Vaidik Trivedi
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PayPal Stock Can’t Catch a Break. A Big Investor Cut Its Stake.
Bloomberg News
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New York
CNN
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PayPal is rolling out its first stablecoin as it attempts to capitalize on the “emerging potential” of US dollar-backed digital tokens for consumer payments.
The stablecoin, PayPal USD, is fully backed by the US dollar and is “designed to reduce friction” for payments within virtual spaces and provide faster, cheaper transfers of money across borders.
For now, the use case for the new token appears limited to crypto-related and other “web3” applications. But PayPal is betting on a future in which digital currency is more mainstream and merchants may request payment in stablecoins to avoid credit card processing fees. Similarly, crypto holders can send money instantly across borders without incurring remittance fees charged by banks.
“The shift toward digital currencies requires a stable instrument that is both digitally native and easily connected to fiat currency like the US dollar,” said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman.
Stablecoins, as their name implies, are designed to hold their value steady, making them a vital tool for traders of cryptocurrencies, which are notoriously volatile. Most stablecoins are tightly pegged to a traditional fiat currency, such as the US dollar, or to a commodity like gold. Stablecoins also act as a sort of on-ramp, allowing investors to more easily cash out their crypto holdings for money that can be used in real life.
Their purported stability has made stablecoins such as Tether a pillar in the infrastructure of the $1 trillion digital asset market.
PayPal
(PYPL) said its stablecoin will be “compatible with that ecosystem from day one. It will be available “soon” on Venmo, the popular payments app owned by PayPal
(PYPL).
Stablecoins aren’t always as stable as they purport to be. In May 2022, the “algorithmic” stablecoin TerraUSD collapsed when the crypto token backing it, Luna, collapsed. That triggered a broader panic in the space, wiping about $40 billion from the crypto market. The Securities and Exchange Commission later charged its creator, Do Kwon, with misleading investors about the coin’s stability.
The value of PayPal USD, or PYUSD, doesn’t rely on a complex algorithm the way Terra did. It is issued by Paxos Trust, a blockchain infrastructure firm, and is fully backed by US dollar deposits, Treasuries and similar cash equivalents, according to the companies.
In other words: every PayPal USD should be worth $1.00, no matter what.
With the launch of PYUSD, Paxos and PayPal are “proving the real-world value of blockchain technology,” Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla said, calling the new token “the most significant leap forward for digital assets and the financial industry.”
Vaidik Trivedi
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Vaidik Trivedi
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Bloomberg News
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Government regulators said Thursday that people who keep cash with payment tools like Cash App, PayPal and Venmo are at risk of losing their money in a crisis because the funds are not protected by federal deposit insurance.
The warning follows the recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, which collapsed after panicked depositors withdrew their funds.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and National Credit Union Administration insure up to $250,000 in a bank account, but funds stored with a nonbank payment app may not be held at a lender that offers such protection, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in an advisory.
The upshot: If a payment service suddenly folds, any consumer funds stored on the app could vaporize.
“Popular digital payment apps are increasingly used as substitutes for a traditional bank or credit union account but lack the same protections to ensure that funds are safe,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement.
The financial watchdog advised consumers to transfer any funds stored on a payment app to an insured bank or credit union.
Some payment apps claim to offer what is known as “pass-through insurance” on customer funds through an arrangement with a bank or credit union. Yet while that coverage offers protection if a lender fails, it doesn’t insure the customer if the app fails, the agency said.
PayPal, which owns Venmo, and Square, owner of Cash App, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Millions of Americans have adopted payment apps as a convenient way to buy goods and services, make payments, and transfer and store funds. Roughly 85% of consumers aged 18 to 29 have used the apps, while last year consumers conducted $893 billion worth of business using the services, according to the CFPB. Venmo has more than 90 million customers and recently announced it was going to allow parents to create accounts for their teenage children.
