Proven Not Perfect
Proven Not Perfect
Fintech, Gen Z, And The New Playbook
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Money shouldn’t feel like paperwork. We sat down with Virginia Heyburn to unpack how fintech and AI are transforming banking into something simpler, more inclusive, and far more human. From mobile-first experiences to embedded finance, we trace the long road that brought new providers like Chime and Klarna into mainstream behavior—and why Gen Z’s expectations for speed, clarity, and respect are driving the next wave of innovation.
We get real about AI’s impact on work. Traditional AI has lived in the background for years, but generative AI is changing daily workflows: less time on drafting and formatting, more time on strategy and connection. Virginia lays out why leaders must be AI fluent and then proficient, modeling responsible use while balancing governance, compliance, and shareholder demands. We also tackle a hard truth: many entry-level tasks will be automated. The opportunity is to train early-career talent as critical thinkers who can leap the rote work and contribute judgment, ethics, and creativity from day one.
Beyond the boardroom, we explore parenting in the AI age and the importance of mental health. Keeping kids off tech isn’t the answer; teaching them to coexist with tools is. Yoga and breath become a lens for leadership—automate the minutiae, then use your reclaimed time to build relationships, ask better questions, and focus on the whole. For community banks and credit unions, that same mindset means “scaling the unscalable,” partnering with fintechs to serve niche markets and compete on experience, not size.
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Fintech’s Long Road Arrives
SPEAKER_00You've become a thought leader, you've become you've mastered as a practitioner, but you're certainly leading not only your past company, but new clients into this new era.
SPEAKER_01As we have arrived now in this world of fintech with brand new providers of financial services utilizing all of this modern technology, it didn't just happen overnight, it's been a long time coming. What does finance technology mean? The reimagination of financial services.
SPEAKER_00Now that this aperture is opening up, um are new entrants able to come in? Are women with great ideas for finance technology able to enter, or is it too late?
Meet Virginia: Yoga To Banking
SPEAKER_01Oh, extraordinary opportunities. There's no doubt about that. There are new fintechs coming onto the scene literally every day. Wow. The game is changing. It's not the same. It's a completely different ballgame. I mean, the largest generation now, the largest generational cohort is young people, Generation Z, and they have completely different expectations for work, for play, for connection.
SPEAKER_00And we are back, proven not perfect, on site at Women of Steel 2025. Man, if you have not felt the electricity in this place, I don't know what's going on in your veins, right? So right now I'm here with Virginia Hayburn. Um, there's an extra special name in there as well that I'm missing. You're gonna have to pull it out. What is it?
SPEAKER_01Gross. It's gross, it's my married name. There we go.
SPEAKER_00Yes. There we go. Is that Italian? It's German. It's German. Yes. Okay, excellent. It's beautiful. It's my married name. All right, so I have to tell the story of how we met. Little fun fact, little known fun fact for this, you know, girly who finance businesswoman, right? There was a point in my career where things got so very hectic that yoga was the thing that became food to my soul. And so much so that I was like, I need to master this and take it into the boardroom with me. And I became a yoga teacher, right? And you were one of the gurus that I had the privilege to um witness in that journey. You're amazing. Yes, you are, Sean. Oh my gosh. So now we so I knew you as a yoga guru, but then I would come to unpack that and understand your business skills and finance, in particular fintech, at a time where that was not necessarily something that was commonplace to talk about off the chart, right? So much so that you've become a thought leader, you've become you've mastered as a practitioner, but you're certainly leading not only your past company, but new clients into this new era. Um wow, that's pretty incredible. So tell me when you file back to when you first started talking about fintech, and then you get to today, where it's a topic that everyone's trying to know more about, what does it blow your mind?
What Fintech Really Means
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, uh Chantra, I have to tell you, I really appreciate that because can you tell my children that that's what I do? Because they're always like, Mom, what do you do? Yes. My mother used to ask me that too. But to answer your question, Chantra, I've been in the financial technology space for 30 years. Okay. And that's really what fintech stands for: financial technology. And so as we have arrived now in this world of fintech with brand new providers of financial services utilizing all of this modern technology, it didn't just happen overnight, it's been a long time coming. And so I've been along for that long time coming ride. And so I get really passionate and excited to see so much of the promise now come to fruition.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Okay, so now we're gonna break it down for the people in the cheap seats. What does fine fintech mean? What does finance technology mean?
