Women in Payments: Annette Slidge

As we’ve mentioned before, PaymentsSource estimates that women represent only 30% of the workforce in the fintech industry. Global Payments Integrated wants to share the unique experiences of women in the payments industry, so in January, we launched our first-ever Women in Payments interview series.

Our latest interview is with Annette Slidge, Head of Enterprise Integrated Strategic Clients here at Global Payments Integrated.

We spoke with Annette about topics such as her career, women working in payments, and the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Read on for the insights she shared.

Mackenzie Miller:

Hi, Annette. Welcome to our Women in Payments series. It's so great to connect with you today. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what your current role is, your background and where your career really started off.

Annette Slidge:

Great. Hi, Mackenzie, and thank you for giving me the opportunity. So, first of all, just a little bit about myself. I live in Atlanta. It's just myself and Norm. No kids or pets to speak of. I'm one of five girls. I was raised by a military dad. And so I think that sticks with me, that discipline, because he ran us like little soldiers, all five girls, no boys. So, my role is, I head up our Enterprise Account Management team, which really drives revenue and growth and retention for some of our largest clients. Think about a Sportsman's Warehouse or a Housmans Restaurant division or the Gap. Those are the type of customers that my team is responsible for driving revenue and growth. And my career started, it's kind of a funny story. I actually worked for a staffing company and recruited for payments companies and financial services companies and thought this was an interesting piece of business and I want to understand it better. And so there was an opportunity at one of those companies. This is my third company rodeo. I've been with two other very large processors before coming to Global and had an opportunity to help manage their help desk as my entrance into the industry and then moved into sales and account management. I've run probably all parts of the customer experience - implementations, that type of thing.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's awesome. That's funny, actually my first job was a recruiter as well. Mine was more for tech, but we're kind of in a fintech industry now. So I fell in love with that side and also wanted to learn maybe more about the finance side. So, very cool.

I do know that you are a part of the Diversity and Inclusion Program at Global Payments integrated. So I'm interested to learn how we can encourage organizational change and individual support to ensure more women of color get an opportunity to advance their careers and gain leadership positions.

Annette Slidge:

Great. Thank you, Mackenzie, for that question. Yes. So my second job, I say, at Global, is that I do chair our Inclusion and Diversity Advisory Council, driving the corporate inclusion and diversity initiatives for the organization. And I think it's such a great question. And I think one of the things that we need to do is just notice that we don't have enough diversity and be intentional in that we want to expand that because again, diversity just breeds better outcomes, more creativity, more - greater ideation, I think across the enterprise, when you have diverse perspectives in any part of the org. Sponsor a woman of color. How do we promote intentionally women of color and develop them into those promotional roles?

So I think there will be more about sponsorship coming out corporately that will help us move that needle forward. You can be a person that recognizes a woman of color and wants to engage and understand what we can do to help them in a one/one. In fact, I think some of those one-on-one engagements are the most impactful, quite honestly.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's, that's really amazing. I really appreciate that you're a part of that, and I always want to learn more. So I really appreciate you being open about that. And that kind of goes into my next question of how can women support other women in the corporate world?

Annette Slidge:

Again, a great question. I think one thing is just sharing, right. Sharing our experiences. And as we move up through the organizational ladder, leaning back and helping others. I also think, challenging one another. Just a brief story: at a point in my career, I was leading a team and there was a young lady that didn't work on my team. This is at a different company, and their leadership saw some skills and talents in her that would really fit into the organization that I led.

But I had noticed, just in my own observation, some things that I think she needed to work on in order for me to feel like she would be the right fit for my team in terms of skill set. And we had what I call those quiet conversations, right. You pull to the side and give that constructive feedback,, with intentional recommendations on what they can do to move forward. And she did. And she joined my team. We hired her and she had a very successful career post that. So I think that leaning back those quiet, honest conversations are really important. One woman to another.

Mackenzie Miller:

I agree with that, and I've been really lucky to have a lot of women surrounding me that want to build me up, so it's been really, really helpful in my career specifically. What advice do you have for women working in payments, in the industry right now?

Annette Slidge:

Well, you know, I thought about this question, I really think beyond payments, I think just women working in business in general, I think this is applicable, whether it's payments or any other industry that you may be in.