“When users of these digital apps receive payments, the funds are not usually swept automatically to the recipient’s linked bank or credit union account,” the agency said. “Instead, companies hold and invest the funds. These activities are not typically subjected to the same oversight that an insured bank or credit union faces.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Brian Stone
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The debt-ceiling standoff between the GOP House and the Biden administration will likely cast a long shadow over markets. President Joe Biden met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders this past week, but their talks ended without a resolution, and a Friday meeting was postponed as staffs met.
Whitney McDonald
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg bagged gold and silver medals this weekend at his first jiu-jitsu tournament.
A series of six photos, posted to Facebook and Instagram, shows the Meta founder grappling with two different opponents at the Brazilian jiu-jitsu competition, which was held Saturday at Woodside High School in Woodside, California, just north of Silicon Valley. Other images show a referee declaring Zuckerberg victorious after the two matches.
“Competed in my first jiu jitsu tournament and won some medals for the Guerrilla Jiu Jitsu team,” Zuckerberg wrote beneath the photos, which racked up more than 400,000 likes on Instagram and 300,000 likes on Facebook. “Thanks to Dave Camarillo, Khai Wu, and James Terry for training me!” reads one caption.
The post features a photo of the CEO posing alongside members of the Gorilla Jiu Jitsu team, at a Bay Area-gym where he competed. The last image shows a pensive Zuckerberg approaching a gym mat.
Zuckerberg began studying mixed martial arts during the coronavirus pandemic and quickly became enamored with the sport, he told in an August interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, himself a noted practitioner and fan of the sport. The sport’s “primal” nature has helped Zuckerberg boost his energy level as he tackles challenges at work, he told Rogan.
“MMA is the perfect thing,” Zuckerberg said on the podcast. “After an hour or two of working out, or rolling or wrestling with friends, or training with different folks, it’s like now I’m ready to go solve whatever problem at work for the day.”
Zuckerberg trains with Dave Camarillo of Gorilla Jiu Jitsu, who has taught several UFC champions. Since beginning his jiu-jitsu journey, Zuckerberg has convinced several of his friends to start hitting the gym as well, he told Rogan.
Zuckerberg isn’t the only tech tycoon who has been hitting the gym.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, 51, also trains in jiu-jitsu at a California gym he said on Rogan’s show in 2021. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman has a well-documented affinity for krav maga, an Israeli self-defense practice that the 65-year-old has credited with teaching him how to pick his battles and keep advancing toward his goals. Palantir CEO Alex Karp, 55, has practiced both jiu-jitsu and aikido — a Japanese art of self-defense, Fortune reported.
Martial arts and other sports might offer much-needed stress relief for tech CEOs, especially given the industry’s recent slump. Tech companies have been battered by waves of layoffs as they record weaker earnings.
Meta’s net income fell 24% to $5.71 billion during the first quarter of 2023. Last week, the social media company also revealed it would shed an additional 1,500 jobs in the Bay Area as part of its plan to reduce its worker headcount by 21,000, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Alexandria, Virginia — Monica Colburn helps run a Virginia hair salon. But like a growing number of Americans, she uses her flexible schedule to earn extra money.
“I have all of these extra side jobs,” Colburn told CBS News.
She works weddings and promotes musicians. “I think last year, I had eight 1099s,” she said.
In the process, she collects most of her income for that work through payment apps like Venmo.
“If I didn’t have multiple ways that somebody could pay me, I feel like I would lose business,” Colburn said.
While the apps are easy to use, starting next year, filing taxes for millions of people could become trickier. A new IRS rule will require anyone who earned over $600 on payment apps in 2023 to file a 1099-K form. The previous threshold was $20,000 on over 200 transactions.
Confusion over the changes led the IRS this past December to delay its implementation.
“This is not a tax law change,” explained Lisa Greene-Lewis with TurboTax. “This is just a reporting requirement for those third parties like Venmo, PayPal and the credit card companies.”
According to the IRS, money exchanged between friends on those apps should not be taxed. As added protection, experts warn users to classify their transactions to family and friends as personal, not goods or services.
“If you’re not, you know, in a business, you would not get one of these forms,” Greene-Lewis said.
The IRS expects to receive about four million 1099-K forms next year, which the agency claims it will be able to handle.
