Write your story with Pride - Q&A with Dylan

In this blog Dylan Taylor, who sits in Zip’s Investor Relations team, reflects on the importance of allyship and belonging at work.

Tell us who you are, what you do at Zip and a little bit more about your Zipstory

Hiya 🙂 I’m Dylan and I am an Investor Relations (IR) Manager. You can view IR as the bridge of the internal and external - we get to communicate the great work Zipsters do to execute our strategy, and support investors to value it appropriately and understand our story!

Rewinding… my career started out in the trenches of an investment bank. As many do, I did two years and in a bid to reduce my hours I moved to Wesfarmers in their M&A and Strategy team. While my stress decreased, I still didn’t feel like I was doing what suited me best. This was until I was offered a secondment to their IR team, which finally brought me back to some of my key strengths. I was always an English & Humanities kid at school so this role gave me some much needed confidence in my career game.

In order to continue in IR, I left Wesfarmers after my secondment ended and found myself at Dexus. It was my first time in the property sector which was always going to be a flip of the coin in terms of whether I could see myself doing it long term or not. It was the latter.

I had been looking for my next challenge for about a year until one night I was on the phone to my Dad and saw the Investor Relations Manager at Zip LinkedIn (which had been posted within the hour) and said “oh my god, this is just what I’ve been looking for!”. I applied instantly and ultimately secured the job and joined Zip in January.

In your experience, what are some of the opportunities you get working in Investor Relations at Zip that you wouldn’t get working elsewhere?

Zip is simply a cool company to do IR at. It is not everyday you get to work somewhere with as many exciting growth opportunities as we have ahead of us. This is why I wanted to pivot out of real estate and back to an operating company.

One thing I was also hoping to get out of a career move was greater access to management and Zip has provided just that. Given we are an agile company, working closely with the Executive Team and being able to hear directly from them has been a unique and rewarding experience already.

Think about a time you felt truly seen, accepted, and able to bring your authentic self to work, either at Zip or in your previous career. What was it that made you feel that way, and how did it influence your sense of belonging?

At a junior point in my career there was an MD who would say “that’s so gay” to refer to something negative. I was 21, new and didn’t feel empowered to address it. While it wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t okay. I was openly gay and personally never had an issue with expressing this at work, and one of the Associates took it upon himself to explain to the MD why their language was problematic, and it soon stopped.

This is a great example of allyship in action (speak up, stand up), and it went a long way in making me feel more comfortable in my day-to-day.

If you could share a unique experience or perspective about the LGBTQIA+ community - whether it's your own, or something you've observed - what would it be, and why do you believe it's important for Zipsters to hear?

At a prior organisation we had an internal LGBTQIA+ working group. One of the committee members was a Manager who joined after one of her team members transitioned. She joined the committee as she wanted to help draft an inaugural gender affirmation policy. While we weren’t successful in getting this policy through, I always admired her drive to foster inclusivity. It wasn’t just great allyship in action, but also great corporate leadership.

What excites you most about writing the next chapter of your career story at Zip?

Having worked at large, traditional corporates I hope to bring some unique perspectives in evolving Zip’s IR approach as we continue to grow. Also as we increase in size on the ASX, it is exciting to think of the pools of investors that we will become increasingly attractive to, particularly offshore.