Women@WU is celebrating women who are leading initiatives that are driving our strategy forward through our Extraordinary Contributions program. Our mission is to create a culture where leadership at Western Union is gender-inclusive and women of all levels are engaged and empowered.
Meet our first spotlights of 2022, Giedrė, Diana, Mahak and Rupa, four women who are living our strategy and values around the world.
Giedrė Maldutienė- Group Leader of Settlement Operations
In addition to her current role Giedrė has been leading WU Lithuania Training & Development Committee since 2017. This ecosystem provides development and support for Western Union employees. It has become a critical part of Western Union’s ability to maintain employee engagement and is a significant item in our benefits basket. Employees can grow personally and professionally using the knowledge they gain from these training courses or one-on-one coaching sessions, provided by internal trainers or professional coaches on a voluntary basis. Over the years, employee growth has led to more efficient processes, greater collaboration, and a stronger company. The Training & Development program has provided the opportunity for Western Union colleagues to share their passions and knowledge and has inspired many. In Spring 2022 alone, the program delivered 27 training classes (soft skills, hard skills, and languages) to over 250 unique WU Lithuania employees. Fifty-two different employees took advantage of one-on-one coaching sessions. This unique program provides benefits both to the company and to every individual employee.
Diana Hidalgo – Enterprise Business Excellence & Assurance Analyst
Through her work, Diana spotted longer than average contract execution lead-times in Africa. Diana knew that shortening lead times would help Western Union agents start serving their customers more quickly. To get started, she conducted an initial baseline analysis to develop current vs ideal benchmarks. Then, Diana quickly coordinated a cross-functional team which included the head of Africa, Operational Excellence and local sales representatives. Under Diana’s leadership, the team eliminated a backlog of over 100 contracts. They also optimized the E2E process and implemented dashboards to provide real-time visibility. Diana lives our company motto of See, Own, Do and exemplifies the WU behavior – better comes from everywhere.
Mahak Somani – Sr. Associate Technology and Governance
In August of 2021, Western Union migrated to a new time entry tool called Tempo Timesheet. This tool was intended to help Western Union employees and contractors more easily track time spent on their activities. Transferring 2000+ employees from the old system to Tempo Timesheet could have been a manual, time-consuming process. Instead, Mahak created a utility program to migrate employees to the new tool. This saved many hours of effort and also eliminated the potential errors that could have come from a manual migration. Mahak also created a program to generate on-demand time entry reporting for the Western Union accounting team. This involved combining data from three different sources: Tempo, Workday (for FTE data), and IQN (contractor data). These reports help the accounting team calculate capitalizable efforts and ultimately impact Western Union’s financial performance. Mahak took the initiative to both improve the process of migrating to Tempo AND give the accounting team easily accessible time tracking information. Great work, Mahak!
Rupa Maganahalli- Group Leader IT
During Western Union’s peak volume days, it’s important to ensure that operations run seamlessly. As a WU Director of IT Operations- Head of Enterprise AMS and Release management, Rupa has accomplished just that. She implemented a Peak Season Readiness effort across WU Digital and Retail Money transfer platform operations. This process brings the relevant enterprise teams together to complete preliminary checks in each area. The readiness check also identifies risks and ensure that risks are addressed prior to the peak season start. Rupa’s strategic vision and end to end ownership made the 2021 peak season the smoothest on record. Most notable, there were zero issues reported during peak season across the Digital, Retail, Care, and Infrastructure portfolios. In addition to her business accomplishments, Rupa’s colleagues report that she is a magnificent leader who truly leads by example. Congratulations and thank you for your hard work, Rupa!
The Extraordinary Contributions program recognizes women, regardless of level or location, who are leading the way with key initiatives, while demonstrating the WU Values. Nominations can come from anywhere and are evaluated by the Women@WU Steering Committee. Extraordinary Contributions recognizes that it’s not just about what gets done, but how it gets done and Women@WU is proud to recognize these amazing leaders.
