In celebration of Women’s Equality Day, we’d like to introduce some of the women who make our mission a reality every day.
Elsa Elbert
VP Customer Engagement
I am the Head of Aspiration's Customer Engagement team - affectionately and aptly referred to as ACE. On a day-to-day basis, I'm working with our team of roughly 35 agents, on all aspects of the organization of the department and the staffing of our various customer-facing channels. We focus on outreach, education, proactive contact, and opportunities to surprise and delight people - even when they are already thrilled with our product or services.
Our business model attracts like-minded individuals, and an atmosphere of giving; it provides a shared sentiment of purpose for our team at large, and an inclination on the customer side for loyalty and patience, which is largely disproportionate for a bank or financial institution.
It's extremely empowering to be involved in a company where there are so many benefits to becoming a customer; and furthermore, it's incredibly satisfying to be surrounded by so many intelligent women (and men), who lead with empathy, authority and integrity. It's a true pleasure to witness the level of expertise and respect extended to all members of the team at Aspiration, but particularly wonderful to see how many of those team members also happen to be women.
Tiffany Lin
Software Engineer
I'm a frontend software engineer (and proud to be one of three women on the engineering team!). Currently, I'm working on Admin 2.0, an internal tool for our customer engagement team. I've had the opportunity to help build out the UI for some cool features, including a notes capability that allows us to deepen the relationship with each customer over time. This capability empowers our customer engagement team to partner with customers in a more personable way and improve the customer service experience -- something that Aspiration genuinely values.
My road to becoming a software engineer was a pretty untraditional one. I'd previously had a much different career: editor for various online properties. I decided to leap into the software engineering world because I felt I had reached a point where I was no longer taking on enough challenges. As a developer, I'm able to continuously learn new things, including keeping up with evolving technology.
Since this is my first job as a software engineer, the biggest challenge I've faced has been resetting my career from the ground up and being OK with not having all the answers. It's been a humbling experience, but I'm fortunately surrounded by supportive colleagues who've provided me with invaluable mentorship. I'm incredibly grateful to have joined such a talented team and customer-driven company, and I'm excited for the journey ahead.
Suzy Ni
Software Engineer
I'm a backend software engineer, and the first female member of the engineering team. I am personally so excited to see our team continue to grow and diversify! Since I joined 6 months ago, I've been a key contributor to our platform development. We’re working on some incredible advances for our customers!
I come from an academic background and have spent a decade in my university in China doing research in the field of Computer Science. When I moved to LA about a year and a half ago, I decided to take the opportunity to change my career path and start fresh as a software engineer. The challenge for me was learning modern web architecture, along with the cultural and language barriers. With all these challenges I am determined and motivated to achieve what I want and continue to grow.
It is exciting for me to be a part of Aspiration, not only because it's a great opportunity for me to learn new technologies with my amazing teammates, but also that I'm able to contribute to building great customer financial product experiences!
Arthi Radhakrishnan
Software Engineer
I am a Software Engineer at Aspiration. I joined the team recently, just in time to step in and support new features. It's been exciting for me to come on board at such a pivotal time for Aspiration and our customers. After receiving my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, I began my career in enterprise software until I realized that I wanted to steer a different course in my career, towards building technology that can have an impact.
I've been fortunate to have made a shift in my career to work at companies that I believe can make the world a better place. In Aspiration, I'm thrilled to have found a company whose ideals align so well with my own. Aside from my dedication to engineering, I am passionate about issues surrounding Diversity & Inclusion in tech. Specifically, I am passionate about encouraging younger women & women of color to pursue STEM careers. Recently, I was able to volunteer and speak with a group at Girls Who Code's Summer Immersion Program.
On a day to day at Aspiration, I'm writing code to support our scalable back-end systems, as well as honing my craft as an engineer. As a newcomer to the team, I'm constantly learning more about our systems and product. I'm very excited for our team and product's continued growth!
Meghan Ruff
Product Marketing
My job is to help our customers understand how to get the most out of Aspiration—whether that means sending email sequences, writing product flows, or planning for new ways to communicate with our community. In short, I help make sure the right person gets the right message at the right time.
Growing up, I was never the kid who knew what they wanted to be. I always considered my passion to just be people—I was motivated by building positive relationships and helping everyone I met. And one of the many things I love about working at Aspiration is that every day I get to help show our customers how they really can find success financially without compromising on their values.
But there are a lot of challenging things that come with that goal. Probably the most important thing I work to overcome is building messaging around my audience—not just customers. Whether speaking to my boss, or concepting a new email sequence, if I’m not fully empathetic to who I’m speaking to, it’s easy to lose sight of the right message. If I don’t know how my audience is feeling, I’ll never be able to get my message through to them. So balancing empathy with data and the occasional gut feeling is something I work on every day.
Tamara Goldstein
Director of Learning & Development
I'm the Director of Learning & Development for Aspiration's Customer Engagement team (referred to as ACE). I joined Aspiration many moons ago, when we had but one product and seven team members.
It has been incredibly rewarding to be present for the growth of both our internal team, as well as our customer base. Seeing the vision of Aspiration materialize over the last (almost) four years has been very motivating, as has my role in guiding our ever-growing ACE team, as they navigate their day-to-day responsibilities, and evaluate their career development.
My background is in the hedge fund and venture fund world, and coming from that environment in New York City, to a startup in Los Angeles has been an exceptional contrast - and one that I am grateful for each and every day.
While customer service can be challenging, I think Aspiration's business model and focus on giving back attracts a truly refreshing population of people; customers who care a great deal about where their money goes, and equally place value on the ethos of the companies they do business with.
It's amazing to see how much more prevalent these types of customers are becoming - something I feel validates the work that we do on a daily basis at Aspiration. Providing options for people who care deeply about the world and where their investment dollars go, and additionally taking great care with their financial success in return... I believe we will see a much brighter future if people continue to hold businesses accountable, and it's heartening to work at a company leading the charge on behalf of their customers.
Lily Bowles
Sustainability Officer / Impact Product Manager
Sustainability is one of Aspiration's core values and embedded into everything we do. With this, I work with multiple departments to ensure that we maximize our positive social and environmental impact in every way possible.
From an operational perspective, my responsibilities have included making sure we operate sustainably by, for instance, finding a way for our offices to all run on 100% renewable energy, creating preferred supplier lists of sustainable office supplies and vendors, doing due diligence on the paper sourcing of the checks our customers use, and implementing a system to compost our office fuel: coffee grounds!
As a member of the Product team, my main responsibility is to find and implement ways to deliver sustainable and impactful products. One of the core features I have been part of from conceptualization to implementation has been the Aspiration Impact Measurement (AIM), our unique in-app banking feature that allows customers to see the impact of the places they shop on People and Planet. I have enjoyed all aspects of product development, from the ideation phase to coordinating with external data partners to aggregating user feedback to playing quarterback between the Product, Design, Engineering, and Customer Engagement teams to make it happen. Moving forward, my focus is to continue collaborating with these teams and using customer feedback to improve the way we incorporate impact into our products.
One of the most rewarding moments of my job so far was finding out we were one of the top 10% of companies and were considered one of the "Best Companies in the World" after completing the B Impact Assessment to re-certify as a B Corporation. This entire process -- and result -- solidified the extent to which Aspiration upholds its values of fairness, transparency, and sustainability when it comes to all of its decisions regarding its customers, employees, products and operations.