However, some small businesses, such as that of Maryland furniture maker Dennis Turbeville, are concerned that the extra paperwork from this change could lead to mistakes and prompt costly penalties.
“Small businesses don’t have the resources to understand how to do things properly,” Turbeville said. “A $2,500 penalty for a business that’s doing $2 million a year, not a big deal. For somebody like me, that’s a big deal.”
Top TV Financial Expert on Financial Literacy and Make Tax Day Just a Little Better
ATLANTA, April 12, 2023 (Newswire.com)
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The stress of tax season is here so this year, financial expert Leanna Haakons shares timely tips to take a little stress out of this challenging time. Haakons is the author the best-selling book YOUNG, FUN AND FINALLY FREE: Live the Good Life and Build a Kick-Ass Future. She is on a mission to promote financial literacy for millennials and Gen Z while adding a little fun to finance.
A TIMELY TIP FOR MAKING IT EASIER TO FILE TAXES
Tax season is nobody’s favorite, but this year, manage funds with less stress by tackling taxes with PayPal. When filing online, PayPal makes paying simple. It lets consumers securely pay for tax prep and filing through one of its filing partners, and even spread the tax payments over time through PayPal Credit. Tax season doesn’t have to be stressful, and PayPal provides some amazing tools to make it easier than ever.
TAKE THE STRESS OUT OF TAX SEASON
A simple and easy tip to get a tax refund up to five days quicker and take some stress out of the entire tax process is with PayPal, which has great tools to help manage refunds. Quick and simple, receive a federal tax refund in PayPal Balance with PayPal Direct Deposit. Once it is in PayPal balance, make the refund work by saving cash or shopping directly from PayPal Balance. To learn more, visit PayPal.com/taxes.
NEW WAYS TO SAVE ON TAXES
First, learn about the new tax laws. For homeowners, there is the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, of 2022, which offers eligible unprecedented opportunities to save on home energy improvement projects with Federal tax credits and rebates starting in 2023. The law brings energy bill relief to homeowners by incentivizing more efficient, all-electric appliances. One of the best is Mitsubishi Electric’s variable-capacity, all-climate heat pumps. This Mitsubishi Electric technology can help Americans reduce their carbon footprint, achieve better comfort, and realize lower operating costs.
OTHER TAX BENEFITS OF ELECTRIC APPLIANCES
Say goodbye to old air conditioners, furnaces or boilers because the Mitsubishi Electric all-electric heat pump systems provides both air conditioning and heating. They create zones that heat or cool rooms only when used, saving money and energy. With the Inflation Reduction Act, homeowners also get a tax credit of 30%, up to $2,000, for the purchase and installation of a qualified heat pump. This credit runs through December 2032 with the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Tax Credit. Eligible households also get a rebate of up to $8,000 from their state to offset qualified heat pump costs with the High Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Program. For more information, visit www.mitsubishicomfort.com.
About TipsOnTV
TipsOnTV is a lifestyle blog featuring content as seen on national and local media outlets. Expert hosts share advice for viewers, listeners, and readers. TipsOnTV covers a variety of topics, including food, entertaining, personal finance, technology, travel, health, lifestyle and more.
Source: TipsOnTV
Brian Stone
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Whittier Trust Co. trimmed its position in PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL – Get Rating) by 24.0% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 19,795 shares of the credit services provider’s stock after selling 6,239 shares during the period. Whittier Trust Co.’s holdings in PayPal were worth $1,410,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Several other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of PYPL. Joseph Group Capital Management purchased a new stake in shares of PayPal in the third quarter valued at about $26,000. Arlington Partners LLC acquired a new position in PayPal during the 4th quarter worth approximately $27,000. RFP Financial Group LLC purchased a new position in shares of PayPal during the 4th quarter worth approximately $27,000. Old North State Trust LLC acquired a new stake in shares of PayPal in the 3rd quarter valued at approximately $29,000. Finally, New Millennium Group LLC purchased a new stake in shares of PayPal in the second quarter valued at approximately $30,000. 72.12% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.
