Minding the Gap

I’m looking at what everyone is wearing. I don’t know if they’ve spent time picking out what they were wearing or if you did. But one of the things we realized is that these two women for people who might think there’s a gap in, you know, why is she or this person the leader of this organization or how do they bring their own self, their authentic self to their role? These women have done in a very unique way. Some of you may not be able to see the detail, but I just want to explain to you the thought process or have them explain to you the thought process for what they’re wearing. So Fannie Mae is kind of right here on a beautiful pin. Priscilla, start with how you you decided to do that. Great, thank you. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for this. So Fannie Mae CEO and I feel like I’m Fannie Mae. I represent the brand and the company. So I didn’t want to wear one of those sort of boring corporate pins. So I asked a jeweller friend if they would take our logo and create a pin and create this pin. It’s a house, which is our logo. And so it’s, it’s very subtle. You don’t know it’s a, it’s a corporate logo, but it is a Fannie Mae logo. It’s a little secret with Fannie Mae’s because they know the logo. And what’s amazing is we now have found a producer. We’ve made them for like $3 and now everyone has them at Fannie Mae. And sorry, man, men don’t wear ties anymore coupling. So but yes, it’s, it’s, it’s my logo. I’m bringing it up because branding ourselves and branding yourself as a leader is important. So Jessica, you didn’t want to leave anybody out. You, you, you tell us what is on the under the lapels of your jacket. Well, as a commissioner of a professional sports leagues, we have to love all of our teams equally. It’s prerequisite for the job. And I often say to my children that I root for the refs. We want the refs to call the game fairly. We root for ratings on TV. We do not root for a particular team. And so if I was going to manifest our league on my person, I had to represent all of our teams. And really the inspiration for this came from the fact that when I took this job two years ago as the commissioner and I met our players who are in fact, cultural icons, I had to find a way to get cool. And if I’m going to be walking around speaking on panels, I wanted to make sure that I had the right fit, which is the word I’m supposed to use according to my 13 year old son. And so I found an artist who depicted, I think, the coolness of our league in a blazer. That’s awesome. I, I, I’m sorry to start that way. If you thought I was going to start somewhere else, but, you know, you spent time figuring out what you were going to wear today. I just want you to know the CEOs did the same thing. That’s all. That’s all that I wanted to get cross. We’re just like them. Would you just like them? I want to start at the very beginning, Priscilla, if you if you wouldn’t mind, because I was reading something about you, about what you were do thinking and and how you presented yourself. At the age of 6. You had a special item that you always carried with you. Tell me what it was and why. Yes, at six years old, I carried an attache case as my book bag. So you knew you were the boss. I, you know, I didn’t know what a boss was. But I guess, I guess, yeah, I knew. I, I guess I want, I, that’s what I thought a leader did and carried an attache case. And that’s my story in, in, in a nutshell. But it’s also, but it’s also a story of what you saw in terms of leadership, how in a very early age you had an idea of what that meant. Yeah. You know, I’ve never, I’ve never thought of it that way. But yes, I from a very early age wanted to, I think it comes from my my late mother wanted to lead something. I wanted to have an impact. She was a school teacher. I didn’t know housing. I’ve been very fortunate to find some, an area where I could have great impact in finance, and that’s in housing and Fannie Mae. We have one in four mortgages in the country. And so to be able to lead and, and find an area to lead and have impact, I’ve been very fortunate. Yeah, to sometimes. I just was recently with a bunch of high school students in Denver who were trying to figure out what career path they wanted and they were doing various visualizations. You did a visualization at 16 before there were selfies to help you figure out how to visualize. What did you want to do at 16? I just want to say, Sharon, we were confused about how our industries and our work was going to be connected, but there’s a lot of connectivity. I think we did not plan this, by the way, and we also did not plan, but maybe you all did your research that we both, I think aspired to have roles like we have today from the time we were young. And so a lot of synergies and I think our career paths. I, when I was 16 years old, decided I wanted to be the commissioner of a professional sports league, which I might be the only 16 year old who thought that. But I was determined and pretty much every decision I made, including internships and networking was really with those blinders on to get to this point. And the inspiration really came from being a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, NY, where it was a melting pot of people from different backgrounds. And I thought there was very few things in our social fabric that unite communities. And sports was one of those. And I wanted to be in a