How Square Is Educating the Tech Industry About Diversity

5:36AM Aug 25, 2021

Speakers:

Keywords:

square

cryptocurrency

evolve

small business

small business owner

jackie

helping

product

women

bitcoin

community

build

elevate

peer

offers

career

mentorship

underrepresented minorities

goldman sachs

thrive

I want to talk a little bit about your journeys. And Jackie, you worked on wall street for 20 years you ended up at Yahoo. Now you're at square, what has been the most important part of that journey.

So I was so lucky. I started at Goldman Sachs when it was a small private partnership. And I learned three things that I have taken with me for my entire life, teamwork, professionalism, and mentorship. And that those are issues that have come with me on the journey of building a company helping to make your peers and colleagues successful, and they really have had an impact in the way that I think about growing my own career. You know, mentorship, for example, I had four mentors at Goldman Sachs, who have stayed with me throughout my entire career, even for square, where one of them was called on as a reference by one of our directors. And so it's wonderful to be able to draw on people who make such an impact on your career as mentors, as friends. And as people who push you to be better than you think you can be.

square has an incredible bench of female executives with real power. And Aaron, you are also one of them. Small Business Education lead, you know, and your story is also fascinating in that you co founded a sushi restaurant, before you join square, how does a sushi restaurant tour, you know, start running small businesses at square?

Sure. So I had a background in small business, believe it or not even more non sequitur in the nonprofit space with a blended retail model. And I learned about how much small business meant to communities having a safe place, a place where people could come at third place, and convene, and what an asset it was for neighborhoods. So that really spurred me and my husband, Tim, to open our own restaurant, create the hub. And it was part of what attracted me to square as a square seller. So I knew that I could really contribute and be a part of things there was a small business education lead. So I collaborate with small business advisory groups around the country, folks like the Small Business Administration, the US Chamber, and I work with small business owners all across America,

Jackie, you run square capital, and you're also chief people officer, you know, in an industry that is starved of women, you know, what are you doing at square to build diverse teams and to create an inclusive environment?

I think the most important thing we started with is inclusion. So how do people feel once they're out square? And can we create an environment that makes people feel comfortable, and then also helps them thrive. And so we focus a lot on making sure that we are helping the careers of women and underrepresented minorities, either by pushing them into roles that we think help help elevate their career, making sure that we have some mentorship for folks that need it, making sure we have teams that pull together groups of underrepresented folks so that they could build a community and community groups amongst themselves. And so we've spent a lot of the last year increasing the number of communities we have as well as elevating their profile within square. And so we've tried to make it just a wonderful place to work.

What do you think it is about square or about jack Dorsey that has enabled you know, so many women leaders, at least, to thrive there.

Part of what attracted me to square was the number of women leaders there were and when I came in as a square, small business owner just to chat about the product and how it worked in my own life, I felt that I had a home there. So just seeing that modeling, feeling like there are groups that I can participate in helps, I think foster more women to feel included

is diversity, something that you're trying to educate sellers about and small businesses about.

So hiring and hiring from your community is essential. And so including that in the conversation, absolutely. also thinking about other places where there are skilled workers, that's an issue that comes up often is the challenge of finding a skilled labor force. So helping people identify in their own backyard where that exists.

So Jackie, give us an update on square capital. I know you've been testing consumer loans, any update on when you'll be offering loans more broadly. Sure.

So we've now achieved over $2.5 billion of loans facilitated by square capital. So we're super proud of that. We do have a consumer product, which is our installments product, it shows up on invoices. And you could see us evolve that product over time both across geographies, because we're not in 50 states today, but also across the breadth of other products. That's where offers

square has sort of become a Bitcoin play. You know, after you guys said you would focus on building an app that would accept Bitcoin Do you think that Bitcoin will become or cryptocurrency in general would become a big part of the business?

So square cache has evolved over the past few years to be an incredibly successful and separate vector of growth for square it's targeted towards consumer start? With the network effects of the first peer to peer product, and then evolved since then to add a debit card, a virtual card ATM access and now cryptocurrency I think where we see demand for people who want to buy and sell cryptocurrency, and that enables them to access a financial market that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. We see it as a huge opportunity, but I think it will evolve as the overall cryptocurrency market evolves through mainstream America.