August 9th is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. It’s an opportunity to acknowledge that almost every land across the globe has been colonized or is under a pending threat to be occupied.

It’s okay not to know where to start. Indigenous Peoples refers to those that are Native American, First Nation, or Aboriginal, to name a few. One small way to practice allyship to Indigenous Peoples can be found in land, territory, or country acknowledgments, a best practice that is common in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Indigenous people are everywhere and it’s critical to acknowledge their place in history. 

While there isn’t a single way to research and fully understand if the land that you may consider home is under occupation, our Indigenous People’s employee resource group (ERG) members have pulled together helpful resources. We’ve shared the information with our Intuit employees around the world and want to share with others interested in embarking on a learning journey.

Be an active participant in research 

As you embark on your learning journey, consider learning more about the following topics connected to lands around the world:

• Indigenous Peoples that previously or currently inhabit the region
• History of the land and treaties which impact the area
• Correct pronunciation

If you are looking for a place to start, many members from Intuit’s Indigenous People’s ERG recommend visiting the Native Land website.  It helps you learn about Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages that may be connected to the land at any location. You can also try searching for official websites connected to Indigenous Peoples, which can provide even more helpful information.

Remember that there is no single resource that is guaranteed to give you all of the answers. Be responsible and respectful to confirm any information you gather to help ensure you have an accurate understanding of the land’s history.

Use respectful and appropriate language 

While it can be uncomfortable to learn about, the past is important to admit and accept. Use language that not only honors Indigenous Peoples but acknowledges the occupation of the land. Many of the territories and lands we occupy, also have history embedded in the common names currently in place. Take time to understand the traditional languages in place across various geographical areas. Just like there are many ways to research the land you’re occupying and how those locations came to be called what they are today, there are many ways to participate in a land acknowledgement. 

Typically, a land acknowledgement precedes the gathering of a meeting or event as a way to honor the space and our history before transitioning into the topics set for discussion. If you’re interested in sharing a land acknowledgement as part of your next meeting or event, here is some suggested verbiage that has been developed by our Indigenous Peoples ERG.

“I want to respectfully acknowledge the [Indigenous Peoples name], who have stewarded this land in [location] throughout the generations.

We ask you to join us in acknowledging the [Indigenous Peoples name] community, their ancestors and elders both past and present, as well as their future generations.

We also acknowledge that our presence on this land is the result of the occupation of Indigenous land.

This acknowledgement is part of our commitment to work towards honoring the ongoing legacies of the [Indigenous Peoples name] and Indigenous Peoples around the world.”

Continue your allyship and support of Indigenous people 

Land acknowledgement is a helpful starting point but there are more ways to get involved. Be intentional about building authentic relationships with Indigenous people. Check to see if your company has an Indigenous Peoples employee resource group or consider supporting a local Indigenous organization by donating your time or money. Look for opportunities to shop with Indigenous businesses, especially small-businesses. You can also seek out Indigenous voices through films, television shows, authors, and artists. Be mindful of Indigenous causes and issues pertaining to Indigenous Peoples and our communities. Indigenous people are everywhere, have been, and will continue to be. 

Practicing true allyship sometimes means leading by example – expanding the boundaries – challenging the norm. It’s up to all of us to honor, acknowledge and advocate for Indigenous communities and people around the world. Together we can do more. 

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Not only is it important for organizations to recruit new talent, but it’s critical to cultivate that talent as well. Eleanor Harvison, global leader of the Intuit Next Generation Network (NGN), does just that. 

As a global leader of this employee resource group (ERG), Eleanor works to engage, empower, and connect the next generation of Intuit talent through ongoing events and community-building initiatives across our company. 

Through ERGs like the Next Generation Network, we encourage connection, empathy, and trust between employees to lay the foundation for a culture of diversity and inclusion. By celebrating this, we help to build awareness of different cultures, identify unconscious biases, and start important conversations to drive meaningful change.

We connected with Eleanor to learn more about how the Next Generation Network is adjusting to a new hybrid work environment and their plans for the future.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

My name is Eleanor Harvison, I live in Reno, Nevada and have been at Intuit for 5 years. I am a Senior Manager on the Small Business and Self-Employed Group Money team working in risk management. 

I came to Intuit because I was looking for a company that was mission driven where I could grow my career. It is incredibly exciting to work on a team that is shaping the fintech industry!

Intuit aspires to be a workplace that encourages diversity, inclusion, belonging and equality. How does the work you do support this?

It can be difficult for people who are early in their career to network and make important connections while working from home. One of our strategic focuses for NGN this year is ‘Network Development’. Our goal is to foster a sense of belonging for our members who are trying to build their network and make connections in a hybrid work environment. We want to make sure everyone feels included, welcome, and has an opportunity to build their career. We have a team of NGN site leaders who are focused on rethinking how they plan networking events to make them available to employees in person and virtually. 

What inspired you to take on a leadership role with the Intuit Next Generation Network?

I have been part of the Next Generation Network since my first days at Intuit.

The energy within the NGN is fantastic! Everyone is early in their career and very excited to take on new challenges and make a name for themself at Intuit and within the tech industry. The network has been an incredible source of friendship, encouragement, and opportunity for me. It was through the NGN that I met the man that would eventually become my husband.

