Charlie LiuGlobal Chief Customer Happiness Officer | CEO Founder, FCFO & CFO Tech Advisory, MCC Inc. · Founder CEO & CFO Advisory at MCC Inc - FP&A Experts & Top Tier Vena Partner | Driving Financial Excellence | Chief Happiness Officer

Making Cents with Charlie Podcast - Eugene Cheng : How he started with Vena

7 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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1:33

In this segment of the "Making Cents with Charlie" podcast, guest Eugene Cheng recounts his career transition from a developer business specialist role at a bank—where he worked on capital markets and trading systems—to a consulting position that offered travel and new challenges. He explains that the appeal of consulting was the opportunity to work in unfamiliar cities and with new clients, which kept him engaged. Cheng then describes his 11‑year tenure at Vena, highlighting the diversity of projects he handled, ranging from high‑profile clients such as SpaceX, Regal Cinemas, and Morgan Stanley to mid‑size ventures like the Big Machine Label Group, the label that launched Taylor Swift’s first records. The narrative illustrates his motivations, the value he places on variety and travel, and the breadth of experience gained at Vena.

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So my last job before joining Vana was called developer business specialist, all kinds of stuff. So it was a lot mainly dealing with capital markets, trading systems, that kind of stuff. So very technical stuff. It was good. But as you can imagine, being in a bank, it was a relatively cushy job. It was, you know, you got your pension, you got your benefits, you got your holidays, you got your bank holidays, and the pay was decent. No complaints, but I felt something was missing. I wanted a challenge, so I started looking, and then I started looking for consulting jobs. And here's where the real reason comes in. The first thing, the main thing I was looking for, is it was just a consulting job that required travel. Anything that had travel, I said I'll take it. It was one of those days where you're still kind of young; you still want to see you know how what else you can get like out of career career. And frankly, I actually did enjoy the travel. Being— it's not so much about, you know, perks of it, it's the being in the unknown. You're in the unknown city in a foreign land, in the city you've never been to, client that you've never been to, that client that you've never met. That kept me on my toes. So that's actually one of the things that I truly, truly enjoyed. So then yeah, after that, the rest is history. Spending 11 years at Vanna doing all types of different projects, from really cool stuff such as SpaceX, Regal Cinemas, Morgan Stanley, to some of the also exciting but mid-sized markets such as Taylor Swift's first record label at Big Machine Label Group. So that's how you got started, Vanna.