SPEAKER_01FinTech is a modern term that essentially describes the reimagination of financial services. In other words, very simply put, the realization, hey, there's a better way to do this. Wow. Banking does not need to be painful. It can be easy, it can be inclusive, it can be an extraordinary experience delivered on a device of choice. Maybe yours is a mobile device, maybe I'd prefer to be on a tablet, maybe in the future it's a virtual reality session, maybe I'm on my refrigerator. But it is a simple, seamless, frictionless experience. And in some cases, traditional financial institutions are delivering that, in other cases, it's brand new competitors. And that's creating the excitement.
Opportunities For Women Founders
SPEAKER_00So honestly, as a business geek, self-proclaimed, I love that it's made space in an industry largely regulated, one where, if you haven't been in it for a significant period of time, there was no real entree into it, right? We don't like to say monopoly, but certainly an oligopoly, right? And so my question is now that this aperture is opening up, um, are new entrants able to come in? Are women with great ideas for finance technology able to enter, or is it too late?
SPEAKER_01Oh, extraordinary opportunities. There's no doubt about that. There are new fintechs coming onto the scene literally every day. Wow. So it's this new this idea that there is, yes, there is a better way to deliver financial services, and sometimes that better way is to tap into a particular group of human beings, for example, women, for example, female entrepreneurs that have really unique needs and unique perspectives, and they want to be spoken to by technology, by companies in a way that resonates. And so, yes, opportunity abounds.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So tell me what's one of the coolest new offers that you've seen come about um in new applications of fintech recently.
New Players: Chime And Klarna
SPEAKER_01You know, some of the the best applications of technology that I've seen in uh fintech are offered by brand new companies. So these are companies I would say like like Chime, like Klarna that's gotten into the buy now pay later space, yes, um, e-wise, that are really tapping into this shift in demographics, a brand new generation of customers in Gen Z that has grown up on social media, that's grown up with a mobile device in their pocket that is extraordinarily entrepreneurial. Yes. You know, there's 75% of Gen Z says, I want to be an entrepreneur. They don't want to work. Our generation structure. Our generation, 25% maybe. We were, you know, let's go to the company, let's pay our dues, let's work in the cubicle, let's grow.
SPEAKER_00We were told to, right? That is true. I literally had the option like this. You can do not take my advice and go to college and major in finance, or you can not take my advice and go to college and major in finance. Which one? It didn't feel like an option to me, right? Pick your poison. Yeah, pick your poison. But my but I in all seriousness, I definitely remember the thinking was get a job, get a good job. My dad was very early on in finance, so you know, really drove my major in finance. Um, you know, insurance, risk, Wall Street, all those things were important to him. But all of the the game is changing. It's it's not the same.
Gen Z Expectations Rewrite Rules
SPEAKER_01It's a completely different ball game. I mean, the largest generation now, the largest generational cohort is young people, Generation Z, and they have completely different expectations for work, for play, for connection, for friendship, for how they spend their time, where they work, how they work. Yeah. They do, and they of course, word of mouth is tremendous because they're on social media up to eight hours a day. Wow. So if one of them has an idea, by tomorrow, everybody's gonna have the same idea, you know what I mean? So you've got this generational shift, and you it's compounded by the fact that technology innovation is accelerating as at the fastest pace we have ever seen. That's right on. So you put those two things together, and any company and any business, anywhere in the world, has got to be thinking differently about how they hire, yes, how they deliver service, how they speak to their customers. The ballgame has shifted entirely.
SPEAKER_00I want to talk about that because in the session earlier, one of the things that we hit on in AI was how companies are using technology and AI these days. And we talked about it in the context of market insights and things of the like. I am hearing from a lot of my daughter's friends that they're graduating from college and they're feeling pushed out by this new AI um discerner for corporations. So no longer is HR reading that stack of resumes, they're putting an AI bot on it, it's screening through, and I'd be darned if I've had one conversation, I've had 10, where these younger folks are telling me I am frustrated because I don't feel reviewed by a human anymore. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's it's true, right? You know, you look at what AI is doing, and and essentially AI is automating the minutiae in a lot of companies. And unfortunately, a lot of minutiae is still very much human-centric. Yes. So we have to be very careful about that. And I think for young people, instead of pointing the finger at the technology, I think what young people need to do, and what parents of young people need to do is teach, teach them, empower them, grow them to be able to jump over that hurdle of being in the entry-level position. There will be no such thing as an entry-level position anymore. That's what AI is going to replace. So we have an opportunity, I think, to really shape our young people into being critical thinkers right out of the gate. Yes. Um, to create those conversations within families, within educational institutions, to ask the hard questions, to be able to jump over, to make that leap out of the entry-level position that you and I both started in because we paid our dues.