When the time came to consider applying for a global leadership position, I wanted to take the opportunity to create those same experiences for other young professionals at Intuit. I have a distinct vision for what we can accomplish at the NGN as we navigate this new version of hybrid work. 

Walk us through a typical day for you as an employee and as a leader of the Next Generation Network.

In my day-to-day work, I am a senior manager on the money team. Our goal is to ensure our risk operations teams are upholding the highest quality risk reviews and compliance with important money movement regulations. I spend my time working to bring about my team’s success and encouraging my employees to take on new challenges at an incredibly fast pace! 

As a global leader of the Next Generation Network, I partner with my co-chair to enable our NGN site leaders to develop programming that aligns with our current focus on network development and growth following a tough few years for ERGs while everyone was working at home. 

We are also working to expand industry recognition for our members and create meaningful business impact to drive Intuit’s business forward. We have a new mission to empower Intuit’s next generation of leaders to impact the tech industry through engagement, discourse, and global leadership. We are heading into the new year refreshed and ready to plan some exciting events.

What is a piece of advice you’d give to someone who wants to be an ally of the emerging workforce?

It is incredibly important to make connections and build your network when working from home because you may not have those same organic hallway conversations that are present in an office setting. I set up meetings with people throughout the company to maintain professional relationships when we are not working on projects together. Through this practice, I have a network of people with more professional experience than me who I have gone to for advice about taking on new roles or challenges. These people were all very encouraging when I recently accepted a new role as a Senior Manager. 

Mentorship, encouragement, and recognition can be very powerful for people who are early in their career. If you have advice or wisdom to offer, find the people in your network who demonstrate a particular aptitude for growth and take a genuine interest in their success. 

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At Intuit, we’re passionate about making sure that everyone can show up as their authentic self at work. If you’re looking for an inclusive workplace focused on creating innovative solutions that power prosperity around the world, visit our careers website to learn more and apply for open roles.

The post Building Inclusion: How Eleanor Harvison is connecting the next generation of talent in the workplace appeared first on Intuit®: Official Blog.

Our interns Nikhil S. Kashyap and Rhea Ravi Sharma share their internship experiences. They joined Intuit India as summer interns last May. They were also part of this year’s 6-month internship and were offered full-time roles. Nikhil and Rhea had the opportunity to work on projects aligned with their interests, also adding value to their personal and professional development. Read on to know what they have to say. 

Nikhil S. Kashyap                                      Rhea Ravi Sharma

What is the most important aspect of your internship that helped you grow your career? 

Nikhil: The company’s practice of assigning a buddy to every new hire made a positive impact on my learning. My buddy gave me tips to adapt to the new environment. I also have a mentor who helps me with learning new concepts and clarify my doubts on the tech front. The internship has enhanced my team-building skills and helped me realize how diverse a team can be. I can talk about a problem statement with a leader who is much older than me, or with a peer.

Rhea: The 6-month internship gave me a lot of time to learn. I worked on many projects while interacting with teams and engineers from different time zones. They helped me learn how to write better code and interpret software requirements. These efforts deepen my understanding of tech to become a successful engineer. 

How has your internship deepened your interest and knowledge in tech? 

Nikhil: I’m passionate about machine learning. And I have had the opportunity to work on modern technologies like GraphQL. Working on a machine learning project for customers has been amazing. My learnings have been quite extensive. I realized that there is a constant need to improvise, debug, and rework until the desired outcome. Optimizing and making things work has been a huge learning experience for me. In fact, my knowledge of finance has increased as a result of the internship. I’ve gained insights into expert profiles, onboarding process, tax forms, and much more. 

Rhea: My role as an intern is quite like an employee. I got to work on several repositories. I’m involved in the team’s everyday activities. I communicate with other teams for requirements—and even work on code that is not written by my team. I enjoy working on website development, which is a core focus area for QuickBooks Online Advanced. Also, the training that interns have is quite like employees. So my learning experience is quite enhanced. I had an opportunity to work on the backend of a feature that we’re building. I enjoyed the process while learning more about building APIs. Engineers should learn both front-end and back-end to become a full-stack developer. 

What are your key learnings that build your tech capabilities? 

Nikhil: The agile culture at Intuit opens up new avenues for learning. It has encouraged me to keep mini goals that are achievable. This way, I’m not overwhelmed, and I see results in the short-term. Having small goals helps me focus on achieving quantifiable results needed for engineers. Moreover, self-learning is much appreciated at Intuit. I have access to digital learning platforms to learn about SpringBoard, Java, AWS, and the like. I also learned the importance of documenting my work, as shared by my mentor. The process is needed because teams and customers worldwide use our products. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and if something new is identified, then documenting helps teams scale the work. 

Rhea: I’m always interested in learning new things and had the opportunity to be part of the training provided by my manager. The leadership team was also very supportive in enabling me to learn faster. They encouraged me to take the time to learn new concepts. I’m very proud of the work I’ve done so far at Intuit. The company’s Global Engineering Days (GED) held twice a year allowed me to work on an idea that I’m passionate about. GED has been a great opportunity for me to work on several projects and new concepts. Before GED, I used to work on projects that were assigned to me by the team. Now I’m confident about learning new concepts and working on my own.  

