Chimetacular: Celebrating our values in action

At Chime, our values aren't just words on a wall—they're the driving force behind everything we do.

At our annual company-wide event celebrating Chime and the Chimers who embody the best of our values—aptly called 'Chimetacular'—we honor these extraordinary Chimers with Chime Values Awards. Chimers are invited to nominate their peers for the awards and asked to share stories with recent examples of how the nominated Chimer goes above and beyond to exemplify the value. We award two people for each value and four for our 'Alvarado All-Star' award, given to those who exemplify multiple values.

Our 2024 winners showcase how living our values helps us better serve our members while building an exceptional workplace culture. We sat down with a few of the winners to learn more about how they put our values into practice—and what they're able to unlock by doing so (not to be forgotten are the winners of our Be Bold and Win Together awards, not featured here!).

Be Member Obsessed: Understanding needs and building trust

One of our 2024 Be Member Obsessed winners, Sidi Sun, an Analytics Program Manager on the Reporting and Insights team, has spent nearly four years at Chime transforming how we understand and respond to member needs. By connecting member feedback to business metrics using NPS tools, he's helped shift the entire company's focus to what really matters to the people we serve every day.

For Sidi, being member-obsessed means putting himself in members' shoes: "I try to think from their perspective, truly empathizing with their experiences," he says. "I want to feel their emotions, celebrate when they're happy, and listen to them to address their concerns if they're struggling."

This commitment to member experience runs deep—it's what drew him to Chime in the first place. "During my interview, I actually brought up some issues I was experiencing as a member, and the interviewer immediately escalated them to the right team," he recalls. "That showed me this wasn't just a value on paper—it was truly part of the culture."

His dedication to understanding members extends beyond day-to-day work. Sidi's hackathon team also won in the Be Member Obsessed category for developing an AI solution that helps internal stakeholders better understand members through weekly summaries of app store reviews, social media feedback, and NPS data. The tool, which has since been officially launched internally at Chime, helps teams understand what drives member experiences and how changes impact member satisfaction. "Combining analytics with being member-obsessed gives us the advantage of connecting customer data with business data," Sidi explains.

When asked about winning the Be Member Obsessed award, Sidi is characteristically humble, redirecting praise to his colleagues in OMX: "This award could be given to anyone on the OMX team—they truly live this value. Our team supports our members millions of times each month and strives every day to find better solutions to improve their experiences. I'm just proud to be on a team that's so member obsessed."

Respect the Rules: Moving fast without breaking things

Our Respect the Rules winners exemplify this balance through their distinct but complementary approaches to protecting and empowering our members:
Gabby White, Quality Lead on the Financial Crimes team, considers respecting the rules fundamental to maintaining member trust. "We can't just know the rules—we have to understand what they mean for Chime and how they relate to our day-to-day work," she explains. "With that understanding, we can build efficiently and quickly while being responsible."

For Gabby, who joined Chime a year ago, the Respect the Rules value resonates deeply with her team's mission. "It's not about specific wins—it's about constant wins because our members count on us to do the right thing every day," she says. This commitment to doing right by members shapes how her team approaches their work: "We're big on promoting that if we see something, we should chime in and say something. We keep our values at the forefront of all the work we do."

Jordan Merimee Navidar, Senior Content Editor on the Organic Growth team, brings the Respect the Rules value to life through content that educates and empowers members. Through his team's work on In the Green™, Chime's member-facing blog, Jordan helps demystify money management for members who are often overlooked by traditional banks.

"Respecting the Rules is about moving fast without breaking anything," Jordan explains. "As a competitive fintech, we must constantly push ourselves, experiment, and launch helpful features and products for our members. It’s about doing so in a way that is compliant, compassionate, and collaborative."

This approach has yielded impressive results. Through process improvement and collaboration, Jordan's team published over 200 pieces of long-form content, educating members about products and financial topics while reducing content review time by 50%. "For me, Chime’s core values are an invitation to lead with integrity," he says. "They're a reminder to include everyone in discussions, ask tough questions, and strive for excellence in everything you do."

Both winners emphasize how crucial Respecting the Rules is to Chime's mission. As Gabby puts it, "To help and empower everyone to unlock their financial progress, we have to have member trust. It's a huge responsibility and privilege to work closely with a member's money, and we take that very seriously." Jordan adds, “Respecting the rules ensures we provide a useful and clear experience for our members while maintaining terrific relationships with our partner banks."

True to the collaborative spirit they both champion, neither winner takes sole credit for their achievements. Gabby sees her award as "a representation of the amazing work that [my] entire team has done," while Jordan is quick to credit the Compliance team's partnership in making Chime’s content program possible.

