Before Money20/20 and the book and NASA, she was busing tables at Ruby Tuesday's in Times Square. Scarlett Sieber graduated from Fordham with an accounting degree she never really wanted, spent a semester abroad in Beijing, came back with one clear realization: "life is short, and accounting is not it.” And then she spent the next year clearing dishes while her classmates climbed the corporate ladder.

Today, she's the Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at Money20/20, the world's largest fintech gathering in three continents, 100+ countries, and the entire global fintech ecosystem in one room. She's a Wiley bestselling author ("Embedded Finance: When Payments Become An Experience"), a Senior Advisor to NASA, a Forbes contributor, a former SVP at BBVA, Chief Innovation Officer at an $8B bank, and one of the most strategically connected people in global finance.

And she got there by doing something almost no one talks about: she stopped trying to get into the room. She built it.

In this episode, Brennan and Scarlett get into all of it: the career origin story most people don't know, the networking philosophy that actually works, what it takes to get on the world's biggest fintech stage, and the honest truth about what innovation looks like from the inside of a massive organization.

What we cover:

→ The real origin story: a small-town Colorado girl, an accounting degree she hated, a semester in Beijing, and a year busing tables in Times Square before any of the titles came→ Why "owning your unique thing" is your single biggest career weapon, even when you're standing next to a billionaire→ The #1 networking mistake Scarlett sees constantly: leading with the ask instead of the offer and how to flip it→ The blunt truth about speaker pitches at major conferences: why your PR agency is probably killing yours (and what to say instead)→ Why the "5-year plan" might be holding you back and why the most powerful thing you can do is stay flexible→ What it's really like to be a corporate innovator inside a big institution (hint: lonelier than anyone talks about)→ Why big banks don't have to move fast and what that should actually teach every fintech founder about how they build→ The moment Scarlett still comes back to: busing tables at Ruby Tuesday's, looking out those big Times Square windows, and thinking: "I can't believe this is my life. I've made it."

Scarlett Sieber is one of the most deliberately constructed careers in all of financial services. She's never been the product. She builds the room the product lives in. And she came to play on this one.

New episode of Not Another Podcast, out now on YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere you listen.

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