Do you feel that Intuit’s mission aligns with your long-term goals as an engineer? 

Nikhil: I’m fascinated by computer science. Understanding a problem statement and solving a problem can be interesting. The field of computer science has a plethora of problems to solve and that excites me a lot. Tech, in particular, is so fast-paced that it’s amazing to see how things progress—changing people’s lives.  And that’s how I connect with Intuit. Our tech helps change people’s financial lives and I want to be a big part of that. 

Rhea: Technology can impact the lives of people and that’s why I decided to join this field. Technology can transform the financial needs of small businesses through products and services. I receive critical and positive feedback from customers which builds my tech capabilities. When I look at the stats and know the number of customers using a feature that I contributed to—it is amazing. And that’s what I love about Intuit. 

If you’re looking for a way to create innovative solutions while helping the world, we’re always looking for great talent to join us at Intuit. Visit our careers website to learn more and apply for open roles.

The post Empowering interns to become successful engineers appeared first on Intuit®: Official Blog.

We have numerous stories of engineers solving complex challenges that result in incredible benefits to Intuit customers. Our engineers from various disciplines, titles, global locations, and backgrounds speak of their career trajectories at Intuit and how they unlock financial challenges for millions of people.  

Analytics India Magazine (AIM) got in touch with Sadaf Sayyad, data scientist at Intuit, who described a typical day at her work, alongside sharing interesting instances, career growth, and the impact she is adding to the team and the ecosystem. 

“For a data scientist, a typical day depends on the phase of the project one is working on. But, on a high level, my day starts with checking emails and messages for any urgent tasks. Then, we have a stand-up meeting to discuss the progress of the project and blockers followed by planning my day,” said Sayyad.

Sayyad completed a master of management from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. Her elective courses focused on analytics, data science, and machine learning. Post this; she got a campus placement at Walmart, where she got the opportunity to work on projects in optimization and machine learning. After that, she worked at LinkedIn in the data science team, where she was responsible for deep-dive analysis and experimentation of features on LinkedIn jobs pages. “This was a stint where I learned more about key business metrics, stakeholder management, product ownership, and power of data insights to drive business decisions,” she added. 

Sayyad told AIM that she would have been a quantitative financial analyst if she wasn’t a data scientist. “I developed an interest in finance during an internship in a hedge fund and would have pursued it further if I hadn’t been a data scientist,” said Sayyad. 

Hoops and hurdles 

“The challenge and beauty of being a data scientist are that every problem you get is likely different. Therefore, the single approach most likely will not work for two problems. This makes our job very exciting as every project is a new learning opportunity,” said Sayyad. 

Further elaborating, she said that on a high level, the steps or processes to follow are similar – i.e. define a problem statement and set clear expectations, ensure we have the right quality and quality of data, and set success metrics. “We build the first version model/solution as a proof of concept to ensure there is merit in pursuing a project. Then, suppose the target metrics look positive, and the cost of building and maintaining a model is worth the benefit. In that case, we go ahead to build out a production-level model,” added Sayyad. 

Overcoming data science block 

Often data scientists are under pressure or overburdened with work/tasks leading to data science blocks, which could hamper their daily activities. However, Sayyad said that she overcomes this with the spirit of teamwork. 

“This depends on what is the cause of the block. Sometimes the block is due to lack of data; in that case, we communicate with others to find alternative data sources, and if not, talk to business stakeholders about what is the best approach we can use and what is the best we can deliver with the available data and resources. The other block could be when one is struck at a model accuracy, which does not seem to improve even after multiple approaches,” explained Sayyad. 

She said that this is when it might help to get a fresh perspective, and team knowledge helps. And talking to other data scientists about the approach one has taken and what new things could be tried can bring us back on track. 

Motivation at work 

“Knowing that I am working on a product that affects people’s lives in a meaningful way by powering prosperity to small businesses and customers is undoubtedly the biggest motivating factor,” said Sayyad. In addition, as a data scientist, she said that getting to solve exciting problems and learning something new every day is a great motivating factor. 

Career goals 

Sayyad said she wants to grow her technical expertise in artificial intelligence, keep herself updated with the ongoing research and contribute and give back to the AI community. 

“I want to continue making an impact in people’s lives through the power of AI. With Intuit’s strategy being an ‘AI-driven expert platform,’ I couldn’t be better paced,” said Sayyad. 

Work at Intuit 

“At Intuit, my role has evolved from building ML models focusing on the technical aspects and algorithms to extending this to building reusable AI-based systems focusing on improving customer experience and ease of use,” shared Sayyad. 

She said that she had had multiple opportunities to work on some amazing and impactful projects at Intuit, delivering key success metrics for the company and learning and implementing state-of-the-art ML techniques that have helped her grow as a technologist. 

“I am currently working on a project which will help us improve customer experience significantly as they provide resolution to the problem they raise, using the power of AI,” said Sayyad. She said that she uses computer vision (optical character recognition) and natural language processing (document classification and named entity recognition techniques) for this project. 

Previously, she has also worked in multivariate anomaly detection and supervised machine learning problems. 

