Influential Woman · Finance Tech

Vinitha Simon

Director, Capital One

Tysons, VA

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Computer Science Engineering Degree Anna University Degree India

Her Story

About Vinitha

I've been in the finance industry for 12 years, though my overall professional journey spans 19 years. My father was in the finance business, and ever since being a child, I've seen how finance and banking industry has helped shape lives of different people. That familiarity, combined with viewing finance tech as an actual service to people who need money management in their daily life, drew me to this field. I did my computer science engineering from Anna University in India, which introduced me to the tech world, but I believe the practical experience of actually having worked almost 19 years - nothing beats that, quite honestly. I'm an engineer myself, and in my current role at Capital One, I spend a lot of time with our engineers understanding the problems and figuring out how to make the lives of our engineers and our enterprise a little bit better. I also spend considerable time understanding the tech world because technology is evolving so fast - every morning when you wake up, there's something new that's released, so staying on top of that is equally important.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Vinitha

01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

The most tactical and useful career advice I've received is to manage perceptions, because perceptions become reality at some point. It doesn't quite matter how much work you do, or how efficient you think you are - how you're perceived by others around you makes a whole lot of difference in your success. So I think it's really important to be able to stay on top of that and manage that effectively.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

My daughter goes to college, and her friends ask me these questions all the time. One thing I tell them is to be truly passionate about what you want to do, because when you're really passionate, no difficulty or hurdle becomes impossible to cross. No challenging situation becomes impossible to get through, and no matter how tired you are, you feel more motivated. So I think passion is probably the number one thing you can bring into your field of work every single day. If you love what you do, you're going to be really good at it, that's for sure.

03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

More than focusing on challenges, I'm going to convert them to opportunities. Within the tech sector and industry, we do see heavy, heavy investment in a lot of being tech-savvy, a lot of AI-specific capabilities coming to life. So I think jumping on that bandwagon and being at the forefront and being pioneers and trailblazers of that is probably the biggest leverage we can bring to ourselves. We don't want to be left behind, so capitalizing on that opportunity - not shying away from it - I would say is one of the biggest things we should be doing.

04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?

I think maybe the number one value I would say is integrity and ethics. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, it doesn't matter how much you know, but if you're not going to be able to do what you say you're going to do consistently and bring your best effort forward every day and stay disciplined towards it, I don't think anything else matters, quite honestly. Reliability is one of the biggest assets we can bring into the world today.

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