Embodying our values when it matters most: Meet our Values All-Star, Molly Payton
Twice a year, Chimers nominate fellow Chimers for embodying our company values and we award one Chimer for each value and a Values All-Star. Meet our latest Values All-Star, Molly.
Molly Payton moved to San Francisco with three suitcases and the goal of building her career. She soon got a job in sales, where she discovered her weakness as a salesperson and her strengths in customer service — and in true San Francisco startup spirit, she pivoted. Shining in a customer support role, Molly had found her path.
In 2019, Molly was looking for a change. She wanted to put her customer support skills to work in a mission-driven environment, and when she saw the work we were doing at Chime to contribute to social equity, she was sold. “I felt like Chime understood that predatory financial services disproportionately affect underserved and underrepresented minorities — and I wanted to help change that,” she says.
Molly’s enthusiasm for her work, our members, and her team is palpable. So is her dedication to living our values in everything she does. She believes that “If you embrace our values, you’ll start to see them everywhere.”
One of the places our values show up daily is in her role as a Quality assurance analyst in member services. She and her team review member interactions to ensure that they’re at the standard, expectations, and compliance levels that we need them to be. If you’ve ever heard “This call may be monitored for quality and security purposes,” she’s the person listening to the recording. She also works cross-functionally as a member services liaison. This means that in moments like a service outage, tax season, or the COVID-19 pandemic, she works with different teams across the organization to respond publicly and solve whatever issue our members are facing.
From her work with our members all the way to her Slack chatter with coworkers, Molly lives Chime’s values. She’s always quick to admit she’s human, team up with someone, take care of a member first, be bold and take risks, simplify her options and make a decision — you get the picture. Here’s why our values matter to her and how she imbues her work with them every day, which makes her our Summer 2020 Values All-Star.
Why they matter
Our company values matter to Molly because they are as useful as a Swiss Army knife — they are all tools to be used in different ways. “Our values can make someone feel welcome, or provide us with ways to take risks and be vulnerable,” she explains. Grounding ourselves in our values helps people stay rooted when things can feel overwhelming or uncertain — like in the face of a global pandemic or a service outage.
For example, Molly often leads with our Be Human value. “Leading with vulnerability is so powerful,” she says. Using this value in an interaction with a fellow Chimer can make everyone feel at ease, instantly. “With the smallest thing, like not wanting to look silly asking a question on Slack, someone can use the Be Human emoji and start their question with, ‘In the spirit of being human…’” she explains. It can be hard for some people to ask a question or admit they are confused, and the value acts as a tool to give them comfort (and the receiving party a little more compassion).
Molly uses our Chime In value as a tool to voice her opinion when she disagrees and wants to speak up in meetings, starting her point with, “Hey, I’m chiming in here.” And since we’ve been working remotely, she’s noticed other Chimers using the value to help give a voice to others, too. When someone takes themselves off mute in a Zoom meeting, Chimers will often ask, “Do you want to chime in here?” — instantly inviting the person to speak up. “This helps make it more comfortable when some people might not want to interject themselves.”
Molly relies on the values most when she’s looking for help or trying to solve a problem. Whether she needs to Team Up or Simplify to avoid analysis paralysis, the values act as a guide for every problem she encounters. What’s more, “Our values provide ways for us to come together over a shared lexicon and communicate clearly,” she says. “I will often call out the values by their name, but I also love using the emojis — I keep them readily available to respond to people on Slack.”
Values in the time of COVID-19
Since the recent pandemic set in, our values have been even more important to the company — and to Molly. “Our values have been reflected in how our People and Executive Leadership Teams have responded to the crisis at hand,” Molly explains. “I feel so fortunate to be at a company that cares so much about us as well as its members, and values transparency, keeping us safe, and staying connected.”
Molly has seen our values shine through videos made by our executive team reminding us to Be Human (complete with kids and pets at home), company-wide responses to the challenges our members are facing (Be Member-Obsessed), and our new anti-racism task force that encourages Chimers to Chime In and Be Bold.
But mostly, she’s staying grounded in the fact that we’re all human. “No one at Chime is acting like things should be business as usual — we’re having conversations about everything that’s going on. Those things keep me grounded because they’re real.”
For Molly, the ways Chime and all Chimers are supporting each other through this time is a result of the call to action of our values. “Our values are calling us to embody them in many ways — how we support our members, how we stand with Black Lives Matter, how we treat each other,” she says.
For Molly and those of us at Chime, our values are more than just a list of ways to feel or be — they’re a way in which we move forward in the world and affect change. We’re proud to be part of a team that so actively embodies and acts on our values, and of Chimers, like Molly, who go the extra mile to really live them — especially in a time when they are one of the best tools we have.
If you want to live our values as much as we do, we’d love to hear from you. Visit our careers page to see which roles we’re hiring for!