Work Culture

“At Intuit, I am delighted to work with a team of highly talented people where we learn from each other every day. There is no exaggeration when I say everyone personifies the company’s value of ‘Stronger Together,” said Sayyad. 

Further, she said that the leadership is also very clear about the top-level goals called ‘Big Bets’ and tech priorities, and every project is aligned to these goals, so they always have their eye on the big picture and what they are working towards. 

Adding to this, she said Intuit has repeatedly been in the top three best places to work in the Great Place to Work ranking because of its employee-first and empathy-driven policies.

The AI and data science team at Intuit is currently about 500 members strong, distributed across multiple geographical locations. For example, the team in India consists of data scientists, machine learning engineers, machine learning infrastructure engineers, business analysts, and program managers. 

Sayyad said that there is a lot of encouragement and opportunity for peer-to-peer learning. “We have a cadence of knowledge-sharing sessions within our team and have resources available to learn what other members have worked on. Contributing in these forums and sharing valuable feedback is one of the ways we contribute to each other’s success,” she added. 

At Intuit, we’re passionate about ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to prosper. If you’re looking for a way to create innovative solutions while helping the world, we’re always looking for great talent to join us at Intuit. Visit our careers website to learn more and apply for open roles

(Originally published by Analytics India Magazine) 

The post Impacting people’s lives through the power of AI appeared first on Intuit®: Official Blog.

As a global technology platform company, Intuit helps customers and communities overcome their most important financial challenges. The company serves millions of customers worldwide with cutting-edge technology products like TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, among others.

We have numerous stories of engineers solving complex challenges that result in incredible benefits to Intuit customers. Our engineers from various disciplines, titles, global locations, and backgrounds speak of their career trajectories at Intuit and how they unlock financial challenges for millions of people. 

Analytics India Magazine (AIM) in conversation with Radhika Kannan, Staff Technical Program Manager for AI at Intuit, discussed how the company is using AI to enhance customer experience. “We believe that everyone needs to have the opportunity to thrive and we never stop working to find innovative ways to make that possible,” Radhika said. 

Kannan adds that Intuit’s biggest USP is its strategy of being an AI-driven expert platform, solving problems with a customer and platform-focused mindset. 

“AI helps our customers work better and smarter because we can predict, automate and personalize their experience. Powered by data, this integrated products, and services platform is accelerating our speed of innovation,” said Kannan. She said that using AI technologies, some of the applications they are working on include:

• Leveraging ML to build decision engines and algorithms that learn from rich datasets to transform user experiences (UX) 
• Applying knowledge engineering to turn compliance rules into code
• Using natural language processing to revolutionize how customers interact with products and services 

“We believe our AI-driven expert platform will revolutionize experiences for customers and help people make the right financial decisions for themselves, their businesses, as well as their families. People across the world will be able to instantly access the skills, insights, and expert advice they need, while at the same time experts will gain access to new clients they wouldn’t reach otherwise,” said Kannan. 

Overcoming challenges in AI

“One of the biggest challenges currently prevailing in the industry is properly structuring and architecting data so that AI can be applied and implemented easily,” said Kannan. She said that includes making sure that there is a clean pipeline of data processing and accessibility of data in real-time so that you can provide actionable insights to users.

Additionally, Kannan said that in an ever-changing privacy regulation landscape, companies would need to make it easy for end customers to understand how their data could be used, alongside giving them the freedom to select who they trust with that data.

Like many big data players, Intuit stores copies of unstructured and structured data in a large enterprise data lake. Kannan said that the data lake is important to Intuit’s AI-centric strategy, as data analysts and data scientists tap into this rich data set to build machine learning models and gain insights to deliver personalized customer experiences with their products and services.

She said that this data is managed according to a strict set of ‘Data Stewardship Principles’ that govern the complete lifecycle of data. “These Data Stewardship Principles are working on changing the data culture at Intuit, enabling us to have well-designed, domain-driven data to start building AI,” added Kannan.

Furthermore, she said that setting up the initial strategy and investment in AI as a strategic priority can be a barrier for some businesses. “Often, a compelling business case needs to be developed. In some situations, that business case may need to be based on data that is not available yet because the new product is not yet in production,” said Kannan, saying that it becomes the classic ‘chicken-and-egg problem.’ 

She adds that this is the reason it’s important to document the assumptions in a business case and the assumptions about AI. To solve this hassle, the team at Intuit has created a core set of innovation and design thinking methodologies, known as ‘customer-driven innovation’ and ‘design for delight’ that encompasses these and related issues. “The key in both of these approaches is making sure we obsess about falling in love with the customer problems and not our solutions. By keeping this focus, we continue to remain nimble and flexible in seeking new, innovative solutions to evolving customer problems,” said Kannan.

Carving a niche

Kannan said that at Intuit, they’re focused on powering prosperity for their 100 million customers through AI. This includes:

• Financial insights, benchmarks, cash flow forecasts, and advice – actionable insights for QuickBooks Advanced (QBO-Adv) customers and cash flow advice to help businesses understand where they are
• Clean, organized data – real-time feedback-driven system for transaction understanding enabling insights in the customers’ first session
• AI advisor – advisory experiences in Mint (personal finance product) moving from a look back to planning ahead 
• Connect with an expert – context-aware digital experts in QuickBooks and TurboTax to help customers proactively, matchmaking for live offerings
• Expert augmentation – bringing ML intelligence and recommendations to experts

Intuit AI and analytics team members regularly participate in premier international forums like KDD (Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining) to share their ideas, research results, and experiences via presentations, workshops, and demonstrations.

