What's your job about?
I sit within the Business Development and Digital Partnerships team at Mastercard, which owns the relationships with both emerging Fintechs (including neobanks, BNPLs, and cryptocurrency platforms) and global Digital Players. It’s difficult to capture the vast scope of work our team does, but at our core we work closely with partners (or prospective partners) to solve problems while growing Mastercard’s business.
Sometimes this involves holding workshops with partners to discuss their pain points and explore the Mastercard products and solutions that could solve for them. Other times, this involves competing for an opportunity with prospective partners. Most times, we’re meeting with someone new to understand what they do and how Mastercard can partner with them.
In my role, every day really is different. On any given day I am supporting multiple partners at various stages, from introductory meetings to product launch preparation. As such, my day-to-day is typically some combination of: meetings with internal stakeholders; meetings with partners; commercial deal modelling; customer presentation preparation; Mastercard products and services learning; and dashboards and templates creation.
It’s a really exciting part of the business where something new is always happening!
What's your background?
I could never figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, but it was something like an astronaut-FBI agent-psychologist. Funnily enough, Business Development didn’t quite make my list of dream jobs.
I started with a Bachelor of Psychology at University of Sydney, and during my first year I became intrigued by how business and psychology interplayed. With that, I transferred to a Bachelor of Commerce (Liberal Studies), majoring in Psychology, Marketing, and Human Resources. I still didn’t know what my dream job was, so I tried roles from marketing at a start-up to human resources at a global tech firm, consulting at Big 4 to Talent Management at Mastercard. Throughout these experiences, my biggest takeaway was that I loved working with people and helping them solve problems. While studying, I deferred a semester to travel and realised I wanted to work for a global organisation with international opportunities.
Since joining Mastercard as an HR intern, I have realised that while I don’t have a dream job, I have dream skills and experiences. For example, my ideal role is one where I am challenged to grow, genuinely contribute to the business, and every day looks different.
I was encouraged to join the BD team after discussing my career aspirations and was offered the role despite an HR-focused resume. I have now been in the role for six months and so far it’s ticking all my boxes.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Definitely. I would say that the background for my role is less important than the foundational soft skills such as being a strong communicator, problem solver, and quick learner.
Mastercard is a complex organisation, with quite a steep learning curve when you enter the payments industry. Thankfully, Mastercard has so many different resources to support employees in this process so new members in my team aren’t expected to have deep payments knowledge. I certainly didn’t when I joined!
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The best thing about my job is that I am empowered to do work that is actually meaningful, both to Mastercard and for my personal growth. Because the work is so varied, there are always projects and initiatives that align with the skills I want to develop. These skills could be presenting to clients, project management, or deal negotiation. The nature of my team is that the projects also directly contribute to Mastercard’s growth.
What are the limitations of your job?
While variety is one of the best things about my role, the flipside is that it can be challenging prioritising all the different tasks and clients. Communication with my team is key to managing this, and luckily, my team is extremely supportive.
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