One is you have to know who you are. Right? Understand who you are. Understand your strengths. And oftentimes we tend to focus on our weaknesses. Right. I say understand your strengths and hone those strengths. Build out based on your strengths. I mean, the weaknesses are there. You can circle others. You can work towards them, but know what your strengths are and build on those to move you forward in whatever direction that is for your own career.

I also think, have passion around what you're doing and circle around others that support your goals and pull them into your circle. And be authentic to yourself. I think that's so important. I think authenticity is a key to success. I think when you're authentic, people trust you. Once you're trusted, then you're credible. I think inauthenticity is very easily identified and sometimes you can develop a sense that people don't believe you are true. And I think it's very hard for people to connect to someone that they don't believe is authentic, so I think authenticity is important.

And then lastly, take care of yourself. I think as women, especially as women in business, we tend to just work, work, work, hard, hard, hard. We don't decompress. And oftentimes we lose our ability to be creative. I know that's my own personal experience, when you don't pull away and decompress and then come back, so you take care of yourself and decompress. It sounds rote, but I think it’s really important.

Mackenzie Miller:

No, I like that. Especially the authenticity aspect. When I first started my career, I actually, so I graduated in 2017. So, still kind of new to everything, learning. But I remember my first job that we talked about, I was so worried that they weren't going to like something I did or something I said, because I'm a very just like, I'm an outspoken person.

And then I just finally realized, like, I have to be who I am or I'm not going to be happy in this situation. So it was fine to kind of like, learn and grow into myself a little bit more in the workplace as well.

So with fintech growing at a rapid rate, I feel like technology in general, every time you turn around, something new is changing or evolving in the way we do things. What do you think will be the biggest trend in payments over the next few years?

Annette Slidge:

Well, I think for, for any industry - we really tap into all industries - it's really driving commerce, and it's really driving that client experience to bring commerce to your business. And I think anything that helps facilitate that from the client experience is going to be where payments goes.

So, for instance, biometrics, geolocation identification, things like analytics, anything artificial intelligence, right. Creative marketing. We actually had a customer, it's a retail sports store. They actually were opening a big brand new store and were using athlete holograms, right, to get people to come into the store. So I think all of those things will drive where payments goes. And really what I love about Global, we don't really consider ourselves a payments company, though that's where we are placed. We're really an entity to drive commerce. And I think those solutions that help our clients do that will have a huge effect in this sphere of this industry.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's awesome. Yeah, I really like the part about the holograms, I've never seen that yet. So hopefully someday when I'm going into a store or something, I will get to.

Annette Slidge:

I was at a museum and they did a hologram. It's a little spooky, I'll be honest, but it was really, really fascinating. So, yeah, I - that was interesting. It would certainly make me go to the store.

Mackenzie Miller:

Yeah. So I know it's always good to have people like influencers or someone that you follow to get your news, to get updates. Do you have any recommendations for female finance or tech influencers that we should be following or someone that you personally enjoy to follow?

Annette Slidge:

Yeah, so I, I hope I'm not too long on this question because I thought about a couple of people.

First of all, I'll start with our own company. So when you think about Andréa Carter, our CHRO, right. Or Stacy Hughes, our CISO, or even Theresa Gongora that works within Integrated and head of our finance, they have been big change agents in our industry and we are starting to see more women in these C-level roles. But that's, I feel somewhat new over maybe the last 10, 15 years. And so right within our own organization, those are influential women in payments you can follow.

But for me personally, there's a couple of others that I follow. And I think partly because they're Black women in the industry that are really taking strong leadership roles at organizations. One is Colleen Taylor. She is now President of Merchant Services for American Express. But previously she was EVP for Wells Fargo Merchant Services. And she's one, sits on many boards, sits on all the community boards like Europe. So she's one to follow.

The other one, interesting. she's not U.S. She's out of Britain. Her name is Paulette Rao, and she leads, she's CEO for Integrated and e-Commerce for PaySafe. So, very similar to the organization we sit in and really, really has been recognized as the top twenty five women influential in payment, top 10 in minority leaders in Britain. She's African and African-Caribbean. So it's not African-American, as we typically think. But certainly I think she is someone influential in payments to look. And for those of us of color, who in the payments industry really have not seen a lot of diversity there, is especially inspiring for me.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's awesome. I've definitely started to try to follow more accounts and kind of expand my horizons as well, with, I think there's been a lot going on in this world, especially this year. It's been a crazy, crazy time. Always learning and kind of growing. I think that's amazing. So what advice would you give someone wanting to pursue a career similar to your own?

