right, that's lot of optimism. In my other conversations, there was a lot of pessimism from some people I shan't name, because they are rightfully burnt out. And that's, I think, something that I don't know anyone that's lived through that period that has dealt with an amazing amount of burnout, whether it was, you know, work related stress, now leadership, but now autistic burnout, personal burnout, you name it, literally most people I've ever worked with have gone through trip or two around the horrible clock and that's understandable.
Roberta:Definitely very intense. We have lived, all of us have lived some extremely intense moments trying to push, push, push, push, push. So definitely that was part of the conversation, still is part of the conversation. Our good friend, Nectarious, has a whole podcast around well-being mental balance in entrepreneurs. That's still a huge ticket many people have to pay.
Roberta:But because I'm being realistic, this is a huge movement. And you said, We're not talking a hundred years ago, eighty years ago. So it is a very complex world and what I think is important to underline and to stress is that the energy is still there. The energy to change, the push is to still there, right? Look at what's happening, look all of the various domains, payments, etcetera.
Roberta:Yeah, we wanted things to happen this fast. They didn't, but they're not stopping. We're getting there.
Duena:And in a sense, look, we all knew and we do still know, right, that there's insane bloat in the technology world everywhere, right? I don't know that we need more than 10% of what we all we have. Equally we knew that there's like this explosion and this mushrooming of having thrown finances at what was at some point hundreds of thousands of companies on the exact same proposition. You and I were mentors for various things over the years, Techstars, Startup Bootcamp. So we've seen, I don't know, I'd say thousands of startups up close.
Duena:That ecosystem was thriving, but not necessarily healthy. I see that it has shifted to a degree to propositions that are more, that are sexy. Obviously, we see though this finally to the question happening with AI now. And the question I have to you is, you know, kind of beyond getting a smarter answering machine at the bank, which we still haven't quite cracked. And there are a couple of two or three of those things that we've always wanted to do.
Duena:I think I'm comprehend why we're so behind. But beyond that, do we not fear that that same type of mushrooming is going to happen now in the sense of the billions of enterprises attempting to do something in the ML space?
Roberta:Oh yeah. I think that's part of the human behavior. Whenever there's a big thing that attracts attention and potentially money, there's a flock of people who go and try to do their thing, hoping to become the next best thing. So yeah, I suspect that, yeah, AI, gen AI and everything is going to be this mushroom that you mentioned. It's slightly more difficult, slightly more difficult.
Roberta:It's much more difficult than other topics because of many well known reasons, attracting a lot of people and a lot of, I think a lot of energy is gonna go there, yeah. Even And make though, the mushroom.
Duena:Know what you mean. We'll see where it goes. And you know, for all we know, we might achieve singularities before that happens, and they'll unplug us before we do crazy experiments. Yeah.
Roberta:There's a lot of podcasts around AI, and of course there's the huge debate. Are they gonna wipe us well
Duena:let's leave it in a corner, yeah.
Roberta:No, it's never gonna happen.
Duena:I really like this, you talk about the future, where we all have exact same universal income and we all just get to be creative. I don't, not sure if I believe it, but it would be lovely to see some glimpses of it before it pass. I doubt it. Question I had was around something much more tangible than these fun things, which is walk me through why there was an explosion of and the mushroom on the topic of blockchain. And let me attempt to formulate the question in a way that's not upsetting anyone.
Duena:Don't know if I can. I'm a novice and someone who doesn't comprehend more than the mechanism. But why is there so much more to be said other than the mechanism?
Roberta:So the blockchain opened a wealth of opportunities in our minds, right? Back in the days when we started discussing about blockchain, it wasn't only about cryptocurrency. We were also thinking about the blockchain, for The example, in
Duena:first propositions were around that. Think very few people realise this, but we judge propositions from textiles that had to do with, I think the first propositions were within the diamond industry, the first propositions were within logistics. It only came to finance a minute after.
Roberta:Yeah, so that was the interesting bit around the blockchain as a concept. And then of course the finance bit came fairly quickly and the cryptocurrency. And at the beginning, was an amazingly fascinating movement because it was about creating something which was not under the control of the central banks and countries. And it was more linked to freedom. So you
Duena:had an idealistic sort
Roberta:of The freedom of doing things. It had an idealistic quality to it. Or that's what I remember thinking back in the days, which fascinated me a lot. Of course, we have several very close friends of ours who are crypto champions globally, etcetera. So they're the experts.
Roberta:But back in the days, this was the big thing around blockchain. And now of course, lot is crypto and not only, but yeah, I'm still very connected to the initial, let's say ideas are.
Duena:You're in the past. Yeah,
Roberta:yeah, yeah. Of course, crypto and the whole world, it's bit reductive. There's a lot going on. You just open whatever website you read or whatever or Twitter, LinkedIn, I've there's a lot of being
Duena:cancel it, I've seen leave yesterday, so I think we've canceled Twitter. Okay, okay, cancel Don't the go back, I think you didn't get the money on.
