G: What are everyday things that you do at your company that fosters business growth and even personal growth?

S: As I think about what I do to push the organization, the first thing that I always start with is our mission. I think being a very customer-centric organization is crucial. As a result, any problem we're facing or challenge we're thinking about, we start with, "What's our goal here?" Our goal always comes back to that mission. For us, the goal is around enabling the global majority to be true owners of their financial life, to be financial agents. That means giving our customers access to a financial system and the ability to choose products and have awareness and control.

Because we simplify it back to the roots of the organization, we can look through if it's a capability we’re missing. Do we need to approach this from a technical side and the tools or capabilities our teams need to solve the problem? Is it a trade-off between mission and pricing? Ideally, we're always optimizing both. By starting from the customer pain point and how the business shows up to solve it, the team is able to cut through noise very efficiently.

G: Any emerging trends that have caught your eye? Technologies or strategies?

S: The new paradigm around AI and how we continue to leverage machine learning within financial services is really exciting. We've been using machine learning throughout the last nine years of Tala for our proprietary credit models, servicing, and various product suite aspects for our customers.

As we see shifts in technology around AI, it's exciting to think about how we can do more enablement for our small business owners. We can provide them with products outside of financial services, such as optimizing their businesses, giving them guidance on pricing, helping family money managers prioritize bills, or filling out paperwork for other services seamlessly.

If we leverage AI for our customer base, we can prevent many segments from being left behind. I'm excited to see how we can leverage it for them.

G: As a leader, how do you stay grounded?

Do no harm

I have two mantras I always come back to. First is "do no harm." There are personal goals and business goals, but if we create goals that help everyone, we see more success. People want to help you if you're not harming anyone.

You can always begin again

The second mantra is "you can always begin again." This one is about risk-taking and approaching challenges. If we do things outside our comfort zone, we might not do them right the first time, but we can always start again. This mindset helps get rid of fear.