New York (Rye Brook & Port Chester):
Lunch & visit with Pamela Huang (MBA 05) and her husband Steven Wong (MBA 05) at the best taco spot I’ve eaten in the United States. Too bad, I forgot to take photos of the food. The restaurant is chain called "bartaco".
I really appreciate Pam driving to my classmate Fred Wang’s place to pick me up, take me out to lunch, and drop me off at the train station.
Pam is doing well. 2 kids, I think. A beautiful house. And still the same social butterfly that I remember.
In many ways, she’s the social butterfly / glue who connects many of the Taiwanese and Chinese students (MBA 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, and 11) together and bridge the friendship with many of the domestic USA students like me.
Besides catching up with personal updates, she provided me with interesting content for my blog:
For example, she was the product manager who lead the team at JP Morgan Chase for Zelle (a service I currently use to pay my rent). Jamie Dimon (the CEO) even had a direct line to her team which is good thing or bad thing depending if he was happy or upset with her product). Thankfully, Zelle took off.
Pam is no longer working at JP Morgan Chase, but that was one of the favorite products she led.
Looking back in hindsight, Pam believes one of key decisions that paved the way to Zelle's success was creation of the Zelle consortium and a separate brand from Chase. When Chase first launched their P2P payment platform partnering with the Big 5 US Banks, they thought that their early adopter customers would automatically feel comfortable using their free Chase Quick Pay service since it was already endorsed by the Big 5 banks.
But that was not the case. There was confusion in the marketplace. Wells Fargo had their Sure Pay service and Chase promoted Quick Pay. It was not clear that all these companies provided the same free interbank services. Adoption finally took off when Chase and its partners decided to spin off their service as a separate consortium and agreeing a common brand that defined this FinTech service category (Zelle).
Pam likes New York. After graduation, she worked as a Product Manager at AIG in Atlanta. But with her boyfriend and MBA classmate (now husband) in New York, she decided to make the move in 2008. At some point in time, Pamela and her husband Steven decided to move to the suburbs north of New York City and bought a beautiful home in Rye Brook where her kids can run and play.
And now after my brief visit, I can imagine and experience part of her world every time I see the photos she posts on Facebook.
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