Team Lead, Payments Support EMEA & APAC
Airbnb Airbnb | Vacation rentals, cabins, beach houses, & more
When I joined Airbnb in 2011, the company was still in its early days — just 250 employees and less than 100k listings worldwide.
By the time I left in 2016, Airbnb had scaled dramatically, growing into a global powerhouse with millions of listings and a rapidly expanding team. Being part of that 100X growth journey was an incredible learning experience, especially in the fast-moving world of payments and financial operations.
Highlights
I led the Customer Experience Payments Team for EMEA & APAC (~30 people), ensuring that financial transactions were seamless, secure, and scalable across two of Airbnb’s fastest-growing regions.
- Building & Leading a High-Performing Team: Managed the day-to-day operations of the EU & APAC Payments Support Team, focusing on team engagement, clear goal-setting, and professional development. Coached team members to support career growth and long-term success.
- Scaling Operations to Keep Up with Explosive Growth: Airbnb’s rapid expansion meant constantly adapting workflows to support an ever-increasing volume of payments and complex financial transactions across multiple regions.
- Optimizing Workflows for Efficiency & Impact: Evaluated existing processes, set performance goals, and streamlined operations to make payment support more efficient, relevant, and valuable both internally and externally.
- Balancing Priorities & Customer Needs: Adapted support strategies based on seasonality and evolving customer behavior, ensuring that Airbnb’s payments experience scaled smoothly without sacrificing service quality.
- Building Knowledge & Infrastructure: Created a comprehensive internal knowledge base to empower support teams and vendor partners, making it easier to access critical information and drive consistency in support operations.
Why Airbnb?
Scaling Airbnb through hyper-growth gave me firsthand experience in building global customer support operations from the ground up. I learned how to balance efficiency with human connection, ensuring that even as Airbnb expanded, customers still felt supported at every step.