Thérèse Giambona, VP of Operations and Payables at Flywire

Thérèse Giambona’s path to becoming Vice President of Operations and Payables at Flywire began thousands of miles from Wall Street, in a small Costa Rican village where she lived and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Fresh out of university with aspirations of pursuing a master’s and PhD in international development, Thérèse joined the Peace Corps, a US government programme placing college graduates in countries across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. Her assignment took her to Costa Rica, where she spent two years working in a rural farming community.

The experience proved transformative in unexpected ways. An hour from her village, large pineapple and banana corporate farms employed thousands of Nicaraguan migrant workers. Thérèse visited these factory farms and came to know the families working there, many of whom were sending money home across borders. This came in handy when, studying for her MBA, she applied for positions at Western Union.

The unexpected pivot to fintech

After completing her Peace Corps service, Thérèse made a significant pivot. Instead of pursuing the academic route in international development, she opted to obtain her MBA and study finance. This decision came shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, a period when business schools were grappling with fundamental questions about the financial system.

During her first month of business school, Western Union came to recruit for summer internships. The global money transfer company specialises in remittances for people living and working outside their home country of origin – precisely the demographic Thérèse had lived alongside in Costa Rica.

“I knew who their customers were,” Thérèse says. “I had met all of these Nicaraguan families that were migrant workers sending money home.”

Despite seeming unqualified for a role in payments and foreign exchange, Thérèse’s intimate understanding of migrant workers gave her unique insight. Western Union hired her for their Internal Audit department, providing exposure across the business.

“I didn’t know how to be in business,” she admits. “But when I went into the interview, I just said ‘I know who your customers are and I’ll do anything to learn’."

Building expertise

Internal audit proved an invaluable training ground. Thérèse worked on audits spanning compliance, finance, treasury, marketing and operations, gaining comprehensive understanding of how a global payments company functions. When the opportunity arose to move into the business side, she jumped at the chance.

At Western Union, she worked in the Business Solutions division’s global operations before moving into network management, where she led the team responsible for the bank network. The relationships and expertise developed during this period eventually created opportunities for Thérèse to join Flywire.

Leading operations at Flywire

Thérèse joined Flywire four years ago, shortly after the company went public. As VP of Operations and Payables, she oversees all back-office processing and the company’s in-house outgoing payment solution across more than 140 currencies and at least 240 countries and territories.

Her leadership philosophy centres on reframing challenges as opportunities. In payment operations – where something goes wrong every day – maintaining this perspective proves essential.

“I never really think of anything as a challenge,” she explains. “No matter what happens, there's an opportunity there. There’s an opportunity to exceed client expectations, there’s an opportunity to deliver extra value, there’s an opportunity to learn something.”

Client-centric innovation

What Thérèse loves most about her work is the combination of client interaction and problem-solving.

“I love interacting with our clients, getting to know them as people, understanding their problems and coming to appreciate their day-to-day activities,” she says. “And then I love solutioning off the back of that.”

She also values the payments industry's tight-knit community. Having worked in the sector for two decades, she regularly reconnects with former colleagues and contacts at conferences and events.

As well as this, the payments industry’s constant evolution keeps the work engaging. 

“Each day presents something new and fresh to learn,” Thérèse says. 

This combination – of human connection, technical challenge and continuous innovation – makes payments operations a perfect fit for someone who started their career trying to solve global development challenges.