Several research firms have issued reports on PYPL. Wells Fargo & Company increased their price objective on PayPal from $95.00 to $97.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Friday, February 10th. UBS Group boosted their price objective on shares of PayPal to $125.00 in a report on Monday, December 12th. BNP Paribas raised shares of PayPal from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 3rd. Raymond James downgraded shares of PayPal from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Monday, February 6th. Finally, Canaccord Genuity Group reaffirmed a “buy” rating and issued a $160.00 price objective on shares of PayPal in a research note on Friday, February 10th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have issued a hold rating and twenty-four have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, PayPal has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $108.42.
PayPal stock opened at $73.61 on Thursday. PayPal Holdings, Inc. has a 1 year low of $66.39 and a 1 year high of $115.52. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $76.49 and a 200 day moving average price of $79.06. The company has a market cap of $83.28 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 35.05, a PEG ratio of 1.13 and a beta of 1.31. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.51, a quick ratio of 1.28 and a current ratio of 1.28.
PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL – Get Rating) last released its earnings results on Thursday, February 9th. The credit services provider reported $1.24 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.20 by $0.04. PayPal had a net margin of 8.79% and a return on equity of 17.48%. The firm had revenue of $7.38 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $7.39 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $0.92 earnings per share. PayPal’s revenue was up 6.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts predict that PayPal Holdings, Inc. will post 3.83 earnings per share for the current year.
In other PayPal news, CEO Daniel H. Schulman purchased 26,065 shares of PayPal stock in a transaction on Friday, February 17th. The shares were purchased at an average cost of $76.17 per share, with a total value of $1,985,371.05. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 395,351 shares in the company, valued at approximately $30,113,885.67. The acquisition was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. 0.13% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.
PayPal Holdings, Inc engages in the development of technology platforms for digital payments. Its solutions include PayPal, PayPal Credit, Braintree, Venmo, Xoom, and Paydiant products. It manages a two-sided proprietary global technology platform that links customers, which consist of both merchants and consumers, to facilitate the processing of payment transactions.
Want to see what other hedge funds are holding PYPL? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYPL – Get Rating).
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ABMN Staff
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PayPal Holdings increased its technology and development spend year over year as the company reduced its headcount in January. WHY IT MATTERS: PayPal, one of many tech companies worried about economic uncertainty and a potential recession, reduced its headcount by 7% — 2,000 employees — the company announced last month. PayPal did not specify the […]
Brian Stone
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PayPal said Tuesday it will trim about 7% of its total workforce, or about 2,000 full-time workers, as the digital payments company contends with what it calls “the challenging macro-economic environment.”
PayPal said it will make the cuts over several weeks, with some of its organizations affected more than others. The company did not further specify. PayPal is the parent of payment apps Venmo and Xoom and the coupon service Honey, among other brands.
The company, based in San Jose, California, is the latest in the technology sector to trim its headcount. During the month of January alone, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce announced tens of thousands of layoffs.
Last summer activist investor Elliott Management bought a stake then worth about $2 billion in PayPal, which said it had entered into an “information-sharing agreement” with Elliott “to continue collaboration across a range of value-creation opportunities.”
“Over the past year, we made significant progress in strengthening and reshaping our company to address the challenging macro-economic environment while continuing to invest to meet our customers’ needs,” PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman said Tuesday in a statement. “While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do.”
PayPal Holdings Inc. is scheduled to report quarterly results Feb. 9.
Shares of the company are down about 53% in the past year. They rose 2.3% to close Tuesday at $81.49.
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The controversial ending to Mojang Studios’ Minecraft has sparked plenty of conversation over the years. A poem scrolls on-screen following after players defeat the Ender Dragon for a whopping nine minutes. Quotes from the “End Poem,” as the swan song is titled, have been inked on fans skins and turned into merch. But the story behind the prose is tantalizing in itself.
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Irish writer Julian Gough recounted meeting Minecraft creator, Markus Persson 11 years ago and writing the narrative ending for the adventure game, Minecraft’s End Poem. Gough said he was pressured into signing a contract with Mojang Studios, and later Microsoft after the company purchased the studio back in 2014, after the ending had already been implemented in the game. The contract would sign over Gough’s rights to Mojang and later parent company Microsoft. According to Gough, he was never under contract with Mojang when he wrote the game’s ending, meaning he owned the copyright over the poem, not the corporation. In the thread, Gough uploaded a photo of the contract Microsoft allegedly sent that Gough refused to sign in 2011 and in 2014.