AI In Hiring And The Vanishing Entry Level
SPEAKER_00It's a different world. So you know what? I go back to Proven Not Perfect and I talk about my principles of leadership. One of them is resilience. And I know that you and I are like-minded here. We've talked about this, but there is a different role in parenting in this AI age, right? Totally. And it's gone. If you are still in helicopter parent mode, you have missed the memo. You have right because no, that's what our that's what we were sort of taught to do. However, you know, we we were encouraged to resist it, but let's just face it, we all did it, right? Now, this new generation, teaching them resilience, helping them to understand the tools that exist, helping them to be able to articulate what they are good at and how to leverage those tools around their unique passion. Wow, what do you think? Well, I you have a little one, so tell me.
SPEAKER_01I I do, and Chantra, I'm maybe a little bit of a unicorn in this sense. I have uh four children ranging from 31 down to seven. So I'm a multi-generational mother. I gave birth to all of them. So I have this experience of raising millennials, a Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha, my little guy.
SPEAKER_00And what a unique opportunity. I'm just gonna say that.
SPEAKER_01I feel incredibly blessed to be able to do this. Having a baby at 46, now being 53 and having a seven-year-old, let me tell you what. And we didn't even talk about perimenopause, and she's flipping babies in there. Let me tell you, this the human was not designed to go through menopause. But I often say to myself, I say to myself, I had teenagers. Yes. You know, would I rather have a teenager going through menopause, or would I rather have a cute little pumpkin of six years old? I'll take the six-year-old.
SPEAKER_00Any day.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um what was your question, Sean? What are you doing different? That's menopause. No, I'm just with my little guy. What are you doing different with your little guy now, based on how you see technology just really taking hold of how um how our folks are successful in the future?
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, you know, I I I do hear this push from parents let's keep the kids off technology. Yeah, let's keep them off the gaming. And I think there's some truth in that, but also I think to remove them from technology is a big mistake. I agree. They need to learn to coexist with technology in a very healthy way. I was really hoping you said that. That's very, very important because let's face it, I mean, that's the world that they are living in, that they need to grow into, that they need to be successful in. So I think it's it's mental health. Double click.
SPEAKER_00Do not click take your kids off of technology, instead, help them to integrate and how to leverage technology. That's absolutely right.
SPEAKER_01And the mental health piece, I think, that's what I'm really very aware of in my young young one that I don't know that prior generations really paid enough attention to. My my older kids, I mean, they were high flyers, they were in IB programs, they were the ones that came out of school with 13 AP exams, which is all wonderful. But it's only wonderful if they're also mentally in a good place. And the pressure that we place on kids, on young people, on ourselves is immense. So, with my younger one, what I get excited about with AI, and this is something that's a bit of a specialty for me because I advise financial institutions on how to use AI. Yeah, I work with the the boards and the C level. We're going to get to a point where we're not going to be overwhelmed by the minutiae anymore, Chantra.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Parenting For Resilience In An AI Age
SPEAKER_01Because we have, for generations, been overwhelmed by the minutiae and therefore unable to see the whole, the whole being punctuated by wellness, by mental health. Yes. Now we can automate the minutia. Yes. We can get out of the river and onto the riverbank and have a better perspective on what matters most. And that's what I am trying to teach my seven-year-old.
SPEAKER_00So I I need to, I love that. Thank you for giving us a little peek into your mommy ink. Part two. But this notion of let's not be scared of it, let's lean into it. As you're talking with C-suite, right? Because you know, now you're in my lane, my job, my day job, right? Where we're thinking about, okay, for our corporation of 50,000 around the world, how do we let go of the fear just to the extent that we can lean into the art of the possible? But I will say we're on that journey, no different than other corporations, of figuring out what that fine line looks like, right? Um, what do you tell the C-suite right now? What are you saying to your clients that are saying, okay, there's compliance, there's governance, there's liability, there are all the things that we're all very accountable for to our shareholders and stakeholders. Um, but then also if we do not lean in and lean in quickly, we will create a chasm of a gap between ourselves on the wrong end and our competition.