Intuit’s product portfolio

Kannan said that across their platform, they had put the power of technology and data on the side of their customers. “Our product delivers simple, delightful solutions across the full range of our customers’ financial lives – and we are proud that millions of people worldwide turn to Intuit to make the most of their money,” she added.

Here’s the list of products developed by Intuit –

• TurboTax takes the complexity out of the tax code, helping users get the maximum refund they deserve.
• QuickBooks helps small businesses manage their books, get paid fast, manage capital, and pay employees with confidence.
• Mint and Credit Karma help users plan their finances, put more money into their pockets and benefit from the financial expertise and insights. Mint helps users get a comprehensive view of their financial picture and make smart money decisions.
• Finally, Mailchimp provides an all-in-one marketing platform that empowers customers to start and grow their businesses by helping customers get their business online, market their business, and manage customer relationships.

Tech stack

Kannan said at Intuit, analysts glean insights from customer data available across the ecosystem, and AI teams focus on building customer experiences driven by machine learning, knowledge engineering, and natural language processing, delivering personalized, automated, and insightful products.

Further, she said that the team combines AI with human expertise to innovate and deliver unimaginable benefits for our customers along with areas such as:

• Protecting customers from financial loss
• Building personalized smart products with AI-based predictions, recommendations, insights, and workflow automation that are ethical, explainable, engaging, and fair
• Inspiring trust in human expertise and AI-driven insights

The team also focuses on creating reusable self-service AI capabilities to help scale quickly across the company. 

Kannan said that they currently have AWS infrastructure support, including EMR notebooks that can run distributed workloads for large datasets with sizes of the order of TBs, and Sagemaker notebooks having CPU and GPU capabilities that can scale according to needs, Databricks, etc. Besides this experimentation infrastructure, Intuit also has its own internally developed frameworks to help abstract the infrastructure details from data scientists. 

Future roadmap

“As we build our AI-driven expert platform, we prioritize our resources on five top priorities, or Big Bets, across the company,” informed Kannan.

She said these five key priority areas go after the biggest customer problems and are the largest growth opportunities for the company. These include revolutionizing speed to benefit, connecting people to experts, unlocking smart money decisions, being the center of small business (SMB) growth, and disrupting the small business mid-market.

In addition to this, Intuit has also charted out some Bold Goals for 2025, including doubling household savings rate and improving SMB success rate greater than 10 points versus the industry, and increasing their customers to 200 million, alongside accelerating their revenue growth.

At Intuit, we’re passionate about ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to prosper. If you’re looking for a way to create innovative solutions while helping the world, we’re always looking for great talent to join us at Intuit. Visit our careers website to learn more and apply for open roles

(Originally published by Analytics India Magazine)

The post How Intuit is leveraging AI to enhance customer experience appeared first on Intuit®: Official Blog.

Growing up, Fale knew what it was like to go to bed hungry and without a blanket. He loved his parents and large Polynesian family, but they made the rules of life crystal clear: You went to school, then you got a job as a security guard or at the airport. Dreams were for other people.

Except that Fale had a dream.

Ever since he was a child, he wanted to do four things: to help the youth, help the elderly, help people experiencing homelessness, and help the community. It wasn’t a clear-cut dream and there was no road map of how to get there. It was a sense of purpose that burned within him.

 Meanwhile, he became good at basketball. Very good. Growing up, going to the basketball court was his safe place. It provided structure when nothing else did. It was where he could be himself. If he was having a bad day, shooting hoops would help get his mind straight. “Basketball is literally like therapy to me,” Fale says. “It was a place where I could go and work and build, and every day was an opportunity for myself to get better at it.”

Hard times—and a break

Fale’s life took an unexpected turn. When Fale’s family lost their home, they moved into low-income housing in a tough neighborhood. He put aside any thoughts of college and threw himself into work to help support his family. He took jobs as a security guard and washed cars. It was humbling work for someone known in the community for his basketball prowess. And although it felt good to make money, something inside him wanted more—only now it was a different kind of desire. Fale had a passion to build a life filled with purpose.

Then Fale got a break that changed the trajectory of his life. He was offered a job as athletics director at the Boys and Girls Club he had attended as a youth. He became a basketball trainer—with a difference. In addition to helping kids of all ages learn ball skills on the court, he helped them with life skills off the court.

In one of those remarkable turns of fate, the job also fulfilled the four goals he’d had since childhood. Through it, he found himself helping not just the youth, but also the elderly, people experiencing homelessness, and the larger community.

In addition to training kids of all ages, Fale continues to expand his skills as a coach, supporting professional basketball players, including those from the National Basketball Association (NBA). One of his trainees recently was admitted to the University of Washington. Another signed a contract with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

Getting closer to his dreams and financial empowerment

For Fale, prosperity means having a positive impact on others’ lives. But as he worked to increase that impact by teaching basketball skills to a wider circle of people, he found he lacked the financial skills he needed to succeed.