Roberta:I'm No, I didn't. I'm not using it. But yeah, so it's a whole universe. But yeah, No, sorry I
Duena:not bothered to hear. That's the point. That's what free people have tuned in to listen to us babbling a little bit as well. And also giving them some tea, which we won't. Every episode I explain we will not name names.
Duena:We know all the bad people in fintech, we're not going to tell you who they are. We know all the good people in fintech will tell you who they are when the time comes. We live there. I think what's really exciting is that you still have your heart into it. And one of the key questions I was going to ask you is, how do you manage to keep yourself as intrinsically motivated by the vision as you have always been?
Roberta:Oh, this is so easy for me. I just love it. Just love it. It's just my passion. I mean, I just love doing it.
Roberta:I love the idea of being one of the people who, millions, who actually contribute to making the system better, to changing it, to making it more friendly for the users, people like you and I, and companies, because companies are users as well, etcetera, etcetera. I just love it. It's just my passion. Might sound a bit sad. Mean, might come across as being sad for people, but I
Duena:I should just love
Roberta:just love it. I love changing things so they can be improved just think Just just the the amazing.
Duena:That's absolutely amazing. That's indeed the only thing they can carry us, isn't it? If we weren't all having our hearts into it, would have long gone given up.
Roberta:No. And the amazing people we come across, and we have come across throughout the years, and the amazing conversations, intellectually stimulating, never banal, All encompassing because you touch so many aspects. You touch people. You touch behaviors. You touch the needs.
Roberta:You touch socio political geographical situations. It's so all encompassing. It's just amazingly
Duena:That's good for us that we are crazy enough to be nerd enough to be excited about these But that's a really good point for anyone listening. You have to actually get passionate about it. Otherwise it will murder you. It's a hard thing to change, you will never change from the inside. We've both been entrepreneurs and extrepanors and all kinds of preneurs.
Duena:And there is no easy path. Change is hard from both sides. Change is painful. It makes you feel like the world is in great and it's not going as fast as you'd like. It's the cause of why we're not all on a yacht and having the lives that we were hoping for.
Duena:But we also believe in what we're doing so strongly. Once you see it and once you see that corridor where you can make the genuine impact, it's almost impossible to turn away from it. Don't know how you where you are on the spectrum. I'm autistic and I can't once I've started on down the path, I have to keep going. So that's probably part of it.
Duena:But how was it being a woman though, doing that? I think another. I don't normally ask that because you know, we all live through those moments, I'm trying to be arrogant, where we decided whether or not feminism in banking is a thing we need to do full time or not. I like to say it. So, and we had very controversial moments over the years with people who were making it into just a career for the sake of it, because that wasn't necessarily helpful.
Duena:We've had, you know, cis males and people helping them that have pushed maybe the wrong messaging for a while. How have you found it? Were both women coming from Latin culture, so few were quite loud, quite visible, quite passionate, quite thorny in the side of multiple mayors in our careers. How have you found it?
Roberta:Ah good question. So there have been moments that it was extremely difficult. And you know me, I'm also tiny.
Duena:She's perfect for anyone not seeing this and not having seen Roberta. She's absolutely perfect. She is tiny, but mighty imperfect.
Roberta:That's so sweet of you. I'm tiny. So actually, when you're in a room and we're all standing and people just talk over your head because physically that's what happens. That's also part and parcel of who I am. So aside from this, which did have an impact, this tininess in some circumstances, I've had some very difficult moments, as I said.
Roberta:But the trick is, I think the internal psychological trick is to treat yourself and the other people, you first, as absolutely identical and equal, which we are. But you, you have to be the first person to embody that concept and behavior. So, we are, you and I are both extremely determined and strong willed people, which does not mean we are rude. Quite the opposite, I think.
Duena:Oh, I've been rude. I can be rude. You are elegant. Am rude as well.
Roberta:No, that's not true. You're not rude. But the but you can be assertive in a very nice and polite way, right? So you have to embody who you are and just bring that with you everywhere and whatever you're doing. So back in the days, was much more difficult than today.
Roberta:I was one of the very few women in a meeting room or in a, were one of the very few women
Duena:in conference Absolutely, it would be three or four women in total in an entire conference, absolutely.
Roberta:Do you remember when we were panelists and we were the only women and then they started paying attention to that and bringing in more women? So, but I think that, reputation, being, which you build throughout the years, so before that, being honest in what you do, how you do things, being passionate, being true to yourself and embodying that, I think that was key for all of us. It wasn't trying to fight or to quarrel. It was People were doing that and that was great, that we needed that. But not necessarily that was key to me, for example.
Roberta:I just was very adamant in bringing my position.