position of power to use our platform for good and was inspired by Nelson Mandela and sport has the power to change the world and decided that being a leader in sports would give me the opportunity to have the greatest possible impact to help communities. Jessica, I grew up in Brooklyn too. This is weird. So by the way, I love your story. So housing, I grew up as a renter and I think now I didn’t know that at six years old. But today I think that six year old renter remembers when her parents bought their first home and that changed the trajectory of our life. So I stumbled on housing as a potential path and, and this is like 20 years ago and I’ve made a career out of something that maybe started from a very young age because I know how housing impacted my family. We’re having a lot of epiphanies. You have a lot of epiphanies. One of the things that that struck me about both of you also that you have in common is that you’ve both been in your careers, the 1st or the only. You were the first female deputy commissioner of the National Lacrosse League with before you came to the Soccer League and you are the only Latina CEO in the Fortune 500. What is going on people? It’s tremendous, but it shouldn’t be. It’s tremendous. There should be more. That’s a lot of responsibility, Priscilla. That’s a lot of pressure to be the only or to be the first. Do you feel that or do you or because you’ve been planning this since you were six years old, it’s not a problem. Yeah, look, it’s it’s a privilege. I might be the only now, but it won’t be for long. I mean, when I 1990s, when I started my career, I think there were maybe two or three CE OS who were women. Today there’s like 10% on the Fortune 500 Latinos. Then we’re 9% of the population. Today they’re over 20% and they’re having great educational attainment. So I won’t be the only for a long time. I think it’s a privilege and I feel this great responsibility and and then I’m ready for it to inspire Latinos and be a source of inspiration for Latinos, but for women and frankly for young, for anyone really, because I think people like us. And really congratulations to CNBC for hosting these events because it shows that leadership is changing. The face of leadership is different. And I think people like Jessica and I and many of the leaders here, we’re embracing who we are because frankly, you can’t separate your personal self. I at least I can my personal self and professional. And I try to createspace, but it’s changing. So I I feel this privilege, responsibility and but I feel I’m ready for it. And I have a great team. So that helps. They help it. Yes. They make it easier. Does does being the 1st or having been the first Jessica prepare you for the leadership role that you have now or, or for the way that you lead that league to then be at this league now? Yeah. Well, when I got this job, I had spent 25 years working in professional sports, but only ever with, for, and on behalf of men. So I was a labor lawyer, and I worked for the NFL and the NBA and the NHL for decades, and I was often the only woman in the room. And then I got the role to be the first female deputy commissioner of a men’s professional sports league. I didn’t actually know that when I got the job, but learned it when the draft press release came across my inbox and learned that that was an opportunity to maybe put lacrosse on the map. So happy to leverage the being the 1st to get our our league some much needed PR at the time. I think what you learn from being the only or the 1st is to have a lot of focus and intentionality around how you show up. Because when you’re the only, you feel like people are watching you, whether that’s true or not. And it forces you to really raise the bar and deliver. At least for me, a level of excellence that made it such that no one could deny me an opportunity to be in the room. Because I always sort of felt like I had to prove that I deserve to be there. And I think it’s actually benefited me. I don’t know that I would have gotten to this place if that wasn’t the circumstance. I hope that others don’t have to go through that, but it really forced me to work hard and ensure that I put myself in a situation that undeniably would give me the opportunity that I have today. It’s interesting that both of you have been working so hard and so quickly in their current roles for less than two years. And, and Jessica, 2023 was the most successful 12 month period in the 12 year history of the National Women’s Soccer League. So that’s in terms of attendance, broadcast, viewership, sponsorship, revenue, fan engagement. How do you execute a plan like you did so quickly to fill a gap and create a new image that was so needed? Well, it starts with investment. And I think that’s a theme that we’re hearing throughout this conference with the incredible change makers that I had the opportunity to listen to today. And when you invest in women, good things happen. And these are women professional athletes who are literally the best in the world. The best female soccer players in the world play here in our country. So it’s not hard to imagine that if you build an infrastructure around them with appropriate operational rigor and professionalism and bring brands, media partners and quality ownership to the table, that they’ll be given an opportunity to succeed. The athletes were great before. That hasn’t changed. That actually changed with Title 9. And I think it’s one of the few sports that if everyone in this room closes their eyes and thinks of greatness and soccer in the US, you’ll think of women. There aren’t many sports where that is true. You think of Mia Hamm and Brandy Chastain and players who really defined my childhood. I remember when Brandy took off her shirt and her sports bra and I was like, Oh my God, is that a girl? And then it was like, yeah, that’s great. And those same players are now either owners or still playing in our league, and we have an opportunity to deliver the business plan that allows for them to get paid what they’re worth. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, one of the things that strikes me whenever I’m covering personal finance, which is what I do today day-to-day, is how many people are fixated on their credit score to make sure that they get the best deals, that they do certain things. And as we’re talking about filling the gaps of people that are not served, have been underserved or unserved, I think about that gap in terms of having good credit to be able to move from being a renter to being a homeowner. That’s been your focus in your two years to look at this group, this untapped group. Tell us why focusing on the credit invisible has been such a key mandate that you’ve created for yourself to make sure that Fannie Mae is addressing. Yeah, no, I’d love that question. So as I said, I I grew up as a renter. And by the way, I think renter, homeowner, whatever, it’s a choice, all right? People should have a choice. And what what’s happened in this country, there is this huge home ownership. It’s stubborn. There’s a wealth gap. It starts with the wealth gap. And if you look at the average consumer, their balance sheet, their home typically is where their wealth is generated. And there’s been this stubborn home ownership gap between white households and people of color households. I mean, black households, there’s a 30% gap, white households, 20% gap. And what Fannie Mae figured out is we said let’s look at the data like what is getting in the way of these renters, many of which are people of colour? What is what’s getting in the way of becoming a home owner? Because our survey say that most consumers still, they list home ownership as a good life like education, good health, friends. And home ownership is right up there. And one of the things we learned, we looked at all the obstacle, but one of the stubborn ones has been not having a credit score or having thin credit or no credit. So we started tackling that and we realized that a rental, a rental payment was not counted towards. It was like a chicken and egg. You were making the housing payment, but it wasn’t being counted and it wasn’t recognized to build credit. So we started looking at renters and if they gave us permission to see their bank statements, we could see with data today you could see what looks like a rent payment. And we got some of our landlord partners to start recording positive rent payments. And it is amazing the impact we had. Renters who did not have a credit score now have a credit score, those that did have a credit score. So we’re like a almost a 35% point increase, which is substantial. And it’s showing that the old ways of access to credit, I mean, our mission is to make access to credit more equitable and sustainable. So to look at consumers differently today, it’s the only way we’re going to really close that gap. And it resonates with me. It’s. Yeah, I want to keep to our time. We have several other panels. We definitely want you to hear from. The last question I have for both of you very quickly. What is the one app thing we need to read? Thing that you read to centre yourself in the midst of all you’re doing. You’re trying to close the gap. Mind the gap for all these other people that haven’t been served. How do you serve yourself and make sure that your head is in the right space to do what you have to do? I am a daily practice journal writer, so it’s not reading, but it is daily reflection on myself and taking tabs on the people I love and the people I’m here to support and making sure that I record it. Because the thing that I’ve actually learned over time, which has been an incredible experience, I’ve kept a daily journal since I was a teenager, is that if you go back and read your old writings, you identify themes that repeat themselves. A lot of our defaults are ingrained from the either from our nature or our nurture. And if there are patterns you want to correct, they will present themselves to you because you will see them be repeated without you making the intentional choice to do that. So that for me is what I do for self reflection, self betterment. Awesome, awesome Priscilla. Gosh, I have to say I read a lot of news morning brew with the Economist. But someone recently introduced me to non duality and it’s about just thinking about we’re all our being is we’re all good beings at our core. And I was just so I’m, I’m just listening to this podcast and this and it’s it’s fascinating. Well, it’s fascinating for me that you’re not always on. You can’t always be on that. Both of you have things that you take time to reflect so that you can come to what you’re doing now and lead with your head in the right space. So that’s so very important. Thank you so much. I look forward to, and I’m sure they do too, speaking to you in the next networking session. Thanks again.