The world of credit scores, saving money, and doing taxes were foreign to him. Growing up, no one had taught him these skills. Fale began learning from experts, and colleagues and through his use of Credit Karma. When he traveled to other cities to teach basketball clinics, he started logging his miles so he could write them off as a business expense. If he discussed business over a meal, he learned to keep the receipt. He tracked his credit score and paid his credit cards on time.

“There were times where I would struggle and my credit score would dip, and then it was just like, ‘Okay, well, how do I pick myself back up?’” he recalls. “I’m still trying to learn everything as far as credit and the value of credit. But it’s been a growing process for sure.”

He pushed himself to continue learning. With greater financial literacy came greater empowerment. Instead of owing money after taxes, he got a refund.

Continuing his journey to create a life filled with fulfillment

These days, Fale has a head full of even bigger dreams. He wants to use his platform to have a greater impact beyond basketball—through doing toy drives for less fortunate kids, and through building homes and supplying clean water to the needy in other countries.

His greatest dream of all? To have his own gym—a place that can serve as a safe haven for others, just like the basketball court was his haven growing up.

As he works toward this dream, he’s facing a whole new set of learnings—about everything from bathrooms to fire codes. And he’s having to up his financial stability and literacy. In his moments of self-doubt, he tells himself to always remember “his why”—which he sees in the faces of the kids he trains and in their parents who believe in him. And he holds a vision of his new gym. “You may have had a rough day,” he says, “but we’re going to make sure that you leave with a smile.”

Supporting Fale to help him reach his dreams

Building deep customer empathy is part of our company culture. Each employee is expected to think like an entrepreneur, and it’s everyone’s job to create, to invent, and to look for new and better ways to improve our customers’ lives. We do that by getting to know our customers and understanding their pain points so that we can create bold new ideas to make their lives easier. 

During our recent company-wide event, Fale joined us alongside our 14,000+ employees around the world, as we learned more about not only his story but how he uses our products to reach his personal finance goals and grow his business. 

We also had the chance to share a special surprise with Fale. As a thank you for being an inspiration to all of us at Intuit, we added $10,000 to his Credit Karma Money account to help him build his gym. “It’s stories like yours that we live for, as we look to make an impact for those that we serve.” shared our CEO, Sasan Goodarzi. Customers like Fale drive us as we continue to make advances in technology that give everyone the opportunity to prosper.

The post How one basketball coach broke the mold to build a career and uplift his community appeared first on Intuit®: Official Blog.

Celebrating diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace helps build awareness of different cultures, identify unconscious biases, and start important conversations to drive meaningful change. One way to do that is through employee resource groups (ERGs), as they encourage connection, empathy, and trust between employees and also extend to customers. These employee-led networks formed from commonalities like ethnicity, gender, sexuality or shared interests, can lay the foundation for a culture of diversity and inclusion. 

We’re excited to highlight George Kousouros, global ERG leader of the Pride Network, and the work he is doing to build a more inclusive culture for our entire organization.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I live in Essex, United Kingdom, with my husband Cris, our 2 children and our 2 dogs. I was born in North London to Greek-Cypriot parents and emigrated to Cyprus when I was 8 years old. At 20 I moved back to the UK to study at university and stayed. I have been working at Intuit for 2.5 years in the Small Business and Self-Employed Group, where I lead Learning, Development, and Quality across our International Customer Success business. 

In all honesty, I’d never heard of Intuit before I started working here. Once I started doing my research, I felt drawn to the mission, the values, and the general sense of purpose. From my very first interview, through my onboarding, I saw Intuit’s values come alive in the people I met. 

2. If you had to share with a new employee or community member about Intuit, what would you say stands out most for you about working here?

Our recruitment process is designed so that when people start we’re not looking for them to prove themselves, we just want them to enjoy the process of learning their new role, getting to know their colleagues, and slotting into our culture. We place high importance on personal development, providing time, resources, mentorship, and coaching so people can move in the direction they want to. At the heart of our people strategy are the 13 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which represent and support our diverse talent. 

3. Intuit aspires to be a workplace that encourages diversity, inclusion, belonging and equality. How does the work you do support this?

I am one of three global leaders of the Intuit Pride Network, our ERG that supports and represents our LGBTQ+ employees. Together, we work to empower our people by educating the entire workforce on the LGBTQ+ community and issues they face, through events, panel discussions, fireside chats, manager education, and resources. 

In the last 2 years we’ve worked hard to educate our people on displaying their pronouns in their email signatures and messaging apps to create space and safety for our employees to express their identity freely. 

4. What inspired you to take on a leadership role with the Pride Network?

The first ERG role I took was local Pride Co-Chair for the London site. Having been at Intuit for just over a year at that point, I hadn’t experienced much from the Pride network and I appreciated that there was only one Chair at the site so I wanted to work with them to evolve the network’s presence at the site.

Having seen all the positive impact I had helped create as a local Pride Chair, when the global leadership position became available I was excited to create that impact on a larger scale, using everything I learned as the London Chair and the skills I bring from my main role at Intuit.

