Chime Values Spotlight: Team Up

In Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference finals, Kobe Bryant set up an iconic alley-oop for Shaquille O’Neal to dunk. Their teamwork helped the team advance to the Finals.

In response to the 8,367 wildfires that hit California in 2021, firefighters came from cities and states across the country to team up and tackle the blazes.

And for Chime’s launch of Credit Builder earlier this year, Chimers from our design, research, engineering, product, member services, marketing, risk, and other teams collaborated to make it happen.

Team Up is one of Chime’s company values, which are the cornerstone of the work we do as a company. Our values inform how we interact and how we think about growing our products, services, and team. They keep us connected as humans by providing a shared lexicon with which we communicate and a basis for our decisions and actions.

In this series of Values Spotlights, we’ll shine a light on each of Chime’s values and how Chimers live them. First up: Team Up 👯

What does Team Up mean to you as a Chime company value?

Sam Berg, Head of Design

To me, Team Up is all about knowing that your work will be so much better when you recognize that everyone around you is an expert. Everyone at chime is great at what they were hired to do, and Teaming Up is about using that to your advantage — it’s about leveraging each others’ strengths to make our company stronger. 💪

It’s also about having each others’ backs. That means helping others learn and grow and believing that people have the best of intentions. We are all in this together and by Teaming Up, we’re expressing trust and support for each other, no matter what comes our way.

Jacquan Brown, Accountant

Teaming Up in a diverse group is about seeing others’ perspectives and understanding their cultures. Doing so gives us a different view of whatever situation we’re working through and can help us reach better solutions because we have a more holistic understanding of all possible viewpoints. 🔎

Jess Schein, Enterprise Risk Manager

Building a culture of resiliency is a team sport, and Teaming Up is ultimately how we keep our business going in the face of challenges. Our Team Up value helps everyone understand the dependencies and processes that exist across our organization and how they fit into the bigger ecosystem of Chime. Teaming Up is critical to looking beyond our individual teams and milestones to focus on broader goals and achievements. In my role on the Business Resilience team, I work to connect teams and bridge the gaps so that the whole company Teams Up when it’s necessary. 🌉

Why does Teaming Up matter?

Jacquan Brown

Ultimately, Teaming Up matters because there is almost always more than one way to solve a problem. Sharing perspectives helps us see the different ways to arrive at a solution and makes us stronger as a team.

Jess Schein

Teaming Up is especially important as we continue to work remotely — we don’t have the possibility of informal encounters or side conversations after meetings, so making a concerted effort to Team Up is even more critical nowadays. Scheduling extra Zoom calls or sending Slack messages is how we Team Up now, and it’s more important than ever given the rate at which we’re growing.

Sam Berg

Teaming Up matters because there’s no one discipline that can build Chime alone. Achieving our mission requires so many different talents, from understanding the regulatory landscape, to deciding what products we should deliver to members and how the Chime experience should make them feel, as well as how to build the experience. All of these complicated parts that come together to make Chime work are also what make it such a fun environment and product to work on.

I believe that Teaming Up is critical to growing individually and collectively as a company. As a leader, Teaming Up is important to me because it shows humility and self-awareness, and that I genuinely believe that our work, team, and company will be better with input from other people.

Share a recent example of when you teamed up. Who did you team up with and how did you work together towards your goal?

Sam Berg

I recently worked with Kate Karas, our General Counsel, on how to create more equitable experiences for our members. Our goal was to improve accessibility for Chime members, increase comprehension of our products, and make Chime more inclusive as a product. Kate helped me understand our regulatory risk and how our Legal and Compliance teams could team up with my Design team to champion this line of work. Together, we’re creating an equitable experience that’s legally sound and makes our members’ lives way better.

Jacquan Brown

At the end of every month, I send out an invoice request to all of our vendors regarding any open or unpaid invoices. By teaming up with Bre Millan, we were able to implement a process to obtain better responses from vendors and incorporate a documentation piece in the process as well.

Jess Schein

I’m an observer for incident response (for when Chime or our third-party providers have outages, for example), so I Team Up with engineering operations to hone our tech incident process flow. The engineers I work with are very technology-focused — that is their area of expertise, after all — so I bring a more downstream angle to our incident response, while they focus on fixing the technical issues. Our skills complement each other, helping to resolve issues quickly while considering the broader impact and long-term resiliency.

What, for you, is the hardest part of teaming up?

Sam Berg

I was always taught that I can do anything I set my mind to — and that being independent is a good thing, especially as a woman. Because of that, teaming up isn’t always my first instinct; my first instinct is often just to tackle the problem at hand. As a leader, I’m constantly fighting my first instinct to do things myself and thinking about how I can Team Up with my team to leverage their strengths and skills. When I encounter a problem, the first thing I do is stop and think about who I can bring on board to solve it. Doing so gives others an opportunity to learn, grow, and stretch their skillset by taking on more ownership. It turns out that asking for help — Teaming Up, as I think of it — isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign you want to leverage others’ strengths.

Jess Schein

The most challenging part of Teaming Up for me is doing so in a remote work environment. I rely on relationship building to get buy-in from colleagues and develop allies, and doing so virtually isn’t the same as in person.

Jacquan Brown

The most important and difficult part of teaming up is identifying you can’t, or don’t need to, go in on a problem alone. The second hardest part is raising your hand to let others know that you need help.

What is your advice for teaming up?

Whether you’re working on a team project, playing sports, or out in the field fighting fires, here’s some advice from our team for how to team up so everyone can win—together.

Sam Berg

Chimers are excited and friendly, so don’t be afraid to ask for help — even if it’s from someone you’ve never met before! We’re all here to Team Up to achieve our goals, so just ask.

Jacquan Brown

Stay open to others’ perspectives — just because someone’s approach is different doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. Don’t be afraid to raise your hand and ask for someone to Team Up with you! After all, you have to Chime In in order to Team Up, so speaking up is key. You’ll be surprised at how willing Chimers are to help out.

Jess Schein

Enter situations and initiatives with an ‘ecosystem’ mindset — think about where the cross-functional dependencies and handover points might be. Remember that we’ve got a mission to achieve and doing so hinges on Teaming Up with stakeholders.