Growing up, Missy Stewart learned to "figure it out and find a solution."
"That's a trait that's just built into my human nature. My whole life I've operated in the unknown and learned how to grow up fast and figure things out," she said. "For example, my dad painted houses, my mom cleaned houses, and they never knew what it took to go to college. From entrance exams to applications, recommendations, and paying for it. I just had to figure things out and sometimes needed to be creative along the way."
As the Senior Product Manager of Small Business Digital Innovation at TD Bank AMCB, Missy is poised to flex this special skillset, but this time helping customers figure out how to thrive in unique ways.
"Think of it as everything we can do beyond our traditional banking," she explained. "We have our traditional deposit and loan products, but I focus on enhancing the value proposition of doing business with TD."
The art of possible
"There's a variety of things that we hear from small business customers, whether it be how they can donate some of their money effectively or how to connect data sources or find different products that they need to run their business more efficiently - all while remembering that sometimes customers may not even know what they need," Missy said.
If you think about the days of the horse-drawn carriage, people back then would never have imagined riding in an airplane, she explains.
"They didn't know they wanted or needed an airplane," she added. "That's what makes this so fun. I'm working to push and think outside the box for customers. I'm thinking about the art of possible and how we can incrementally get our customers there."
Innovation at TD
Missy's journey to TD Bank was defined in a search for a role like the one she's in now. She found herself working in banking, but the beginning of her career was outside the innovation space. She came to TD two years ago looking for a more supportive culture of innovation.
"I started on a very clear traditional banker track, as a credit analyst in the commercial loan space," she said. "But I quickly realized in that space I was becoming restless. I needed more freedom to be able to drive my career and operate outside of an area entrenched in black and white thinking."
From those spaces, she moved into data and then digital innovation.
"Before TD, I was in a role that was focused on digital transformation, which was taking things that were manual and helping digitize them. It enhanced the user experience, but nothing like truly trying to test and push boundaries. And it wasn't as supportive of innovation as what I'm seeing here at TD," she said. "TD's innovation culture and the infrastructure that supports it is incredible. Everyone from the Human Centered Design team to our Commercial Banking Leadership to TD Invent and ID8, all foster great enthusiasm for innovating."
She compares the human aspect of innovation to a toy her 3-year-old daughter loves.
"If you know Play Doh, you know you can have one piece that's red and the other could be purple," she described. "But what if we were to mesh them together? Would that make a different color? Would that make a new solution for a specific need and specific structure? It's how I operate, just trying to take different pieces of what you see in the world and figure out the combining or pulling apart. And these lead to new opportunities."
Inspiring more women into innovation
Missy not only lives by the art of what's possible, but she also loves the motto, "Why not?"
"If I was speaking to a room full of young women, that's the one thing I would lead off with, 'Why not?" she says.
She described an innovation mindset as similar to the mindset of an entrepreneur.
"Women can often place pressure on themselves to have all or most of the answers before pursing an opportunity. And that can make innovation seem extremely daunting or technical, and sometimes, yes it can be," she said. "But for me, innovation is solving problems in creative ways. And that's something anyone can succeed in with the right mindset and determination. So, if you have the right mindset and determination, why not?"