SPEAKER_01I I could not agree more with what you just said. I think it's first of all, leaders have to be AI fluent. Yes, and then become AI proficient. If they are not, they can't set the tone from the top. And leadership is embodied. You have to embody leadership, whether it's picking up a piece of paper off the floor and that spreads, or whether it is learning about AI, learning about its benefits, its risks, how to reconcile the two, and then also passing that along to the organization. So that's that's obviously one. And I think it's also That's a big one.
SPEAKER_00It's a big one because people misunderstand that you can't just tell your people, start figuring out AI. You've got to start leading with it. I've got to start hosting meetings where I'm leveraging it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and you have to get proficient because AI is a term that's that's used widely, but there are actually very different ways of utilizing AI. AI has been around for decades. Traditional artificial intelligence has been in place, utilized by big companies for eons.
SPEAKER_00And the military.
Healthy Tech Habits And Mental Health
SPEAKER_01Sure. It's it's you know, where you look at data, you analyze data, you action the data, and you make better decisions. That's been around forever. What we talk about and what we've talked about at this conference is generative AI. Generative AI that burst onto the scene with ChatGPT, everybody got really excited about it. A hundred million people started using it, then it was 200 million, then other models emerged. That's where you can say to an organization, you don't need to spend 16 hours writing a marketing brochure. You can do it in one or two.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_01And then does that mean you need fewer people? It could mean you meet need fewer people, which is let's face it, business is business efficiency, shareholders are looking for that. That's truly a metric. But then it's also that you can again automate the minutiae so that you can be focusing on what's important strategically. Yes. And that is where companies' growth comes from. So that's one. The other one is we can, I heard this term today in the conference and I loved it. I wrote it down. It's scaling the unscalable. So when you look at that was a good one to pick up. It's a good one because if I'll talk about my industry, banking. We have large banks and we have thousands of small banks and credit unions that have for a long time been worried how am I going to compete long term against the larger financial institutions? We're talking Bank of America, we're talking Chase, we're talking Wells. Now we're talking fintechs, like Chime. Did you know that over 50% of new checking accounts today are opened with fintech banks? Did not know that.
SPEAKER_00Over 50% of new checking accounts.
SPEAKER_01Who's opening new checking account accounts? Young people. They love the fintechs, the great experiences.
SPEAKER_00And they're more fiscally wise than I believe we were at their age. They're why why pay fees that you don't have to pay when I don't need all of them?
SPEAKER_01Hey, look, you know, I often hear young people are, you know, gonna be on my couch for the rest of their lives as a parent. Not not true. They're the most well traveled, they're the most they speak more languages, they're environmentally aware, they're socially conscious, they're up to big things at an earlier age.
SPEAKER_00Agree.
Making Leaders AI Fluent And Proficient
SPEAKER_01So I I just love engaging with young people. And let me tell you, if you ask them questions, you're gonna learn something from them, right? So, you know, in that vein, if you look at smaller financial institutions, they have the ability now with technology, with artificial intelligence to scale, to grow with the resources that they already have. Because they can't afford to invest in a bunch of AI engineers, AI scientists, technology enthusiasts. They have to work with what they have while now AI is telling them you're gonna do 10x more than what you were able to do yesterday.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna not only stay in business, you're gonna thrive, you're gonna seek new target markets, you're gonna reach new customers, maybe not even in your own geography. You're gonna partner with FinTechs and you're gonna be around for a good long time. That's what excites me.
SPEAKER_00So if you really play this game of life right in this next half, and you lean into technology, I think we almost get a bit of a reprieve because so many of us are coming. From the bootstrap it, do it hard, make it happen. Those things the tech will do for you, the mundane, to leave you doing the thing that you always wanted to do, which was to strategize, which was to vision, right, which was to lead, which was to engage. You get to do more of that.
SPEAKER_01Do more of that, do more connecting. And that's where I think the value of technology really reveals the benefits to humanity because I think we lose sight of our own humanity when we're overscheduled, when we're overburdened, when we're buried in the minutiae. And as leaders, if we have more time, we use that time to establish the human connection, to bring people together, to collaborate, collaborate at the human level, eyeball to eyeball. There's so much value in that. It's much needed in the world that we operate in. And when we bring people together, good ideas surface. Those ideas carry our companies forward.
