Charity and Creating a Positive Impact in Treasury with Caroline Stockmann

Foreign to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasury professionals about how they've built their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show, bit of a different show. I am joined by Caroline Stockman. Caroline is the chief exec of the association of Corporate Treasurers, has been since 2017. Prior to that, Caroline has had throughout an amazing career. We had our pre podcast call a week or so ago and we could probably fill two podcasts with this two or three hours. Amazing. You've been the CFO of British Council, save the children, 25 years of senior finance positions and we'll go through that throughout the program. You've lived overseas qualified accountant with just. There's so much Deputy Chair, EACT Deputy Chair, International Group of Treasury Association. I'll just do that for the next half hour, just talk about the. The rest of your CV and then we'll, we'll do two minutes with you, Caroline. But we won't, as always, it's not my show, it's yours, Caroline. Take us back, if you would, to the dim distant past. I think you've got a fascinating career. We'll go through that, talk about some treasury stuff and that'll be today's show. So Caroline, over to you.

I might not be what most people expect in terms of my background. It's probably not a traditional one from right at the start. When I was one, I was born in the UK and we emigrated to Canada and I went to nine different primary or elementary schools, if that gives any indication of how frequently we move. So maybe every six months and each time we crossed the Atlantic. So that was quite a bit of a shakeup on a very regular basis for someone young. But I think it's maybe formed me in the sense that I am very curious about things and I like diversity and different and new things and I also like to get to know people, be very open and transparent and just I suppose almost. It's almost like I think sometimes I like to speed things up because maybe the fear of I'll be moving on too soon. But that has not been the case latterly. I don't move every six months, I assure you. So an interesting background on different sides of the Atlantic. I was very much really a kind of mathematical science person and I decided that was all kind of just memory and I wasn't really very clever. So I really needed to branch out into the Arts and I focused very much on literature and languages. When I came back to the uk, I studied English, French and German at A level. I went to university initially to study languages, but then I realised from having done my diploma on the flute at the Guildhall School of Music in my year out, I realized that I had some potential in music as well. I focused on that. So I had a combined degree of German and music and I actually began my career life, if you like, as a musician. I'm a flautist and I specialize a bit in the piccolo. I do orchestral stuff. I've had works written for me and sponsored by Northern Arts in this case and I like folk music. But I've also, just for those of you who think I'm a real classicist, I'm also quite into all kinds of music and I'm a DJ in my spare time. So a little bit of an unusual background perhaps. Whilst I was doing some of these interesting things, I was also thinking about life, my faith. And actually I born Catholic but wasn't raised Catholic at all. My parents left the church when I was one and it was during my university years I found a faith and coincidentally it was the Catholic Church that I came back into through music, interestingly. And then I wanted to do something really to help others. And that's when I worked for two years with young people in the Lake District. Originally I was supposed to be going to Ethiopia. I was going to teach blind children music. I'd heard that there was a young man who was blind and had walked for six days in the direction of a school he'd heard about that would teach him. And I was so moved by that and his eagerness to learn that I wanted to go and help at this school where they needed some. At the time I wasn't allowed entry into the country, which is why I ended up working with young people in the Lake District. But it's really interesting because if I just then kind of fast forward. After having worked with young people, I decided to get a quote unquote proper job because that was just a two year assignment and I joined kpmg. Now, through kpmg, clearly I became a qualified accountant icaw. And that held me in good stead throughout my career from that point onwards, because qualified accountant, that's a desirable set of skills that I had. I think with a little bit of age on my side, I progressed quite rapidly through roles and became for instance, the youngest FDA at Best Foods, which was then taken over by Unilever. And then I went on for some really. To some really interesting roles within Unilever. Later, again I was questioning what I really wanted to do and I moved to Novartis because they were helping, saving and extending lives and I thought that was a really good motto. But when I arrived, the role wasn't really as big as it sounded. It was also a culture that wasn't as was more hierarchical, shall we say, than the Unilever culture, which is very much consensus driven and so on. So I suggested that they might like to reorganize and cut out my role, which they did. But then for me it was what's my next step? And I moved into the not for.

Profit world at that point was that maybe a conscious. You just taught. That's been a driving thing. You know, obviously you've got British council, Save the Children. Was that much more about your sort of heart led decision, if that's all right. You know, we got head decisions and things like that. You wanted to. Some people say, oh, charitable sector and things like that. Was that just a driving thing with you, do you find throughout your background?

