CEOs You Should Know - Nisha Cordero, Marstone

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hiheartradio Providence CEOs you should know withme today. I've got nische Cordero for
Marstone. Nisha, how are you? Thank you for joining us? Hi
am good. Thank you so muchfor having me. Absolutely, we're excited
to talk to you today about aton of different things that you have got
going on in conjunction with Marstone.Tell me a little bit about the mission
of Marstone and how you see yourrole in the company, especially here in

(00:21):
Rhode Island and in southeastern mass Yeah. Sure so. Marstone is a digital
investment company. We also do financialgoal planning. Our mission is really to
expand financial literacy, broadened financial inclusion, and humanized finance for everyone. We're
really out there in the market tohelp institutions offer a seamless and affordable digital

(00:45):
investing solution to offer their clients.Really, by reducing the costs to manage
these accounts, institutions are able toserve a wider range of clients. With
as little as five hundred dollars,you are able to open an account and
start investing. We're really excited aboutthat opportunity and really opening the expanse of

(01:06):
investing opportunities for the great community.Another really exciting thing that we are working
towards in terms of financial conclusion andliteracy is really understanding how do you set
up financial goals? And that's ourMaps platform. It's really intended to be
playful, user friendly, goal basedplanning tool that basically you can create goals

(01:29):
and a subway map kind of experiencethat's very specific to your financial needs based
on the phase of life you're in, whether it's perching, seeing a home,
or saving for a wedding. Andwhat's really great about it too,
is your needs change, or yourtimelines change, or even your finances,
you can really shift those timelines andmaps to meet your needs. I really

(01:52):
see what's exciting about me and thisrole in this company as I am the
chief people officer and I'm also thegeneral council for the company. So a
lot of the value systems that weinstill internally in the organization is also extended
externally to our clients. Things likeempathy, accountability, and commitment are really

(02:13):
key to what we do and Istand really well boysed to be in a
position to set direction there and reallyembrace a lot of our team and bringing
them into the fold to be partof that process. I also am really
proud of the internship programs that we'verun, and we've had a lot of
support through the Rhode Island Work ImmersionPrograms that help support the funding for our

(02:34):
internships. We even get a lotinvolved with what's going on with the state
and we have a lot of contacts, and we were invited to participate a
few years ago and Treasure magazine ersShadow Day where we had students come into
our office in Providence. They gotto interact with our team and learn more
about the fintech industry, and twoof these students actually became interns of ours

(02:58):
and through the pros of interning andeverything that they learned, they were able
to present at the Venture Cafe inProvidence. We're really excited that our mission
and what we do also extends tolearning with our interns and our employees.
Internships at Marstone really allow you todevelop real life practical skills that you can

(03:19):
take to any job or opportunity inthe future. Research analytics, prototyping,
user behavior. It's pretty exciting stuffand I'm really happy to be a part
of Rhode Island and offering that tostudents and people looking in the workforce.
Absolutely those are a lot of greatopportunities, and I think that you do
hear about it a lot is thatwe learned so many things, you know,

(03:39):
growing up through our regular education,but a lot of people, you
know, they may not know howto balance a checkbook, or they may
not know how to pay their billsonce they get out into the real world
and get out into the workforce.So I think you know a lot of
what you're doing in regards to that, I think is very very important,
and I'm sure that you've seen reallygood results, you know, come back
to you guys from that, right, Yeah, totally, And I think

(04:00):
the people that we're partnering with wereally expanded. Also, what's been great
in the last few years is communitybanks and credit unions, and as many
of your listeners may know, theyare so keen to their communities and the
customers and members that they serve,and I think there's a really great opportunity
for us to be able to driveand influence the ability to really put investing
in financial goal planning in the handsof consumers and institutions that may not be

(04:26):
offering it them themselves. So alot of times we're an overlay to bigger
institutions as a technology front end userexperience. With community banks and credit unions,
we now are able to really offermore closer to a B two C
offering where we can come in andhave a direct advisory relationship with the constituents.

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And I think that's a really excitingspace. I think what's great too
is the education quality of it.Marso is not just a product company.
We are also doing a lot ofassistance to institutions with marketing. We really
help them craft their strategies, theirpersonas, best practices on the journeys they

(05:08):
want their members to take, andreally helping them with content development so that
their clients can say, what isthis all about? Why do I need
this? Is this hitting a touchpoint in my life? And maybe I
should start investing, or maybe Ihave a simpler ask of myself to just
start goal planning, to get theidea going and see what the next action

(05:29):
is for me. Absolutely, howhave you directly contributed to the growth and
success that I know that we've kindof talked about already a little bit that
is going on right now with Marstone. Yeah, So for me, you
know, I think I sit ina really unique position. I tend to
be a people person, so weare a very people centric organization. We're
also a small organization, and I'mreally proud of the fact that in my
role, we really offer a robustcultural experience for our team, and I