Duena:I like that, I like that. And I think it's really important to anyone listening who is identifying as female that it's going to be tougher if you're going to be in some organizations and in some environments and in particular in banking. I will be honest, I think it is key, like Roberta says, to forget about that being tough first. You have to first forget that it's happening. If you're going to fall back on your victimhood, you're never going to survive a day in an environment like that.
Duena:So from many points of view, couldn't stop to sit around and moan that we are the only women around, because then that's the only conversation. That's the only thing we would have been doing instead of doing the things that were Precisely. At And then we brought to life exactly what was the fear, which is that we aren't quite good enough. So we had to really pull our weight and have the results that were expected of us. But what I would like to say, I don't even know if you know this, because we haven't spoken much in the last few years, Scott, is that I'm proud that some of us in a sense, and those of us who were there, and the few of us then, have done so with with without attempting to not be women at the same time, if that makes sense.
Duena:We were very Yes. Culturally feminine and women while going through this. We could have very easily, like, as in, you know, been that classic Kim Wipes the episode of Better Call Saul where every woman is dressed in the same suit. But Roberta and I were some of the people who were staunchly not doing that so that we can model. And then we never spoken in a while, but there is a lady whose name I won't mention, but necessarily, I don't even know if that's good or not, if she would like us to or not, but she has confided in me years later that looking at people like myself and you who were wearing their makeup, who were having a privilege if they wanted to, who were wearing the skirt and the Ted Baker if they felt like it, has helped her continue to be a strong female in the workplace at times when she was desperately trying to believe that she has to conform to get anywhere.
Duena:So that confession of course has powered me and I hope you take something out of it as well.
Roberta:Thank you for sharing that. That's very nice. Yeah, that's actually, I didn't wear I
Duena:don't I didn't wear trousers. Do not own trousers.
Roberta:No. Heels and trousers. And that actually was very different compared to what I used to wear, because I was always one with trousers, you know? But I then had this, it was a unconscious maybe, I can't remember. But at one point I think I must've thought, why should I mimic a man?
Roberta:I mean, plus, you know, I am minute, I'm tiny. So some women really look great I trouser don't. I don't. I don't. And then why should I not wear colors or dresses or heels?
Roberta:It doesn't diminish me. You know, my power is here. This
Duena:is But having having that piece of thinking is kind of what has set us apart from other people who are literally not doing that at all. People have very obviously not people, but everyone around us was desperately attempting to get somewhere. How you got there and how you presented yourself why you did it was harder or easier depending on the choices you were making. We knew when we decided to present a certain way, it's not necessarily an easier choice and it would make, you know, there's no going away from the fact that being a woman in banking, you'll enter those rooms where you'll know within twenty seconds, if you give into it that they think you're no one and you shouldn't be there and you're in imposition or you don't know enough or you're not senior enough or you're not just not male enough and not cis enough and not all the things enough and or neurotypical enough. So if you lean into that, instead of starting with your courage and your passion, it can very easily eat at you.
Duena:And I suspect that hasn't changed even for a new generation, the more we lean into the bits that are and gender is one of them. There are so many other reasons to feel less than in the workplace, in particular, you're trying to make big moves in any industry that can't let it get to you. It's kind of, I think, our role.
Roberta:I agree. I agree, but it goes back to what I said, I think it connects to what I said before, when you have to embody and you have to be who you are. You know, and I, Gwena, you and I have ever since childhood moved around a lot in different culture, completely different places in globe, etcetera, etcetera. I think that also built us the way we are. We don't give in to peer pressure.
Roberta:I had my own identity. You had your own identity, no matter where we were and who the people around us were, right? So, aside from that brief moment where I was wearing trousers that I thought it was also fashionable to do so before Which you were. Understanding Not necessarily the best choice. But you know, I am I and you are you.
Roberta:And again, the power is here. Peer pressure takes me nowhere. I mean, I don't feel it and neither do you. And I think that's what makes a difference.
Duena:And I think that's a really good message for them. I keep thinking of the people that I'm talking to these days, I've just I try to never envision the faces of the bad people in FinTech that are listening. I don't think they would, they don't care to learn anything. But the people that are listening, know are a particular part of this new and amazing generation coming to change things, coming to change things heart, coming to change things from a place of this triumphant I have assumed my identity. So the reason I'm bringing up our moment is because this little bit of pride we have in having done kind of the same things where it was a lot harder because no one else around was doing.
Duena:But we know where they're coming from now. Know what this today site is for as well. But I just want to say we've touched on so many things we've talked about, let's say, all the panoply of innovation there was in fintech ever and also a dash of feminism on top of it. I really appreciate it though, because it means that we've talked about the things that matter to us, and I hope that people can feel it. And thank you so much for coming on, Roberta.
Duena:I'd like to have you again. I have a couple more
Roberta:Thank you so much.
Duena:But I'd love I'd for coming so far. And thank you for keeping up the fight and this amazing passion that you've been spreading for all of us. We wouldn't be the same where we are in banking without you. Thank you.
Roberta:Thank you so much.