Amy Parsons Senior Vice President Discover

 

After an impressive 25⁺-year career at Discover, Amy Parsons, Senior Vice President, is ready to spend more time with her family and in her garden, nurturing the things she loves. The three-time recipient of PaymentsSource’s Most Influential Women in Payments will retire from Discover in July 2022.

 

Known for representing the global nature of the payments industry, one of Amy’s biggest career accomplishments was building a global ATM network from scratch within a year to serve Discover's acquisition of Diners Club International.

 

Brianna Frost and Joanna Hanner, other accomplished women at Discover, sat down with Amy to explore her career, her connection with Wnet, and her hopes for the industry and the women who are helping it grow and prosper.

 

Amy: I was invited to Wnet’s first Career and Leadership Summit in 2006 and I was curious about this new group of women. There was a small group of us at that first event as compared to the hundreds who attend today. I explored their new views of the payments industry and spent much of my time simply listening – to the speakers, like ETA Hall of Famer Pam Joseph, and those around me. I started to make connections and could see the value of networking with these innovative women.

 

Soon after joining Wnet, I knew it was important to get Discover involved. I became our Corporate Champion of engagement because I realized that women helping women was so powerful and an endeavor that Discover should support. I wanted us to make a difference in the lives of women in our organization and beyond.

 

Amy: During my career, I’ve been a mentor, sponsor, advocate, coach and leader – all the important support roles to help others not only in their careers but in their daily lives too. The goal is to make a huge difference without the person ever knowing that you were involved. I think coaching and advocating are probably the two I’ve spent the most time on recently to help women understand what’s going on behind the closed doors.

 

Our environments are becoming a very critical aspect of something that we have to take care of and feed. The pandemic opened up a world of opportunity and knowledge. Women took on most of the work at home while still needing time to do their jobs well. The challenges made it very clear that we need to have changes in corporate environments. I think it's very important for anyone in a leadership position to be a big advocate of changes like flexible work schedules. With the pandemic we have a great catalyst to create a shift and that shouldn’t be wasted. We have to be the voice for change so we don’t slip back to the traditional workplace way of life.

 

We need to support each other, root for each other to keep moving forward. It can be peer-to-peer support and also employee-to-manager and leader-to-employee. Back in 2017 after I won the award for Most Influential Women in Payments from PaymentsSource, I received a promotion. Wnet women started talking to others about my successes…and with me…and around me in ways I never experienced before. It was such a sense of power knowing that I wasn’t alone and there were people wanting to see me succeed.

 

It's not all about career advancement. It's about helping each other in our daily work, all the time. Women can sometimes have competitive relationships with their peers. If you think about each other as being advocates instead of competitors, you can frame your relationships around how you can empower each other. There are more spaces at the table now, and we can create even more space so we don't have to compete. We can make a difference, together.

 

Amy: It’s a question of what a company sees is valuable in a leader. Or what's required to be successful in that environment. I’ll use sports as the easiest example. While “growing up” in my career, and even as recently as two years ago, most meetings started with the men talking about sports. Now, I like sports, but I don't like sports that much and I definitely don't know players or stats. However, I think the dimension has changed in meeting rooms today. If you think about the conversations that are happening now, they are much more diverse, especially when you have 35% women in the room – or on the call – and it's definitely different when there are more than 50% women included.

 

The style of conversations has also changed. The pandemic triggered a dimension shift. It became very clear that empathetic leaders were critical. As you start thinking about moving forward in a corporate environment, that empathy must be there. And research has shown that women leaders during the pandemic tended to be more empathetic than their male counterparts.*

 

In the past, being an aggressive leader, was an important trait that many corporations valued. I could give you an example of an organization where it’s still true: to get ahead, you would need to have more of the traditional male traits. But I could also give you 10 other examples where that is not the culture.

 

I think the most important thing is to be who you are, period. And I'll use myself as an example. I am a more aggressive, assertive go-getter. I can come in punching pretty hard when I want to and sometimes, I don't even recognize I'm doing it since it’s just my natural tendency. Some people are like circles. Others are more like a square with pointy edges. I have sharp edges on occasion and I know that, but I also know that in our environment, I have to sometimes round out my edges. It doesn't mean that I'm a square turned into a circle; it means I'm a square that took off the sharp edges when needed.

 

We must know who we are and be very deliberate about that when we show up as leaders. If it's authentic, it feels right for you, it feels right to the people around you. They will appreciate that. And that is what people follow.

 

It's very important for people who are empathetic to use that trait. It's so valuable. Play to your strengths. Similar to branding, it's not just about knowing who you are, it’s about sharing who you are to the people around you. And then find others who are your counterpoints and get them to be your advocates. Let them show up for you.

 

 

Amy: These are huge generalizations, but I believe women tend to be good team builders and we look for different types of people to join a group because it creates better balance. Women generally tend to look for success as a “group,” not for just themselves.

 

I already mentioned empathy as a strength. Another is efficiency. We want to come into a meeting, get the points, create action items and then move on to get it done. We don’t want to repeat what others have said just to be heard.

 

However, not being heard can hurt us from a leadership perspective. Being the “voice,” even if it's repeating something already said, is an important dimension that women must pay attention to during meetings, especially virtual calls where you don’t have that physical presence. We need to understand the environment and what people value in order to say the thing that will get people to be highly engaged.

 

Another behavior that can hold us back is competing with each other. I don’t hear about this issue as much as say five years ago. I think women are helping each other more now, empowering each other more, which is wonderful.

 

Amy: Number one, we are not the only women in the boardroom anymore. We're at large double-digit percentages, depending on where you are – 30 to 50% in some companies!

 

Number two, many Wnet women, and women in our industry, are creating successful startups or are in startups being led by women. I don't know the stats, but I'll bet if it we looked back 10 or 15 years there was probably just one. And now there are many with limitless opportunities.

 

Number three, there's an acknowledgment that diversity is now important. Research drives it and confirms it. As a corporate leader, you really have to lean into DE&I because it's been proven that successful companies are more diverse companies.

 

Amy: I think it’s just continuing so much of the work that's already in motion today. Now is the time for us to help each other and I think there's nothing more powerful than that, whether it's behind the scenes or publicly. We need to invite other women to join us at the table – push out our elbows to make space.

 

Once there, I hope they can create a space to do what they want to do instead of what they had to do, like in the past. And I hope to help nurture these spaces since I’m not disappearing after I retire. You’ll see me around because this group is too important and I want to see it continue to flourish.