Leading with Heart: Christie Vella of Prepaid2Cash On The Power of Authentic Women’s Leadership

An Interview With Pirie Jones Grossman

Remember that we’re humans, and there is a space and time to enjoy each other’s company while still being serious about business. Work hard play hard.

In today’s dynamic world, the concept of leadership is continuously evolving. While traditional leadership models have often been male-dominated, there is a growing recognition of the unique strengths and perspectives that women bring to these roles. This series aims to explore how women can become more effective leaders by authentically embracing their femininity and innate strengths, rather than conforming to traditional male leadership styles. In this series, we are talking to successful women leaders, coaches, authors, and experts who can provide insights and personal stories on how embracing their inherent feminine qualities has enhanced their leadership abilities. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Christie Vella.

Christie Vella is the Chief Operating Officer at Prepaid2Cash. She is a results-oriented Strategic Payments Operations Executive with 20+ year’s experience building and leading high performance, KPI/OKR driven product teams, responsible for strategic partnerships, customer satisfaction and business line growth. Adept at fueling global growth and transformative change for the FinTech industry, conceptualizing & executing product vision from start to finish, as well as managing complex milestones while adapting to changes and shifting corporate priorities. She is experienced in developing new and innovative global, banking products; and developing key business strategies to maximize profit.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about authentic, feminine leadership, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I actually started my career in the PR industry and transitioned to the fintech space. I’ve worked in the fintech space for about 18 years and started my journey with BlackHawk before transitioning over to Prepaid2Cash. I developed a deep knowledge of Visa and Mastercard and overall just really enjoy the Fintech space, which brought me to where I am now as the Chief Operating Officer at Prepaid2Cash. I was drawn to Prepaid2Cash’s consumer faced approach and their tight knit team.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

When I began my career in the Fintech space, there wasn’t really a defined industry yet like there is today. Fintech was grouped together with the finance industry as a whole, but now it has its own sector and has grown extensively in the past several years. It’s been a really fascinating journey to watch the industry develop over the years.

What do you think makes Prepaid2Cash stand out? Can you share a story?

I love how closely everyone works together at Prepaid2Cash and how focused the company is on the consumer. The whole business model is centered around putting the consumer first and gives card holders access they don’t normally have.

Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Being a good communicator and having strong communication skills overall is definitely key for any successful leader. I found a lot of success in managing up and having a clear understanding of the ‘why’ behind the ask.

As a leader, taking the time to thoughtfully explain and ensuring your team understands is essential. For me in the Fintech industry, another elemental part of my success is having a deep understanding of the concept. Staying curious and having the mindset that I’m always learning has helped me personally and professionally in gaining more knowledge in my career.

Lastly, having the ability to genuinely enjoy what you do and create relationships with your team members. You work with the same people every day and it makes a huge difference when you can show up as your best self around team members you trust and respect.

Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.

During my time at Blackhawk, my team and I were presented with a confusing business plan that required deep knowledge to fully understand the concept. There was a lot of internal training to keep everyone up to speed, and it felt like an uphill battle. We eventually came to the tough decision that if the product was this difficult to understand, how could we market and sell it successfully to consumers? Although it was an amazing opportunity, we had to step away from and pivot the team in another direction.

Can you share a personal experience where embracing your unique leadership style, which might not align with traditional expectations, led to a significant positive impact in your organization or team?

I’ve always been someone that likes to recruit team members by their personality and how they fit in with company culture. You can always train someone to understand the job, but you can’t train someone’s personality. Hiring this way has made a lasting impact on my teams and allowed everyone to get along! This method has especially worked well at Prepaid2cash and even with my last team, they are all still tight knit.

In your journey as a leader, how have you balanced demonstrating resilience, often seen as a masculine trait, with showing vulnerability, which is equally powerful, but typically feminine? Can you give an example where this balance created a meaningful difference?

In the corporate structure, I’ve found that it’s typically easier to lean into the more masculine qualities like being assertive and setting clear expectations. However I think that there’s a perfect balance with masculine and feminine traits and that they work hand in hand. The more feminine leaning qualities I have like going with my gut and having empathy have complimented my masculine qualities such as being direct and moving things along.

As a woman in leadership, how have you navigated and challenged gender stereotypes, especially in situations where traditional male-dominated approaches are the norm? What strategies have you employed to remain authentic to your style?

Finance is known to be a male-dominated industry so I’ve navigated gender stereotypes my whole career as a woman in Fintech. Thankfully I’ve had a lot of wonderful examples of female leaders in this space who have taught me to not be afraid to use my voice and step up. I like to be an advocate internally for other women and ensure everyone is being treated equally with respect with no imbalances.

