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Today, I attended the Women In Payments conference in DC and met some incredible cohorts from the financial technology and services companies. We were there to celebrate the advances that women made at the workplace in the last few years but also to start the conversation around what needed to happen next and how we could make change happen more quickly.

I’m encouraged to see the trends going in the right direction – it’s not enough, but it’s progress. 80 percent of the purchase decisions are being made by women, women are starting businesses more than ever before, more women are entering into leadership roles – The share of women sitting on the boards of Fortune 500 companies has more than doubled, from 9.6% in 1995 to 22.2% in 2017 and the share of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies reached was 4.8% in 2018. As recently as 1995, there were no female CEOs on the Fortune 500 list.1

At Mastercard we realize that the world needs to change and it is only fitting that women are at the table when technology is built, when algorithms are developed and when products are brought to market. Which is why 50 percent of the senior leadership at Mastercard in the US is female and 40% of the Mastercard US workforce is women. We have grown our business considerably by putting women at the center of it all and we know that creates amazing culture, customer service and product development:

  • Our Women’s Leadership Network, one of our nine Business Resource Groups, has 31 chapters around the world, supporting the growth and development of 8000 members.
  • Our Board Chairman and other executives are members of the 30% Club, which champions greater representation of women on the boards of FTSE100 companies
  • Mastercard has partnered with Accion Venture Lab to provide more loans to women entrepreneurs along with financial coaching
  • Together with Grameen America, Mastercard is bringing digital financial services to nearly 100,000 low-income women entrepreneurs
  • Mastercard reached 185,000 young women through its Girls4Tech program designed to get young girls interested in STEM
  • Care.com is using Mastercard technology to make it easier for 26 million caregivers to get paid quickly.

I’m encouraged by what I see and I’m proud to be working at a company that cares so much about the advancement of all people, including women.

1 The Data on Women Leaders, Pew research Center