EPCOR Payments Conference – Spring 2019 is finally here! In anticipation of our conference, we reached out to some of our speakers to learn more about their background.
Today, we’re getting to know Jessica Washington, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Jessica is from a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, where she has a huge extended family. She moved to Maine for high school when her mother accepted a position there. However, Maine was a little too cold for her liking, so attended Florida State University for college. Jessica shares that there was brief moment she was almost going to be a nurse, but her course changed, and she decided to follow her passion for writing. She says, “Believe it or not, I think learning anatomy and biology helped understand payments!” Jessica earned a creative writing degree with a minor in childhood development, keeping the teaching option open. After college, she eventually settled in Metro Atlanta where she started a family.
A few years out of college, Jessica had a few professional jobs, but she felt that none were creating her ideal career path. She applied for an ad in the newspaper, and the job advertised member services and writing member communications. She felt this would be perfect. She had a creative writing degree and worked in member services in a management role. Jessica then started at GACHA Regional Payments Association in the Southeast. She explained, “I had zero experience in banking, let alone payments. The first year there I earned my Accredited ACH Professional Certification. I learned by listening to every single member question phone call that my bosses answered. They pushed me to begin training before I thought I was ready. To make a long story short, there was turnover in the organization and I was able to step up to the plate to manage the association. Our Board of Directors and newly hired president, who I am so grateful for, saw a dedicated individual who could learn quickly. I eventually became Senior Vice President of GACHA, and a recognized industry thought leader. I helped lead the association through a merger of equals with 3 other RPAs.”
After the merger, Jessica say she started to itch for new challenges. She was contacted to apply for a position in payments compliance at a large organization. She sat down with one of my mentors at breakfast to ask her to write me a recommendation for the position. Unfortunately, her mentor said, “Jessica, I am going for the same position.” Jessica explained, “Naturally, she got the job but then she recommended me to replace her at the Fed in the Retail Payments Risk Forum.”
When asked who or what inspires her, Jessica shared, “My Dad was a disabled Vietnam Army Veteran. Before he left for Vietnam he was nicknamed ‘Tucker’ because he was a football running back that could run like All-American Tucker Frederickson, who played for Auburn and later the NY Giants. I have read the military papers documenting his injury in Vietnam, his coma, his transfer to Japan when they send message to his Mother not to come, that he isn’t going to make it. He recovered but lost use of the right arm and leg, among other issues. He dedicated to himself upon his “recovery” to educate Capitol Hill about soldiers still missing in action. My Dad passed when I was 14 but he taught me a lot with the little time we had.”
Jessica is married and has three children, Tucker (11), Trinley (8) and Coleman (9 months). She shared, “One of our favorite rituals is when we sit down to dinner together we pretend that we are anchors for the nightly news and each of us reports out. I report current events, my husband does the weather, my son does the sports and my daughter does the arts and entertainment. We aren’t sure what section the baby will take yet, right now he just makes us laugh!”
We also asked Jessica to share a few fun facts about herself. Through this, we learned she is a huge 90’s music fan! She enjoys Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews, etc. and jokes that she had a lot of flannel t-shirts back then. Something on her bucket list is to Salsa dance in Cartagena, Columbia (but admits she’ll need to learn to Salsa first). Also, we asked if she were stranded on an island what five things she would bring, and shared she would want to have pen/ paper, her husband and kids and a stand-up paddle board. She added, “This leads me back to my bucket list – I’ve been looking at taking survival classes together with my family.”
When asked about the top issue(s) facing the payments industry, Jessica shared, “We talk about fintech a lot and underlying technology which is fun and wildly exciting. The innovations taking place are challenging payments supply or value chains. This has major implications to a string of strategies and partnerships. We may even need to change some of our vocabulary when we talk about participants because their roles are changing so greatly. We may need to change some laws.”
When asked what Jessica wants attendees to take away from her session, she explained, “Our session is a payments fraud update. We do a session like this several times a year and it is always different. I hope that attendees will take one thing they learn, or maybe they already knew but we shined a fresh light on it, take that and tell someone else that isn’t in payments or banking. We need to do a better job educating outside our industry.”
You won’t want to miss Jessica’s session, Hot Topics in Fraud, or dozens of others, at EPCOR Payments Conference – Spring 2019.
Advice from Jessica:
Don’t be shy, make friends, offer your assistance, learn from a variety of perspectives. Make friends and have fun with the work that you do.