Doing well by doing good: A mission in action in 2024

Doing well by doing good is a powerful principle that helps us build an inclusive future together — and this past year provided plenty of evidence. 

Employees in New York City are approaching corporate volunteerism as professional development by improving their neighbors’ access to crucial social services. In St. Louis, data scientists are on a mission to remove unintended bias from the surveys that assess the level of need for the homeless. And 5,000 miles away, in Warsaw, Poland, women entrepreneurs who fled war-torn Ukraine started rebuilding their lives and livelihoods with the support of a small business development program that included free childcare.

At Mastercard, we’re proud of the small role we play, alongside a laudable cast of public and private partners, in building a society where everyone has the tools and support needed to thrive. Here are some of the ways we’ve made a difference together this year.

Personal mission meets professional perk for New York City volunteers

Alice Halter wants to live in a city where everyone does well. That’s what drove the senior product design specialist at Mastercard’s Tech Hub in Manhattan to volunteer her time and expertise improving user experience on Access HRA, New York City’s Human Resources Administration portal, through which residents in need can access a host of public benefits and assistance, including food benefits, Medicaid and home energy relief.

Halter connected to the project through Unlocked, Mastercard’s AI-driven career development platform, launched in 2021, which matches employees with short-term projects, volunteer opportunities, mentoring and customized educational offerings. When Unlocked announced an innovative public-private partnership with the New York City Mayor’s Office and NYC Service in March, Halter, who spends her work hours designing seamless user experiences for Mastercard’s cybersecurity business, knew right away that she wanted to pitch in. 

Her focus for the city’s Department of Social Services is accessibility — and for the two million people NYC DSS serves, there’s a great deal at stake. “Everyone has to be able to use this platform, whether they have just learned how to use a computer, don’t speak English or have an auditory processing or visual impairment,” Halter says. “Ease of use can determine whether or not someone gets benefits that they not only need but have a right to.”

St. Louis leverages data for good to deliver fairer homeless services

Mastercard data scientists were already helping St. Louis police and social services assess their Crisis Response Unit when the city sought solutions for another critical problem: improving services for unhoused people to identify disparities and accelerate inclusion. Since unintended biases came to light in the widely used Vulnerability Index, a questionnaire used across the country to help measure need and allocate housing, the city of St. Louis developed its own survey in hopes of avoiding similar problems and administering a fairer process.

Mastercard experts worked pro bono in partnership with the Institute for Community Alliances, the nonprofit that maintains St. Louis’s homeless management information system, to analyze the anonymized responses of nearly 5,000 clients — and uncovered some unexpected issues the city is now working to address. For example, the findings showed that Black respondents were underrepresented among the survey’s high scorers, who are considered most critically in need. 

The volunteers went further to understand how these disparities arose. For instance, lower scores on a section that asks about medical diagnoses and prescriptions may be linked to Black Americans’ greater distrust of the health care system, so the survey creators are revising these questions to account for their experiences. Ensuring that people can access housing services through a system they trust “all starts with this assessment,” says Kathy Connors, executive director of St. Louis emergency shelter Gateway180. “This work is critical for giving fair entry to the people who need it most.”

Ukraine’s unstoppable women entrepreneurs get a new start in Poland

Polina Khlibanovska and her young son were among more than a million Ukrainian women and children who fled to neighboring Poland since Russia began its assault in 2022. With extensive experience in childcare but less knowledge in starting a business — let alone navigating permits and financing in a new country — Khlibanovska could only depend on one thing: She would stop at nothing to provide a better life for herself and her child.

After seeing it advertised, Khlibanovska was one of 1,500 women to apply for (Re)building Ukrainian Business, a small business program run by Poland’s Impact Foundation and supported by the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. She was one of 80 to be accepted into the yearlong program. Now, thanks to the legal, business and financial support she received through the program, Khlibanovska's venture, Smart Kindergarten Warsaw, is thriving in her new home, employing other women, and she's looking to expand. 

The women in the program were “full of energy and motivated to start a new life,” said Emilia Borkowska, project manager for the Impact Foundation. To ensure they felt comfortable and safe in their new environment, and to better equip them to succeed in business and beyond, (Re)building Ukrainian Business provided free childcare for families in the program.

Entrepreneurship — like motherhood — can be a tumultuous journey, but it’s one that the women in the program now feel ready to tackle. “Even when you have a bad day,” Khlibanovska says, “the next day, the wings open up again, and you fly.”