Within Credit and Fraud, Steve leads a team dedicated to driving customer acquisition through financing options, securing customer information and risk management. As the frontend of the acquisition process, the Credit team “helps customers finance their devices and supports the sales team by onboarding new customers while deferring costs,” Steve says. His Fraud team protects customer identities through data-driven analysis and IP tracking.
Steve Gilbert and Sara Grabowski are both Vice Presidents at EchoStar with a combined experience of nearly 50 years in credit, fraud, billing and collections.
Sara Grabowski leads a team that often works behind the scenes to serve customers a seamless experience, turning projects into profits and reinvesting those profits into further innovations for customers. Beginning her career in a call center, Sara understands all the pieces that must connect to help a business run smoothly. Her Billing and Collections department is a shared service, meaning she supports multiple business units across the organization. The cross-functional nature of her work affords Sara limitless opportunities to collaborate with other teams throughout EchoStar and ensures that all of their work results in a final payment transaction.
Leading her team to constantly modernize the tech stack and connect all lines of business, Sara’s biggest piece of advice is to “never stop learning from your peers, because each one is a new teacher.” She embodies this sentiment as her team makes collective decisions and seeks to flatten hierarchical structures. This approach empowers her direct reports to develop their own solutions, allowing information to flow bottom-up and insights to be provided from the team member most directly related to that area of expertise.
Sara is a “boomerang,” returning to EchoStar after a stint as a consultant. Sara kept in touch with her supervisor and direct reports because of the “close bonds formed from a startup environment and an organization that puts people first,” she explained. She was excited about rejoining a company that’s “always launching new brands and balancing their existing offerings,” viewing these factors as opportunities to push the boundaries and stay at the forefront of telecommunications.