5. What makes the Pride Network special to you?  

The Pride Network stands for so many inspiring things, and the most special for me are resilience and hope. Our community has fought so hard for the right to be ourselves, that we have changed laws, mindsets, perceptions, and shifted the narrative. Of course there is a lot of work to be done around the world, but the grit and resilience that the LGBTQ+ community has demonstrated throughout history inspires hope that one day we will all just be people who are free to just be. 

6. Tell us a little bit about what you’re working on to support the Intuit Pride Network. 

Currently we are working on delivering on our strategy for Pride month, “Reconnecting with Pride.” After June we’ll be working on our strategy for the next fiscal year, which starts in August. 

Our next big event will be the Out & Equal Workplace Summit in Las Vegas, where we are hoping to gather all our local chairs. The summit will serve as a springboard for our strategy, inspiring fresh and diverse thoughts which we can bring back to our people.

7. Walk us through a typical day for you as an employee and as a leader of the Intuit Pride Network. 

I am based in the UK so start with activities related to my role here. As the day goes on I tend to have more interactions with our other markets and towards the end of my day I typically have meetings with US folks, who are just starting their day. Working across time zones can be challenging so it’s important to set boundaries, communicate clearly and often, and make good use of asynchronous tools. 

My Pride ERG co-leads and I have split our global sites between us by time zone to make sure we’re able to support our local chairs during their working hours. I’ve learned to be kind to myself when wearing multiple hats as an employee and as a leader. I have a family and 2 young children so it’s important for me to establish a synergy between work and family life. What gives me confidence to navigate this entire landscape is that I feel supported, both at work and home.

8. What’s a piece of advice you’d give to someone who wants to be an ally of the LGBTQ+ community?

The first piece of advice I would give is be curious and strive to educate yourself as much as possible. Your point of view is based on everything you have experienced so far in your life. If you haven’t had exposure to the LGBTQ+ community, you won’t have a well-rounded understanding or point of view. Strive to educate yourself by reading books and blogs, listening to podcasts, and by watching movies and TV series. 

The second piece of advice would be, act on your allyship. When you hear or see something that you know isn’t right, take action. Allyship isn’t about tolerating diversity, it’s about enabling it and acting on injustice, especially when you’re not in the presence of LGBTQ+ people. An ally is someone who has my back when I’m not there.

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At Intuit, we’re passionate about making sure that everyone can show up as their authentic self at work. If you’re looking for an inclusive workplace focused on creating innovative solutions that power prosperity around the world, visit our careers website to learn more and apply for open roles.

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For example, what if there were a few small adjustments that would make it easier for a colleague or friend to come out as gay or transgender? 

Good news—there are!

One of the simplest steps you can take is to include your pronouns in your email signature, on your internal messenger service, and in your video meeting name tag. You can do this even if you are cisgender (that is, you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth).

You might also look at the words you use in everyday situations. For example, how many of us have used the word “guys” when addressing mixed-gender groups, in meetings or email introductions? Try using gender-neutral words instead—such as “folks,” “team,” or “y’all.”

It may seem insignificant, but these small changes can help people who are trans or non-binary feel safe around you. 

Earlier this year, on International Transgender Day of Visibility, we kicked off our third annual Trans Summit with a LinkedIn Live broadcast. Led by Niall O’Rourke, VP of Talent Acquisition, and TransAdvisory Board Member Jessica Darke, their conversation inspired the following takeaways on how to create a company culture rooted in allyship. 

Watch the full conversation here.

Steps in the workplace

Aside from small, personal actions, there are steps you can take within your workplace or other organization toward becoming a better ally to the trans+ and non-binary community. 

Regardless of your role in the company, when you advocate for gender-neutral bathrooms and inclusive hiring practices, you create a safer place for people who are trans or non-binary. Take the time and the initiative to educate yourself about the trans+ and non-binary community rather than asking a member of the community to do it for you.

From the establishment of a Transgender Advisor Group, Pride employee resource group or even an ally program can help give LGBTQ+ voices a seat at the table. Programs like these can also help build tangible ways for others in your organization to learn and grow so that they can take part in meaningful actions to support the community. 

We’re proud of the job we’ve done developing allyship and getting support from top leaders. We were the first tech company to host a Transgender Summit, now in its third year. It was an honor to have our CEO Sasan Goodarzi open the inaugural event, further supporting our company’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, especially for the LGBTQ+ community.

Allyship as culture

An ideal outcome is to create a cultural shift in an organization that allows everyone to feel safe, accepted, and able to bring their whole self to work. This is especially important today, when gay and transgender rights are under assault in several states.

What’s truly heartening to see is how taking bold action—such as creating the Trans+ Summit—has allowed allyship to become a core part of the Intuit culture. In the three years since the summit launched, attendance has snowballed. In 2020, the first summit drew a couple of hundred people. Last year, it brought in about 500. And the Trans+ Summit on March 31 had nearly 800 registrants, mostly from within Intuit. The event keeps gathering momentum with more people wanting to be part of it.

Allyship as talent magnet

Beyond helping others feel safe and supported, a company culture that embraces allyship and prioritizes diversity, equity and inclusion can be a factor in attracting talent.

 Promoting events like the Trans+ Summit, sends a clear message to people that we’re an organization where allyship is alive and well—a place where they can indeed bring their whole selves to work. It’s a differentiator.

