“Nobody wins alone, especially in a 30,000-person organization. We win because we work across teams to get that success”

Panelle was thrilled to have Michelle Carter as the first guest on our Panelle Talks Podcast. Michelle is Executive Vice President of Services Business Development, North America at Mastercard. This means she leads sales for Mastercard services in the region, managing a team of over 150 people. On the podcast we discussed her sparkling success and how to create impact in a worldwide organization.

To listen to the full episode, visit Panelle Talks on Spotify or click here. For now though, here are some of the highlights of our chat…

So, Michelle, tell us a little bit about your role.

Every day is different. We look after over 1100 customers within the US and Canada who are widely different. You have our largest issuers like Citi and Capital One all the way to some of our smallest merchants.

[There’s] an importance of ensuring you're consistently connecting with the broader community within the organization… ensuring that there's great connectivity going on there and making sure that the team has the leadership that they need.

If there are challenges that they need to get through, making sure that there's no door that's stopping them and that they're getting, you know, all the assistance that they need.

It’s taken you many years to get to where you are, so you know exactly what it means to create impact and to get noticed. How do you actually define that in the context of a global organization like Mastercard?

Community is really important. Ensuring that you have the right advocates, that you know who the people in the organization are that can advocate for you and that can help move you along to whatever that next step is, and ensuring that those individuals are seeing the value add that you bring to the organization.

I often tell folks who, you know, are more siloed in one area of the organization or aren't really reaching out to build a broader network, that that's the number one thing that you need to do. We’re a 30,000 person organization. We bring in a lot of fantastic outside talent. So making sure that you're creating those new connections with individuals.

When you got your executive vice president role, what was that day like?

Work has always been a huge source of happiness for me. I think people have many different things that contribute to their happiness. Work for me has always been something that's been very high up there. So I was incredibly excited and, you know, felt it was deserved. I definitely wasn't surprised by it, let's say.

But I very much was appreciative and so happy that it happened. It was something that was a goal of mine, and I was really excited to be able to get to that goal at a time period and tenure before I thought I could get there initially. So that was just, you know, really exciting to be able to experience. And I was also really excited that I was going to be working for two individuals that I respected tremendously.

And so that was a big part of it as well. I was excited about both the title, but then also about the job, the opportunity, the team that I was going to be managing. They were a really successful team. And I was excited to be able to take them to the next level.

So amazing. Did you have to fight for it?

Yes. I mean, it certainly wasn't easily won or anything like that. There were a number of people that went through the full process and then a smaller number of people that went through the final round of processes. I had put together a very focused PowerPoint presentation to really highlight exactly how I was going to take the role to the next level.

All of the interviewers that I interviewed with, I guess six people during the process, all of them said, ‘Wow I don't even know what else to ask you because you've kind of laid everything out here’. And so that was something that I was appreciative of.

The way you create impact, does that transfer into your personal life, or do you use any other tools in your toolbox to create an impact at home?

I think it does. I'm a parent, right? So I try to make sure that my son sees how I'm working and achieving goals in my career so that he sees things don't just come easy, you have to work at them. And it's how you do that, you know, this is how you get rewarded for the work that you put in.

Because I think children oftentimes don't necessarily see that as much. So I try to make sure that he sees that. He has two working parents and so being able to kind of have a light into what we do from a working standpoint, I think is super important.

Can you delve a little bit more into how technology might be transforming business development for you?

We use a lot of data to really run our sales teams. So I can see very easily exactly what's going on, from what pipelines look like by team member, how much revenue is being recognized on each opportunity, where they track versus their goals, etc. So we have really built out dashboards that help, from a motivational standpoint as well, to show each of the team members exactly how they’re performing.

And you can also see in comparison to other team members and so forth. But we've really done a lot because, you know, we have 1100 customers, 400 products and services. It's a lot of deals that we're signing, each year. And so being able to track everything incredibly well. We're really using a lot of technology to really help with our sales pipeline, and so forth.

Has your leadership and your philosophy evolved over the years? I'm sure you've learned a lot of lessons. What sort of leader would you say you are?

So I like to say I'm very motivational, very collaborative, and I'm very innovative. If you don't have people on your team wanting to achieve higher levels of success than they thought possible, then you're going to get a pretty kind of stagnant situation, right? And so I'm constantly really trying to highlight and show the team that they can do more than they thought.

They can close the deal earlier than they thought they could. They can close the deal for more revenue than they thought they could. They can bundle it with more products than they thought they could, you know. So I’m very focused on motivation.

I’m also very focused on collaboration because nobody wins alone, especially in a 30,000 person organization. We win because we work across teams to get that success.

I always have case studies that are shown in our monthly team meetings about wins. It always highlights what other teams you worked with to get this done, whether it's legal, whether it's the client services team, whether it's product management team, account management team, etc. They all helped in some way.

And then innovative. If we're not changing and challenging the way in which we work on a day-to-day basis, we're not going to be able to elevate ourselves as quickly as possible. So constantly thinking through what are new ways in which we can bring revenue in, change the way in which we're going about things. So always trying to push the buttons on innovation too.

What advice would you give to aspiring leaders who want to make a significant impact in that organization? Are there any particular pearls of wisdom you think are vital for this?

Hard work shouldn't go unnoticed. So if you feel like you're working hard and you're accomplishing a lot and it's going unnoticed, then you need to change something, right? Take a step back and take a look at that.

And make sure you're consistently learning. So if there's a point in your existing job where you feel like [you’re] not learning at the same curve as a year ago or, you know, now you feel like you've kind of plateaued, take a step back and think is this the right time for a new opportunity?

Because your hard work should always go noticed, and you should always feel like you're learning in the opportunity that you're in, if you want to continue to advance.

Here at Panelle we bring all of the greatest female leaders together to inspire, to learn from each other. So, who would be on your dream Panelle session?

I would probably have to say Michelle Obama. I think Michelle Obama's just been fantastic. What she's been able to accomplish and also the way she has, you know, had the strong relationship with Barack, but then she's also been able to accomplish a lot on her own as well. I would say it's been, you know, exciting to see just in general.

Want to hear the entire interview with Michelle Carter? Listen to the Panelle Talks podcast here.

‍