“I’m lucky in that I don’t give a shit about working in the video games industry, so I can just tell the truth and whatever happens, happens,” Gough told Kotaku. “Video games are a great artform, potentially the greatest artform, but the industry as a whole frequently doesn’t treat writers with respect or understanding, and so it often doesn’t get the best out of them. It’s tragic, because the best writers can really elevate the whole game, at every level.”
After taking shrooms in the Netherlands, Gough decided to take the Minecraft Poem End under public domain through a Creative Commons license, according to his own account of the story, which he shared on Substack in December 2022. Gough said he put Minecraft’s ending under the public domain was so that players would be free to do whatever they liked with it, whether that’s using the poem in a school play, making T-shirts and posters of it, or painting it on the side of a van.
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“But there’s no point giving people a present if they don’t KNOW they’ve been given it. So I wrote a long piece on Substack, telling the story,” Gough wrote in the Twitter thread. “It went mildly viral. A terrific editor at a major global media organisation read the piece, and got in touch.”
When the undisclosed media organization reached out to Microsoft, Gough says the company refused to reply. According to the writer, Microsoft’s silence was the company’s way of circumventing the Streisand effect. Rather than making a big deal out of news only to make the news become a bigger story, the article was scrapped.
“And… it worked. Silence worked. The lawyers at the media organisation, understandably but annoyingly, lost their nerve,” Gough wrote. “Without a comment, even a ‘no comment’, it was impossible to tell what Microsoft knew or planned to do. And that was too much risk for the media organisation’s lawyers, because Microsoft [has] 1700 lawyers and unlimited financial firepower.”
Kotaku reached out to Microsoft for comment but did not receive a reply.
Had Gough’s ending been for “some tiny little indie company with no legal department,” he says getting news out about his ending poem, would not have faced such high levels of “scrutiny” and obsessive fact-checking by lawyers.
“If they said or did anything, we could have reacted to it. If they made a good objection, we could have changed a few lines, and published,” Gough wrote. “If they made a bad objection, we could have shown them proof that we were right, and published.”
Gough told Kotaku its been interesting seeing his Twitter thread receive a support from fellow writers and folks in the video games industry.
“I’ve even received PayPal donations from Microsoft employees! That was a pleasant surprise,” Gough said. “And I’ve had some eye-opening DMs from writers, and other creatives, who feel they were screwed over by big games companies, but who are afraid to say anything in public, because they worry they will be quietly blacklisted. There’s a lot of hurt out there.”
At the end of his thread, Gough encouraged players to read and share the original Minecraft game’s ending, which can be seen in the YouTube video below.
Isaiah Colbert
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In ELLE.com’s monthly series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month we spoke with Gabrielle Rabinovitch, PayPal’s acting chief financial officer and SVP of investor relations and treasurer (say that five times fast!), who knows male-dominated spaces all too well after starting her career in investment banking. She recalls once working on an M&A assignment for a company that made industrial-sized boilers; when she asked to see them, she was directed outside, approximately 100 yards away, in the freezing cold—to an empty building. “It was a big ‘gotcha’ moment,” she confesses. Ever since, Rabinovitch has prided herself on being aligned with the values of the company she works for. “Caring about the mission and vision, caring about what they do, and caring about how they take care of their people is very important to me,” she says. That includes helping provide a service that allows people to buy what they want, when they want, and how they want, especially during the holiday season. Here’s how she got there.
My first teenage job was folding sweaters, but my first real corporate job was as an M&A analyst at an investment bank. I worked on the mergers and acquisitions team for about two years, right out of college. Obviously, it was a very high-paced environment. Also, an environment where I was one of very few women; I think I was the only woman on my floor. Investment banking, management consulting—those types of areas are amazing training grounds to build executive presence, be given a ton of responsibility, and have an opportunity to be highly visible and gain a lot of on-the-job training. I thought it was a great way to start my career. I’m a big proponent of getting that diverse experience in your career and digging right in. What you get is what you give.