The same is true for employee benefits that support employees and their family members who are trans or non-binary. Intuit has grown the number of benefit options that do this. Our plans can include both mental and physical health benefits like behavioral health services, including counseling for gender dysphoria and related psychiatric conditions like anxiety and depression. We also cover gender reassignment and related surgery, including all procedures recommended by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

 We’ve also created a trans support channel within Intuit’s internal communications—and you don’t even need to be trans to be a part of it. It’s a safe space that benefits both employees and family members of trans or non-binary people. We made this space for people who may have a trans family member—a child, sibling, or parent, for example—and need support from others who understand the challenges they may be facing. 

 Strive to do your best

Remember to be patient with yourself. For many, it will take time to develop the habits of better allyship. There may be times when you’ll forget the name of a colleague who’s in transition, or bungle someone’s pronouns. If that happens, remember, we’re all works in progress and can learn to do better next time. 

Most important is pursuing ways to be a better ally by striving to be more inclusive and creating a company culture where no one needs to hide.

The post Creating a company culture where no one needs to hide appeared first on Intuit®: Official Blog.

Diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and opinions help us grow and innovate, making DEI critical to the success of our business. The more diverse we are, the better we can reflect our more than 100 million customers, build empathy and create products and services that solve their unique problems. From employee representation, to ensuring our products are fair and inclusive, to our impact on the communities around us, DEI is fundamental to our success.

Ending systemic racism is complex, and we will continue to do our part to make a difference. Two years ago, we came together as a company to create Intuit’s Racial Equity Advancement Leadership (REAL) team which is responsible for developing a long-term plan to address racial equity at Intuit. 

Our work to fight for a more equal world will never be complete, but here’s some of the progress we’ve made:

Supporting our Black colleagues and the Black community

More than two years ago, we appointed Intuit’s first-ever racial equity director, to create a lasting roadmap for bringing equity to the Black community. We’ve also publicly called for corporations to pay fairly and give equal opportunities to Black people, and given grants to support Black business owners.

In 2021, the U.S. officially recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday. In honor of Juneteenth, we’ll observe this holiday on Monday, June 20, 2022, to reflect, educate ourselves, and participate in civic action as we strive for a more equitable world. As the longest-standing holiday to honor the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans, and a day of reflection and action, globally, Juneteenth is recognized to honor the culture and achievements of Black Americans and the end of slavery.

Increasing underrepresented minority talent recruiting and representation

We’ve expanded our efforts to attract diverse talent, working with new partners to help us strengthen our pipeline of underrepresented talent. This includes working with many professional Black associations, such as Afro Tech, Black Professionals in Tech Network, NextPlay, Black Women Talk Tech, and several others. We also have several partnerships in place with historically Black colleges or universities for talent to launch their careers with Intuit. 

Beyond the pipeline, once a job candidate has identified Intuit as a company to explore, we’re making sure the interview experience reflects our commitment to racial equity. We’re continuing to increase the number of underrepresented employees who are certified to serve as neutral and objective members, or assessors, of interview teams. Our Black employees represent 40% of the underrepresented assessor community. We train and certify all assessors to make sure we have a consistent and fair hiring process.

Creating employee training and development resources

We’ve continued to create more opportunities to build employees’ skills and capabilities through training, developing an anti-racism education resource center, and providing resources to help educate employees at all levels of the organization. To date, more than 1,000 Intuit leaders have completed our racial equity training.

Since launching our anti-racist language principles, not only have we rolled out training to our employees, but these guidelines have driven over 800 improvements to potentially non-inclusive language in products, training materials, marketing, and customer service resources.

Developing inclusive practices and policies

We’re building a regular practice of re-evaluating our employee processes and policies to identify and prevent biases. For example, we’ve updated our processes for how employees are promoted and how performance is measured and rewarded. In our performance management process, we’ve built training materials and reminders to identify and prevent bias. We’ve also built consistent procedures to review diversity data trends before the process kicks off, during, and at the end. This helps us make sure our employees are being evaluated fairly. 

Supporting our diverse customers and communities

As we celebrate the diversity of our customers, we also continue to find ways to shine a light on them. Our Virtual Prosperity Pop-Ups are held monthly for our employees around the world. They feature diverse small business owners and help us understand their unique stories and challenges, along with an opportunity for our employees to shop with and further support our small business customers.

We know that many of the communities we serve have limited access to educational programs and resources that prepare them for the future job market and contribute to their financial success. We want to level the playing field to better prepare people and students in these underserved communities for the job market through our job readiness program. We bring real-world tools into classrooms to help students develop personal finance skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. With this in mind, we expanded our Prosperity Hub School District program for school districts that are most in need to develop the next generation of students and teachers. The program now includes 21 school districts across nine countries with a combined enrollment of more than 1.6 million students. Each district was selected based on two key criteria: economic need and diversity of the student body. Nearly 80 percent of students in these districts identify as being from underrepresented groups.

Our commitment to driving greater societal transformation

While we’re making progress, we’ll continue to do more as we not only create long-term plans to address racial equity at Intuit, but advocate for ways that we can come together with our employees, customers, and communities to create a more equal world for all.

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