Annette Slidge:

So when I think about that, and obviously my career is leading our Enterprise team, but really it's about leadership and that's really how I have defined my career. I happen to be in payments. I happen to lead teams, but it's really leadership in general.

And I think the thing that you have to do is be somewhat opportunistic. Opportunities will fall there for you. And sometimes as a woman our nature is, we want to check all the boxes before we take on an opportunity, right. And sometimes our male counterparts, they'll just jump off the building and get their wings on the way down, right. And so I think we have to be opportunistic - opportunistic and take advantage of those opportunities.

And again, I think you have to know your gifts. You have to understand what those gifts and what those talents are and say I'm going to hone into what's my talent and my gift. I think you have to be flexible and adaptable. I mean, when I started at Global, day two, we had our first acquisition, and five years in, I think I've been through four, right, so - acquisitions and mergers. So you have to be flexible, you have to be adaptable. I think also you have to have a sense of humor. You have to laugh at yourself and allow others to laugh with you, right. I think sometimes we take ourselves too serious, and don't over-professionalize what you're trying to do.

I think, again, be authentic to who you are. And then you have to go get the expertise. So whatever you determine are your skills and your goals, you have to have that expertise and then allow those skills to be transferable from one type of role to another.

Mackenzie Miller:

So I know earlier we were kind of talking about that you recently saw a change maybe in the last 10 years of more women in leadership-type roles, C-suite level. What do you think, how do you think we could encourage more women to pursue these leadership-type roles?

Annette Slidge:

Well, I think, one, when we see more women in them, I think that frees women to say, oh, I can do this as well.

It's the same thing when minorities are moved into those very visible leadership roles, then they think, well, they can do it, I can do it. So I think first, is being intentional in moving women into roles of leadership that are very visible for all the women to see. And then back to what we talked about earlier, Mackenzie, the sponsorship, intentionally identifying those women or those minorities that we feel like maybe for whatever reason, maybe unconscious bias, maybe just we're doing things always the way we've done them, we haven't identified those players and then identify and work with them to help them move into some more of those visible roles, because then it sort of becomes a life circle, right? So you move them into roles,another young woman sees they can have that role, that you work with that person and move them into a role, another young woman, and over time you will see that expand.

Mackenzie Miller:

I love to hear that. I definitely am interested maybe in the future in a leadership role and seeing all these great women before me pursue that definitely does make me feel like I also could have that opportunity too. So it's very cool.

And what advice would you give someone who maybe wants to become more involved within their organization? What would you say to them?

Annette Slidge:

Well, and I think it's, again, use your skills and maybe do something different than you normally would do, right.

So for me, using the example of chairing the Inclusion and Diversity Advisory Council, it has afforded me an opportunity outside of just working with Global Payments Integrated to meet and engage with others through Global that I probably wouldn't have just met with them organically for several years, that I'm now able to engage and talk with. So it gives you exposure.

When you just take on a role, stand up and say I'll lead a project, it can be a little intimidating. It can be a little scary. But again, we're going to jump off the building and get our wings going down, right. So I'll take it on, you know, use your skills, work hard. And, and that allows you to broaden your perspectives within the organization as well and for people to see you more visibly also.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's really good tips. I really appreciate that. I want to switch gears here and get maybe a little bit more personal, a little more about yourself. So who are the three people you have been the most - who have been the most influential to you?

Annette Slidge:

Well, that was very hard, so I tried to bucket this question, Mackenzie. So, I mean, the first one I'm going to bucket into one category is my mother and father. So they were both very influential in my life. They're unfortunately not with us any longer. But my mother, right after she went to college, she lived in very small southern towns, married my dad, and he was career military. And here she is from little small towns, over in Ankara, Turkey, which is where I was born, with two young ones, and now she's pregnant with another one. And I always felt like that was very courageous for her to be able to do that. She also was very involved in the community and she was president of a civic organization, director of a community center. That's where I get some of my community and civic perspectives from.

And my father, who just was a hard worker. And it's interesting because my father actually dropped out of high school. His family put him back in three years later and he graduated and went on to have a great career in the military, but then went to college. He and I were in college almost at the same time, part of the time. And then he went on to have a great career in finance after that. And so just determination, the hard work, optimism is what my father gave me. So that's my first bucket.