(05:55):
think we look always to improve thepeople and culture processes that we offer.
I really want to always institute aculture where we're building trust relationships, supporting
the safety and needs of our team, making sure there's alignment. Sometimes people
come to work and they're like,where do I fit in this cog?
And we really want to know thatyour day to day fits into our larger

(06:17):
strategic initiatives. We want to knowyou feel engaged, you feel heard,
and ultimately that benefits you and yourgrowth, but also the productivity that helps
the company's success. You know,in the last year we've been instrumental in
implementing a performance management platform. Itreally helps managers and their reports establish a

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framework for one to one meetings.How can they agenda this? How can
they give continuous feedback so people aren'tsitting there for a year waiting to hear
how am I doing. It's kindof an ongoing experience where you can iterate
and continue to develop and grow notonly in what you need to meet for
the company, but what is itthat I need to be at the next
stage of my career, or whatare my aspirations or even the reality that

(07:01):
maybe you might want to pivot.And I think that's a really important thing
in my job. The other areais is getting back to our value system
and extending it to our clients.We also want to extend it to candidates
who are looking for career opportunities.We've really done a good job of streamlining
our processes around recruitment, hiring,and onboarding to really enhance the value experience

(07:24):
for candidates to know who we areas a company, understand the ask of
the jobs that we're looking for,and really give them a sense of who
we are. I'm really proud ofour team. It's a great group of
people to work with and it's reallya pleasure to come to work every day.
That's awesome. What do you havecoming up for the future with Marstone?
I mean, what products are youlooking to add and change? I

(07:45):
feel like you have so much goingon already, which is awesome, but
what are you looking to add ontoo A little bit, well, you
know, just starting with our digitalinvesting platform. It is the core of
where we started. We're really alwaysexcited to drive to innovate and improve that
experience, adding new features, enhancing, providing more insights, investment details,

(08:07):
just creating a more informed experience,making sure you can stay in the flow
of the journey and not having tojump around. I think that's really exciting
about it, and just taking whatwe're learning from the market and adapting that
to the investing space. As Imentioned before, we're also expanding into marketing
services to really help our clients givethe value proposition to their customers and members

(08:30):
about what we offer as a company. I think one of the key areas,
and particularly in Rhode Island, whichis really exciting to see, is
all the funding associated with health andwellness, and a lot of people may
pause and not think of what afinance have to do with it, but
financial wellness is really a strong componentof your health and well being as an
individual and even in family units.And what we're really excited about is we're

(08:54):
working diligently on building a consumer educationplatform. Really want to be a one
stop resource for financial content, calculatorsand guides and areas that are important to
most people like retirement, debt management, and even education planning. It's a
daunting task of thinking about all thesethings and sometimes you're buying a first home.

(09:18):
You're going to one site to learnabout this piece, another site to
do this, and you really don'tknow where to start. So the platform
is really intended to give you thateducation component, but then give you the
ability to create like a list ofdifferent checklists of things you need to accomplish
to get to these spaces. Butthen I think in the next phase of
this concept is we want you tobe able to take action with that,

(09:41):
whether it's investing, whether it's howdo I open a mortgage like application,
things of that nature. I thinkwe're really excited in terms of the future
of what Marstone is looking to toadd awesome is Marstone hiring what positions?
I mean, I feel like fromtalking to you, it's a great place
to work. What do you gotgoing on? Got available? So Marstone
is currently hiring. We're really focusedright now in the areas of client support

(10:05):
and operations. As I talked aboutbefore. Now with our expansion to the
community bank and credit union space,we really now are direct more direct relationship
with that end consumer and so thatmeans client support and operations. These roles
are really critical as I said before, about extending empathy, commitment to that

(10:26):
service, and the accountability to eachperson's investing needs. We're not just a
digital product company. Service is akeystone of our business and the ways we
promote kind of a lot of ourjobs is referrals has always been one of
our greatest sources, but really thegreater community. You can learn about us
through a lot of the very commonjob online search platforms that many of us

(10:48):
use. Indeed, we're also veryactive on LinkedIn with our posts even if
the hiring managers also will indicate thatthey're hiring, and we always look for
opportunities to reach out to people throughLinkedIn. And finally, we have a
website Marstone dot com that has acareers section that really provides you with information

(11:09):
and links to learn more about thecareer opportunities and be able to apply.
As I said, we have alot of things in the pipeline and our
growth, and so if we keephitting these strategic goals over the year,
I can certainly anticipate us having morehiring activities as we move along this year.
Absolutely well, Nisha Thank you forcoming on. Incredible interview. iHeartRadio

(11:31):
Providence CEOs you should know from Marstone, Nischa Cordero, thank you for coming
on. Thanks all, take care,