How do you utilize emotional intelligence and active listening to create an inclusive environment in your team or organization? Could you share a specific instance where these qualities particularly enhanced team dynamics or performance?

Emotional intelligence is really understanding where someone is coming from so you can help them work through it. By actively listening, I take the time to really hear out a team member and put myself in their shoes to understand their perspective. Sometimes it’s what a team member isn’t saying and recognizing those unspoken cues with their body language and tone. I always want my team to know that I support and advocate for them, especially when they are dealing with a personal issue. I want them to know that they have a support system of coworkers who understand that your personal life comes first. We’re so much more than the people we are at work so it’s good to recognize that and appreciate your team.

What role has mentorship played in developing your authentic leadership style, and how do you communicate authentically to inspire and empower both your mentors and mentees?

Mentorship has played a significant role in my life in both ways as the mentor and mentee. I’ve had the privilege to learn from a lot of amazing women who are authentic and lead their teams effectively, which I now carry on in my career.

I genuinely enjoy helping women advance in their career and teaching them from my personal experience and how they can use their voice in the workplace to succeed.

Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Ways Leading Authentically As A Woman Will Affect Your Leadership”?

1. There will be a lot of information thrown at you and very high expectations placed on you, but you just have to do the best you can. I remember when I was at Blackhawk, we were facing implications of new legislation. It was significant (we had to pull 40M cards out of the market and replace them in the next 6 months). It was my business line and I was called into the office of the CEO and the General Counsel, and they were peppering me with questions, legal advice, etc. WHile i knew the gravity of the situation, I remained completely calm and took notes, asked questions, and came up with a plan. At one point, the general counsel turned to me and said: how are you so calm? I said: I have 2 toddlers under the age of 3 at home, this is nothing compared to that chaos. It’s all about perspective, no one is puking on me and there are no dirty diapers.
2. You’re on your own personal journey. Try to focus on your own growth and view your competitors as a learning opportunity.
3. There is validity in questioning. Always use critical thinking and don’t feel bad in questioning the why behind your work. I always felt it was truly important to make sure the teams I worked with understood the why behind a project. I believe in hiring people smarter than me and there are more than one way to solve a problem. When you explain the “why” — it gives people the opportunity to learn and come up with new and innovative solutions. It also just feels better to work as a team.
4. Practice and nourish emotional intelligence everyday in the workplace. Actively listen to your team members and always show up for your team. My favorite manager started our touch bases by asking how I was. She truly cared about my personal world (we all know it greatly impacts everything). She made me feel seen and heard and supported, in work and beyond. I committed to myself a long time ago that I wanted to manage like she did.
5. Remember that we’re humans, and there is a space and time to enjoy each other’s company while still being serious about business. Work hard play hard.

Are there potential pitfalls or challenges associated with being an empathetic leader? How can these be addressed?

Being an empathetic leader is an amazing quality to have, but there can definitely be pitfalls if you don’t set clear boundaries. You still have to hold people accountable, set clear expectations and not let yourself be taken advantage of. You can be a caring leader and manage teams effectively, it just comes down to clear communication and having firm boundaries.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I’ve always been very passionate about helping women, especially in their careers, and would love to start a movement that encourages women to be sure of themselves and advocate for themselves both personally and professionally. Society is changing and making progress with female leadership, but I’d love to be a part of keeping the momentum going and encouraging women empowerment.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About The Interviewer: Pirie is a TedX speaker, author and a Life Empowerment Coach. She is a co-host of Own your Throne podcast, inspiring women in the 2nd chapter of their lives. With over 20 years in front of the camera, Pirie Grossman understands the power of storytelling. After success in commercials and acting. She spent 10 years reporting for E! Entertainment Television, Entertainment Tonight, also hosted ABC’s “Every Woman”. Her work off-camera capitalizes on her strength, producing, bringing people together for unique experiences. She produced a Children’s Day of Compassion during the Dalai Lama’s visit here in 2005. 10,000 children attended, sharing ideas about compassion with His Holiness. From 2006–2009, Pirie Co-chaired the Special Olympics World Winter Games, in Idaho, welcoming 3,000 athletes from over 150 countries. She founded Destiny Productions to create Wellness Festivals and is an Advisory Board member of the Sun Valley Wellness Board.In February 2017, Pirie produced, “Love is Louder”, a Brain Health Summit, bringing in Kevin Hines, noted suicide survivor to Sun Valley who spoke to school kids about suicide. Sun Valley is in the top 5% highest suicide rate per capita in the Northwest, prompting a community initiative with St. Luke’s and other stake holders, to begin healing. She lives in Sun Valley with her two children, serves on the Board of Community School. She has her Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica and is an Executive Life Empowerment Coach, where she helps people meet their dreams and goals! The difference between a dream and a goal is that a goal is a dream with a date on it!