My second bucket is kind of funny, right? Because, my friends, when I say this they always laugh at me. Because I, and the reason I picked this person is because I think this person individually, you wouldn't say she's great at any of these things, but collectively she's made a great success.

And that's Jennifer Lopez. And the reason I say that is if you think about it, you wouldn't say she's the best dancer, the best singer, the best actress. She's beautiful, but not necessarily the most beautiful. But when you hone it all together and she took all her gifts and she made them work as hard as she could make those gifts work. And I think as women, if we just take what our gifts are and we don't have to be the brilliant one or the prettiest one or the most technical one, but if you take what you have and you just really hone in and work hard, you can be super successful. And I think she just demonstrates that, when you think about her personality, her skill set, there's not one great thing about it. But you put it all together using her skills and she just has this mega career across the world.

And then lastly, the girls that I went to college with, my sorority sisters, and that sounds kind of trite, but these ladies have inspired me. I have a friend that was in the FBI and she was just interviewed on 60 Minutes because she's one of five that are working with the FBI now on inclusion and diversity and three are published authors. And I have one that was recognized by American Express for the Small Business Woman of the Year. I mean, these girls are doing great things, so they keep me on my toes to keep pushing for it with my own goals and objectives.

Mackenzie Miller:

I love that, especially the Jennifer Lopez one.

Annette Slidge:

Most people don't think of that, right, they always think of some profound person. But she really - I always get teased about that. But I really do feel like she's done what she's supposed to do with what God gave her, so.

Mackenzie Miller:

I agree. What else have you learned over the years to better equip yourself when working mostly with male leadership or male counterparts?

Annette Slidge:

Well, again, I, and I've said this, I know this is sort of a theme in my conversation today, but really it's being authentic and I think also with men, no harm to our male counterparts, but sometimes you have to be really bold and you have to like, kind of force your way in.

And this is just sort of a true story. I love telling stories, it's how I get my points across. But a true story. I was at a meeting and in the role I'm in a lot of times, whether it's my clients or even internally, it's a lot of men. Sometimes I'm the only female, the only Black.

And I, we have finished the meeting and I came into the hotel and there was like 10 men from the meeting, right. And senior level, all sitting there talking at the bar area. And my first instinct was like, oh, I'm just going to go up to my room. It's all guys. And then I said, nope, I'm going to go over and I'm going to have a drink with these guys and I'm going to engage.

And so sometimes you just have to be bold and have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, right. And making your way in and being a little directive to get your points across. But never exchange who you are as a woman. Just be ourselves, but be bold and be courageous and be okay with being a little uncomfortable.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's, that's really good advice. This one's kind of an interesting, fun question, but what superhero would you most want to be like and why?

Annette Slidge:

Well, I love Wonder Woman, right? I, I just, I'm not going to, she's a bad, you know what, right? I just think she was powerful, she was smart, she could outdo the guys. And you know what? If you've ever watched the Wonder Woman story, right? I mean, she also, as a little girl, worked really hard to hone her skills, again, right. It's taking your talents and your gifts, and she worked really hard to make them what they were. And so she's my favorite, my favorite hero, superhero. And I'm waiting to do Wonder Woman 1984. I haven't watched yet, but that's on my list for the weekend.

Mackenzie Miller:

Yeah. The first one was so good. I haven't seen that other one either, but I'll have to, have to put that one on my list, for sure.

Annette Slidge:

That's right.

Mackenzie Miller:

And then the final question, what is your favorite thing about working in our industry, in the payments tech industry?

Annette Slidge:

Well, first of all, I think technology is what makes the world go around. Right. And we really play a big part in that.

But secondly is, is the stories I hear from our customers. We have one customer, huge. Three hundred, four hundred million in sales. But it was a restaurant. But that restaurant, the gentleman started that company and now it was public and all that. But at the time he started that company selling hot dogs out of his own truck, you know, and twenty five years later, it's a four hundred million plus in sales company, right.

I just find those kinds of stories, and there are lots of them, as I work with customers, that I just find interesting. And to know we have a part in that, I think is really just fun to work with our customers and to be a part of that.

Mackenzie Miller:

That's awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to deep-dive into topics surrounding diversity, women in the workplace and some great career advice. So thank you for speaking with me today.

Annette Slidge:

Well, thank you. It was fun. I hope it was helpful. I appreciate being invited to the conversation.