I felt like an outsider a lot of the time. I felt like I didn’t relate; I felt like I wasn’t included in the joke or the conversation. There were instances where I would be at a business dinner and a client would literally say, “I want to tell this joke, but I won’t tell it in mixed company.” Then I would get up and go to the bathroom, and I would come back and people would be laughing. Because I was the most junior person on the team, I would often go down and greet our guests and bring them up to a conference room and they would say, “Honey, can you get me a cup of coffee?” I had many of those experiences. One time, I corrected a senior banker when I was called upon to explain an analysis, and he said, “How do you know that? I’d think you’d be spending your time reading fashion magazines all day.” He said it in front of an entire group, and it really, really took me aback. It was an opportunity where I realized, this was not academia, this is not a meritocracy; you’re viewed in a certain way and there are certain preconceived ideas. It was eye-opening.
First, I went to Williams-Sonoma, and I got to the point where I wanted to take on more. I felt like I had stopped growing in my current role, and it was really an opportune time for me to move on. At the same time, PayPal had just become a separate public company, which was a very unique situation, to birth a company with a $41 billion market cap. It’s such an important leader within the digital payment space that, when I heard about the role, I was particularly excited, because it brought together my interest in technology, corporate formulation and business association and government, and it was also a much bigger platform for me to develop as a leader. So, I applied for the job, and I was definitely not at the top of the list—the recruiter made that pretty clear. I called him every week to let him know I was interested. Then I got to the point where I had another offer from a very prominent company, so I took the risk of letting the recruiter know, and very shortly thereafter I was meeting with PayPal’s former CFO. I prepped so much for that interview, because I knew it was my one opportunity. There was nothing that I wasn’t prepared to answer. I put so much pressure on myself, and fortunately, I was able to impress the team.
Taking calculated risks, and that is really consistent with what my transition to PayPal was.
The whole idea of democratizing access is so incredible: how expensive it is to be poor, and the fact that PayPal sits between merchants and consumers to make transactions easier, safer, and more secure. This whole idea about how we facilitate and enable both person-to-person payments and consumer payments was incredibly exciting to me. And also [being] right at the nascency of just becoming a public company with an incredibly rich history behind it: founded in 1998, acquired by eBay in 2002, and this whole story which then developed into corporate activism and separation.
PayPal really is a meritocracy; it is truly a place where lots of people thrive. What I find different about working at PayPal versus other jobs I’ve had is the consistency of such capable, excellent, smart people. It’s very fast-paced, so, initially, I felt like my head was spinning. It was a real learning curve with digital payments. I gave myself 90 days to know everything, because you can only ask so many questions before you lose credibility. There’s a very “come as you are” attitude. I’ll show up dressed up, and other people will show up in T-shirts and flip-flops; no one is judging people based on how they look. They want people who are thoughtful and engaged and passionate about the business.
By reminding myself that nobody would be asking me to do this if they didn’t think I could. I’m sure I seemed a little shaky at moments in time when I was finding my footing, but each successive week felt more natural, and it felt like I started to develop a good rhythm, not without challenges, but it started to take shape. To me, it’s about serving our people. Somebody needs to be in this role, and it requires a ton of energy, so I really wanted to be in service to our teams as we were moving through this transitional time. This year, as with many companies, has been one of intense change. So I needed to step up and give back.
Without a doubt, being acting CFO. One of my main influences for my interest in business was my mother. She had a career and then took a step back to have kids and stay at home, and she always regretted not returning to work. She passed away in 2005. I always think, “This would’ve been the moment where she’d be so proud.” I’m a people pleaser by nature.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Deputy Editor
Claire Stern is the Deputy Editor of ELLE.com. Previously, she served as Editor at Bergdorf Goodman. Her interests include fashion, food, travel, music, Peloton, and The Hills—not necessarily in that order. She used to have a Harriet the Spy notebook and isn’t ashamed to admit it.