It was something that I really felt the need to make something of my life, something where I could feel that I had helped other people. I think that's a common thing with many people and it was something I had attempted to do earlier with my, as I say, Ethiopia attempt. So yes, and first of all I went to Southbank Centre and that was a combination of my music background and arts background with finance and I was also a commercial director. So that was really interesting. When Save the Children came up, it was really very attractive to me, I think, particularly because most people would say this, but what more could you ask for to be able to help children? That's a really great opportunity. I myself have an adopted child from when we lived in Thailand, when I worked with Unilever in Thailand. And I know that he deserves as much as any other child in the world and that children, they all should have opportunity, which is why Save the Children was a very, very special appointment for me. And I was the first chief financial officer of Save the Children International. We were formed in order to bring together all the Save the Children around the world to save money so that we could then reinvest it into children. So we were responsible for the programming across the world. And I fast forwarded to that because then I did actually go to Ethiopia. So in the end I got to Ethiopia. But the point I'd like to make is when I did get to Ethiopia, I had a skill set that allowed Me to be able to make even more impact. And I often wondered if I had gone to Ethiopia years back, I knew it would be a very lonely life. I would be there with two sisters in a school and gets dark early and you're in the middle of nowhere and it would be tough. But I think it would have been very attractive for me because I think for most of us when you're in those situations, you actually receive more than you give. I wonder if I then would have stayed in the development world. I think it's highly likely I would have, thinking back, but actually by a different path that I hadn't expected, I was able to offer more so I could do more and impact more because in fact within Save the Children International, Ethiopia was our largest entity. It became over $100 million organization with over 130, I think different sponsors from around the world. Very, very complex to run something like that. We were able to make change for the better through Save the Children and the wonderful people who work there. So that was something that it showed me a few things. I'm one of these people, I suppose I've had lots of things in my life that have been disappointments along the way. I've failed to secure a place in the universe I wanted originally. I sometimes in roles I've been in, I've had to leave because I didn't agree with the ethics of the organization. But it was a disappointment still. There's been, you know, a number of things that have happened in my life that you could describe as disappointing and that were painful. But when I look back I don't have any regrets. I think just having had that openness to new things throughout was something that I would really encourage people to think about. People often looking at my CV in the past people would say, oh well, you've done a lot of different things. And I was a bit of a confusion for some people and sometimes they would find it difficult to see how they could place me. Or maybe I was seen as a risk to them and that got less and less over time because I proved myself in a number of big jobs which obviously helped. Nowadays we see people moving roles more frequently. I'd suggest don't go too frequent. I think you need to learn and you need to give back before you move on to another role. That's my philosophy. Sometimes it didn't happen that way with me just because of a promotion or something else coming along, but that was what I aimed for, to give a decent time with each organisation. But still I'm not somebody who has been 20 years in one organisation. And I think younger people nowadays, they're not expecting to do that. And I would also advocate that it's not necessary. It's great to have experience, to take opportunity when you can, when it's offered to you, not to be hopping around and trying to find the next thing, the moment you've got into one thing, but when things do come up, to explore them. And so when I was with Best Foods in the uk, I'd been promoted. I was financial accounting manager. I was then the company controller as second to the cfo. And then I went on maternity leave for a couple of months. When I was just returning, my boss said, oh, you know, there was a great job in the Netherlands, but of course, now that you've had a baby, you won't be wanting to move. And I was like, well, on the contrary, my husband's stopping working. That would be great. It's actually great for him because it was better than being at home with people thinking, what's he doing not working? A new experience for both of us. It had its challenges getting there because the boss didn't want me, didn't want a woman, didn't want a non Dutch speaker, thought I was too young. But I was sent there because the organization, the regional office, had confidence in me and I learned Dutch. I went on a week's crash course and my boss told everyone not to speak a word of English to me. And that is the way you learn Dutch, because otherwise they only speak English to you. So that example is really just to say you're taking opportunities when they come, when they're presented to you, is something I would encourage. We can't all do that kind of thing, move country at the drop of a hat. But I think being curious has really helped me on my career and that's why I've had no regrets. Things have just happened and I've tried them out and it's been great.

So you Save the Children and then British Council and then your most recent role, the act. So just give a quick walkthrough of those, if you would, because again, sort of different, you know, membership organization now, but. And some of the drivers behind that, because again, I think people listening today will go, oh, wow, they'll know you and things, and we'll get into the. Your current role. A bit more detail. But how did those moves come about, as it were?