Be an Owner: Making it happen

Our Be an Owner winners demonstrate how this value drives both individual initiative and collective impact.
For Saurabh Gupta, a Software Engineer who's been with Chime for five years, ownership means looking beyond your immediate role. "When you work at a growing company of our size, it can be easy to get siloed in your project or role," he explains. "Being an owner means identifying value outside of your role, team, or project—and acting on it."

This mindset shapes how Saurabh approaches collaboration: "On any normal project, one approach could be to just message teams or create tickets saying something is blocked. What I want to see is working with those teams and including them from the beginning rather than tossing things over the wall. If you owned a small business, you would work with people to resolve issues, not just wait for them to fix it—being an owner is about embracing that mindset."

To Nikita Saini, who joined Chime's Dispute Risk team a year and a half ago, being an owner means taking charge and driving projects forward. Starting in an entry-level position, she was inspired by seeing those around her making decisions and moving projects forward. “For me, being an owner means taking charge, leading projects, and chiming in with ideas not only when you’re required to, but when you feel driven to," she says.

This ownership mentality is already driving real impact for members as Nikita's team tackles member disputes through new initiatives and Saurabh's team expands tools for members to use in the Chime app.

Both winners are characteristically humble about their recognition. "I work in a team-oriented environment, and I couldn't honestly say what I do that my teammates don't—we are all owners," Saurabh says. Nikita chalks her winning the award up to Chime’s culture: “It's a good culture that we're in," she reflects. "It motivates me to show up and be a better version of myself every day."

Alvarado All-Stars: Embodying all of our values

The Alvarado All-Stars award recognizes Chimers who exemplify multiple values—demonstrating how our values work together to drive innovation and impact. Our 2024 winners, Dennis Yang and Julia Kahle, showcase how different perspectives can unite around shared values to create extraordinary results.

Dennis, who has spent over four years at Chime, was initially drawn to the company's unique approach to customer support. "Most companies focus on containment and deflection," he notes. "But Chime's primary metric is member satisfaction—it's materially more difficult and also more important. We focus on making members happy, not making them go away."

Now leading Chime's generative AI initiatives, Dennis sees how our core values interweave in his work every day. "There's no one particular Chime value that stands alone," he explains. "In my role, working cross-functionally across many teams, you see how our values fit together in our day-to-day work."

Julia, Senior Associate on the Compliance, Governance, and Assurance team, has noticed a unique perspective at Chime that demonstrates how following rules can enable innovation—that Being an Owner, Respecting the Rules, and Being Member Obsessed can make Winning Together even sweeter. "In many places, Compliance can be seen as a blocker," she observes. "That's not Chime at all. Chime is different from a lot of tech and fintech companies—people actually reach out to ask what Compliance thinks, helping us work together to move fast while respecting the rules."

Dennis and Julia’s approach to collaboration—and IRL work together—exemplifies how our core values create stronger outcomes for Chimers and our company. "Working with Julia and Compliance has been great because of their ability to Respect the Rules while never compromising on Being Bold," Dennis shares. "While I'm trying to drive adoption of new tech, Compliance approaches with open arms and helps my team respect the rules—it's a great partnership."

For Julia, this collaborative spirit makes being a remote member of the team feel anything but distant. "Even though I'm fully remote, I've never felt disconnected at Chime," she says. "Our values provide us with a shared way of working and make our team feel more connected.”

Looking ahead, both winners are excited about evolving their partnership and continuing to put our values into practice every day. This year, Dennis will work to advance Chime's AI capabilities, while Julia focuses on maturing Chime’s Operations and Member Experience (OMX) functions, particularly in how teams incorporate compliance considerations from the start. "More and more, teams across Chime are seeing how interconnected we all are," Julia notes. "Everything goes hand in hand, making it even more important for us all to connect, both over our work together and through our shared set of values."

Values that drive results

What stands out in conversations with our winners is how Chime's values create a framework for both individual and company success while bringing meaning to their everyday work. This success shines through in the results we're able to achieve for our business, our members, and our communities, including fraud prevention, groundbreaking AI implementations, improved member experiences, and stronger regulatory relationships.

But what's most telling from our conversations with our winners is how they consistently deflect individual praise to highlight team efforts. As Saurabh notes, "It feels weird to win the award alone." This sentiment echoes across all our winners, reinforcing that our values aren't just individual guidelines—they're the foundation of how we serve our members, support each other, and drive innovation in financial services, together.

After all, the path to unlocking financial progress for our members isn't just about what we do—it's about how we do it. These winners show us that when we live our values, we create impact that matters for our fellow Chimers, for our members, and for our mission.