Former Manulife Asia CMO Julie Nestor joins Mastercard

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Julie Nestor has joined Mastercard as SVP, head of marketing and communications for Asia Pacific. Nestor (pictured) will lead Mastercard's integrated marketing and communications team, which plays a critical role in building and maintaining corporate reputation, as well as bringing Mastercard's promise to life for banks, fintechs, governments, merchants, consumers, and other stakeholders. She will also focus on deepening consumer engagement through Priceless - the company's long-standing marketing platform.

She will report jointly to Ari Sarker, president, Asia Pacific, and Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer and president, healthcare. Nestor will also become a member of the Asia Pacific Leadership Team and the Global Marketing and Communications Leadership Team. She succeeds Rustom Dastoor who has relocated back to New York as EVP, North America, marketing and communications, after four years in the role.

“I am delighted and thrilled to return to the payments technology space which has stayed close to my heart for so many years. Mastercard is a hugely powerful organisation, while Priceless is an iconic marketing platform – people around the world know what it stands for and what it means," Nestor said.

She added that she loves working in Asia Pacific and that she knows the markets well as well as understands the operating model. Coming into Mastercard, she looks forward to bringing all she has learnt across financial services, technology, eCommerce, and hospitality to deepen engagement with customers and partners, and to build incredible experiences for consumers.

Sarker said: "Leading Mastercard’s world-class marketing and communications team requires a unique blend of industry mastery, business acumen and managerial skills. Nestor not only has these in spades but she also brings with her immensely diverse, yet incredibly relevant experience across a range of adjacent industries that are critically important for Mastercard’s business. Combined with her long track record of leading highly engaged, inclusive and high performance teams, she is an ideal fit for the role and we couldn’t be more delighted to have her onboard."

Nestor was previously chief marketing and experience design officer at Manulife Asia for close to two years during which she was responsible for the significant contributions made to Manulife's marketing efforts across Asia Pacific.

They included driving continued improvements in NPS, building up Manulife's behavioural insurance platform, ManulifeMOVE, as well as contributing greatly to its DE&I efforts through launching an Employee Resource Group in Asia that focuses on disabilities.

She joined the insurer in October 2020 from Hilton where she formerly held the role of VP, marketing and GM of eCommerce, Asia Pacific. According to Nestor previously, she took Manulife's strengths in marketing, brand, digital, and CX in Asia to the next level. Nestor was also responsible for customer insights, product design, data analytics, digital strategy, ManulifeMOVE and communications. Aside from Manulife, Nestor has also worked at eBay and American Express.

It has also been evolving its offerings for consumers. Last month, it partnered with DBS Bank and Pine Labs to launch Mastercard Installments with Pine Labs, a new programme that allows DBS/POSB credit cardholders to pay via interest-free installments at merchants with the "Pay Later" identifier, simply by presenting their DBS/POSB cards at checkout.

At the same time, it also entered into a five-year global partnership with banking tech unicorn Zeta to jointly launch credit cards with issuers worldwide on Zeta’s modern, cloud-native, and fully API-ready credit processing stack. Mastercard has underscored the partnership by making a financial investment in Zeta.

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