SPEAKER_00I love that. All right, so we have to do this in pure proven not perfect fashion. I need to hear a not perfect experience that you've had with tech. A not perfect experience I've had with tech.
SPEAKER_01Well, Chat GPT is a great, um a great example. So for I will say, just to play with it, I speak at conferences, a lot of conferences. Yes, you do. And I travel over the country. And so just to play, I would say, okay, ChatGPT, give me an opening for uh a speech on artificial intelligence in banking. And then I get it back and it's all doom and gloom. Oh, there are words like fear in there and um failure. And so I'll say, uh, this is a little too dark and grim for this audience. Yeah. Can you give me something a little bit more uplifting? And then it fires something back at me, and it's got a really big Gen Z voice in it with all kinds of young terminology. Like this is fire, and it's a okay, that's not my voice.
Generative AI: From Hype To Workflow
SPEAKER_00Ah, so wait a minute. You're going to the conference and you're like, okay, here I am. I'm Virginia Hayburn. I'm gonna educate you guys. We're all damned to hell. Basically. And if you don't like that, fire.
SPEAKER_01So we've got these two extremes. So now Chat GPT and I are better friends. ChatGPT knows me a little bit better, so they it knows my voice. I love that. But technology does fail, you know. I mean, it's my my um my iRobot sometimes just without any prompting just starts vacuuming in the middle of my conference call. And I have no idea why it does that. So I really wish it would.
Scaling The Unscalable In Community Banking
SPEAKER_00This this is the truth of the matter, right? We're not being taken out of the equation. And I think that that's one of the things that even came up in the conference today, where people, there's some people that are crippling with fear, giving giving their information, losing their footing. And I like to say that it's literally only gonna amplify where you are, right? And I actually thought, because I heard I was in a conversation recently where someone said to me, you know what? Those kids coming out of college, um, they have a tech skill, a tech savvy. All of the more senior folks, you're there's no no use for you anymore because them plus AI, no need for us. No, no, no, no, no. Because I believe that what makes AI great makes it great at all levels, right? And so if you're just coming in and you have a baseline understanding, it's going to be excellent about helping you to aggregate that baseline understanding for a smarter conclusion. If you have been packing 30 plus years like you and I have in the game, right? When we use AI and it gives you the gobbledal yuck, and you're like, no way, right? Yeah, you know, no, that's not the answer, right? How do I take the provocative inquiry that you command as a businesswoman for so many years and reprogram that with a question that has it spit back to you something that's at the intellectual need that you have for the moment, right? So I don't know your thoughts on that, but I'm I'm not afraid of it anymore.
SPEAKER_01You know, it it just makes me so much more efficient in what I do. So, you know, if I'm giving a speech to a group of bankers and I need an opening or I need a close, I never use notes, but it's just something to inspire my thought. It's such a much faster process, you know, for me to get my thoughts together and then do what I do. If I, for example, need to write an article for a publication, I can prompt uh Chat GPT and say, this is what the tone needs to be, this is my audience, um, these are the components that I want you to include. I still need to know that I want those components in there. Yeah. So that's where my experience comes in.
SPEAKER_00No one can take that away.
SPEAKER_01It brings it back and it takes me far less time. I will wordsmith, I will move things around, I'll add something in, I'll take something out, and I will reframe, but it it's it makes me a lot more efficient, more productive. I can do more if I so choose, or I can say, I need some time, I need a mental health break. That's right. I need to take some time for myself. I need to go to the volleyball game for my little guy.
SPEAKER_00You need to practice yoga.
SPEAKER_01I need to practice yoga.
SPEAKER_00Ah, that's excellent.
SPEAKER_01Because calm mind, yeah, you know, calm breath, calm mind, calm everything.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So in that spirit, and we only have a couple seconds left. What do you think is going to be the impact of yoga plus this high-tech world and the interwoving or the extra need for it based on us all being in this dynamic place and needing to breathe more, unplug more?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think I hinted at it earlier. I think it's focusing less on the minutiae and more on the whole.
Efficiency, Humanity, And Time To Lead
SPEAKER_00There we go. There we go. Focus less on the minutiae, more on the whole. Virginia, you're amazing. I know that you're out there talking with C-Suite, and you're also out there continuing to be a thought leader on this topic of fintech. Um, I think the work that you're doing is fantastic, and it's only gonna get more important um as we continue to integrate with this dynamic world. Keep rocking it out, sis. Love ya.