James N. - Founder, FinTech

 

We started working with Jess soon after our Series A – when we had the funding and needed to scale fast.

 

What really stood out through working with Jess was that she’d actually been there before. Having been Head of Talent at a start-up prior to her starting Belong, she understood the reality of building and scaling a business, not just hiring into one. She kept reminding me that companies don’t just grow – they either grow well or grow badly; and that we need to build a culture, but not just a business.

 

Jess wasn’t afraid to challenge me or other managers either, holding up a mirror for some big hiring decisions and helping us think more strategically about the team we were building.

 

Her knowledge of the FinTech and Payments space was a huge help too. She helped us bring in people with the right product and regulatory experience – many things that were not on my radar, but turned out to be critical.

 

Jess also helped us build out our internal recruitment function, which we now run ourselves, but she’s still a big part of our journey and we continue to work with her on senior and exec hires. And I am often reminded by her not to lose the culture we worked so hard to build in the early days!