Auburn native Jason Oxman was recently named CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, an international trade group. If you have a debit or credit card, it means more to you than you may know. He talks about his new job, as well as his choice of head wear, how not to impress the boss at your first job, memories of L-A and much more.

Name: Jason Oxman

Most interesting nickname you’ve had to endure: Bovine Humanoid, a play on my last name courtesy of Edward Little High School classmate (and grandson of the founder of the Lamey-Wellehan shoe stores) John Wellehan.

Age: 40

Age you’d rather be: 40. I like where I am in life. My wife, Annemarie, insists that I am improving with age, and I take that as a positive (although I suppose she could mean I wasn’t so great in prior years).

Currently living where? Arlington, Virginia, a stone’s throw (or paddle across the Potomac River) from Washington D.C. Annemarie and I live with our sons Jonah, 8, and Iain, 6, and our Portuguese water dog, Puddles, who insists he is no relation to the president’s dog.

Occupation: Chief executive officer of the Electronic Transactions Association. ETA is the trade association for companies involved in all aspects of the payments (credit/debit) industry. You can visit us online at www.electran.org.

What do you spend most of your time doing in your new position? I’m answering your questions on my third day on the job, so I’ve mostly been learning about and evaluating our programs, budget, staffing and member company businesses. A trade association CEO has an interesting and diverse job, a mix of politics, business, education, finance, law, market research and many other areas. A trade association’s agenda and activities are driven by its member companies — and ETA has 500 members — so I have a lot of ground to cover to get up to speed and ensure we are serving our members’ needs.

From a consumer’s perspective, where would we see the outcome or your efforts and the efforts of your association? Consumers are enjoying a wealth of new options for managing their finances and interacting with merchants, from digital wallets that allow you to swipe you smartphone across a terminal to pay, to chips embedded in your credit cards that provide additional security to protect your personal information. Smartphones also enable merchants to offer you on-the-spot special offers, such as discounts or loyalty programs, simply by virtue of your physical presence in or close to their establishments. The payments industry truly makes global commerce work, and technology is making it ever more amazing and even fun.

What’s the most exciting part of your job? Representing an industry as a trade association head is a powerful responsibility — companies that may lack a presence in Washington D.C., for example, rely on their trade association to inform and educate policymakers about helpful (and harmful) laws and regulations that impact consumers and business. And then even large companies rely on their trade association to represent the interests of the entire industry, which can present some interesting challenges in building consensus. I’m excited that I have the privilege to represent one of the most exciting and dynamic industries in the country. Without ETA member companies — the credit/debit card industry — commerce would grind to a halt.

You are a lawyer and hold a fist full of degrees. You’ve held some highly significant positions in the communications and electronics industry. You’ve worked for the Federal Communications Commission, been economic and strategic counsel to Fortune 100 companies, VP for a Silicon Valley tech company, a senior VP for the Consumer Electronics Association, and in the process represented some of the nation’s biggest companies and dealt with critical issues like digital piracy and regulation of the Internet. Can we assume none of your employers were aware of the grainy digital picture of you shown here? 

I’m sorry, I fell asleep in the middle of the paragraph — is there a question in there?

Well, was that photo taken at the bar after a rousing match with your Lithuanian polo team? Oh, well, since we’re being serious . . . I was out on our local bike trail teaching my son Jonah to ride a bike for the first time. I kept taking pictures of his efforts, mostly resulting in falls to the ground, and he demanded equal time with the camera. This is the result. Somehow Google got a hold of the photo, and now it will likely appear some day in the Sun Journal alongside my obituary, should I merit one. That’s a comforting thought. I promise I dress much more professionally, and without anything on my head, at the office.

We put the Sun Journal Spotlight squad on a six-month investigation of your past, in an effort to dig up some colorful items — as we do with all Face Time profiles — and that was the best we got. Is that it? Can you at least offer up one of your most embarrassing moments? My first paying job, the summer after my senior year at Edward Little, was as a teller at Mechanics Savings Bank on Minot Avenue. My first day on the job, who should come through the drive-through but the then-chairman of the bank’s board of directors, the late Paul Choate.

He handed me his paycheck to deposit, and I promptly reversed the transaction in his bank passbook and withdrew the amount of his paycheck from his account instead of depositing it. I didn’t notice the rather significant error until I saw that my next customer in the drive-up window was . . . Mr. Choate for a second time, asking for his money back. And now, more than two decades later, I represent the trillion-dollar credit card banking industry — although I promise that I don’t touch anyone’s money.

Your father is the esteemed Jon Oxman, Auburn attorney, and your mother the talented Margie Oxman, who among other things recently retired after many years as the auction director for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. Do they understand why Mr. Wash Car Wash is one of your Facebook interests? They do understand. Like all good Mainers, they are thrifty, and if they knew that “liking” Mr. Wash on Facebook entitled them to discount coupons on car washes, they would be very proud.

Speaking of your mom, she didn’t know that you worked in radio during college. Anything else go on at college that you kept from Mom? I worked as a stringer for Maine Public Radio and as a news anchor for a CNN radio affiliate in Massachusetts. Apparently my mother was getting her news from the local paper rather than radio — how quaintly anachronistic. Or perhaps she meant to say that having told me for years that I had a great face for radio, she feels guilty that I actually pursued a career in radio.

Final question, if you’ve lasted this long: What do you miss most about Maine/L-A? I have great memories of growing up in L-A — from a summer night job working as a dispatcher at the Auburn Police Department (the current APD chief was a rookie patrolman that year and was amazing at his job even then) to sports camp at Bates College to sailing on Taylor Pond to many great friends and good people who are still in town. I still make it up to Maine every summer for vacation, and never miss an opportunity for a meal at Fuel in Lewiston or a beer on the deck at Gritty’s. Coming home from D.C. to L-A reminds me how pleasant and warm the people of Maine can be. And I find that when I tell people I am from Maine, they smile and invariably relate a warm story of how much they love the state. As they should.

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