Yes, I Save the Children was great. I started off with one and a half people in my team and by the end of it there were 70. We were taking on, as I say, all the programs around the world for Save the Children's, that would bring in the funds, do the fundraising, and then we would spend it on the ground in the different 110, hundred 15 countries where we worked. It was a fantastic experience setting up all the different teams because I had clearly finance under me, but I also had it. I had legal, I had internal audit, and within Finance, of course, there was treasury. And it was setting up a totally new treasury team. That was a fantastic experience as well. At the end of my period that I was there for a while, four years, I wasn't attempting to leave, but there were two things that were happening. One, I was approached on the British Council role, and that was instead of being a kind of startup challenge, as say, the children had been, the challenge was to fix something that wasn't working very well. I. E. Finance across the globe for British Council. And I've already been for some time wanting a chief exec role, thinking that might be my next step. This just seemed appealing. And also the cultural considerations, you know, the kind of motto that you could prevent World War Three through cultural relations. That was what attracted me to the British Council. And I felt because of my background, I was very attuned to it because of my mixed culture background, my kind of ethnicity, if you like, but also my experience of, well, certainly after British Council, I think my daughter and I counted it once. I think I've worked in 70 different countries, not lived in all of them. Of course, I felt that that was a good match for me. But there were two things behind that. One was I knew that my boss would be moving on soon. And it's always difficult when you're the CFO and a new chief exec comes in, because it's happened to me before and it happens a lot, that they want their person and it's often time for a change for the cfo. So I had that in my mind. I thought, maybe it's better if I move on before my boss. But also what I had on my mind was I'd done four years, I'd been there from the very start. What I didn't want to be was that kind of person that felt so protective over what I'd created, what I'd initiated. You know, it was my baby, in a way. I'd worked really closely with the CEO. We, along with the operations director. We were the first three in the organization and built up from there. And I thought, yeah, I really don't want to be One of those people who says, no, we can't do that. We've always done it this way, or no, we don't like that. That's not my idea. And I thought, you know, this time, four years is a good length of time. It had been really tough. I mean, there's a lot of kind of blood, sweat and tears that went into that role. Because first of all, just negotiating with 30 different save the Children around the world to develop hundreds of different contracts with all the interrelations between the different entities on the ground and so on, it was a big, big challenge. And so I thought, okay, this looks interesting. Looked at it and thought, it's the right time. So I moved to British Council, had a really great few years there. Fantastic team, doing lots of stuff globally, really getting to know the organization and really loved it and the people. But at a certain point, I could see with a new chief exec coming in, some of the progression. Wasn't going to be there that I'd initially been advised would be. Unfortunately, came in just a few months after I started. So I had to think about it and I thought, really, I'm ready for that chief exec role that I had wanted for some time and that I was really going to go for that. And that's when the act came up. And the act, just in summary, I spoke to somebody on the advisory panel that I knew who'd been the chair of the Audit Committee committee at British Council. Really great guy, Richard Gillingwater. And I asked him his advice and he said, well, you know, it really does punch above its weight, but isn't it a bit small for you? And I have two kind of thoughts on that. I think small doesn't necessarily mean you're not as complex and don't need as good a person as any other organization. And I think that's also the mistake people make sometimes thinking about charities. They think it's kind of a slower pace or easier to do. And believe me, it's not in a professional charity. The other thought I had was also impact. And the act really has a huge impact because of the importance of treasurers to their businesses and also to the financial sector as a whole. So I felt that this was really an interesting opportunity. And then I reflected, it's easy to see maybe British Council, Cultural Relations, stopping World War Three, you know, getting on with everyone around the globe. And, you know, I've worked in 70 countries. I'm an international person and I believe in relations between people. That's one of my core kind of Values, if you like. So it was a really good fit. You said the act, you know, you're moving back, it's a Not for profit, it's a chartered body, but it is kind of touching on that commercial world. Again, why would you be interested? And I thought it through and it's that professionalism. And if I look back through my life and some of the disappointments I referenced earlier, the reason why things might not have worked out in those cases, it was all around ethics and integrity and that I wouldn't allow those things to be compromised. And I think part of that is my qualification. You know, icaw, I have called them on a couple occasions, way back in my life when something was happening and I needed advice because I wasn't happy with what was happening. I wanted them to have my. My back because I had uncovered things. I'm quite good at ferreting around and uncovering things financial misunderstanding are doing, shall we say. And I've uncovered several frauds in my time, so. But just thinking about. It's so important that professionalism and integrity and if anyone wanted to really upset me, it would be. That would be the button they'd push, they would challenge my integrity. And that's what the ACT tries to do. So that is why I'm. I'm where I am now.

We're slightly taking the ACT as a name for granted. And, you know, it's. It's so well known, the association of Corporate Treasurers within the UK and Europe in particular as well. We've got a lot of US listeners, they know the AFP much, much better and things like that, and you're similar but different. And there are, you know, you've also got so many other interests in the other associations across Europe and we'll touch on those in a moment. Just briefly, but just explain, if you would, to the listeners, for those that don't know what the ACT is and does within UK in particular, and, you know, where does the work go from here? What are you doing?

The act, we're very much by Treasures for Treasures. So we're not a commercial organization in that traditional sense. We are doing our best for our members and it's all grounded on education, our qualifications. We train right from fundamentals up to Master's level, which nobody else does in the world. And we have members in 90 countries. We have students in 90 countries. It's really important to us that people have a solid foundation in treasury expertise, but also that that's developing through their career and that we're supporting them all the way through their career. We're also very focused on the behavioral competencies, the business skills, the things that are beyond the technical and we bring those into our studies as well, as well as, you know, additional seminars, workshops, etc. And our events, we hold some very large scale events, whether it be our annual conference in the UK now virtual and reaching 100 countries that way, or whether it's our annual dinner, which we had to hold virtually this time. But we, we had a very, very engaging evening. It was quite different, I think, from what people might have expected. It wasn't just another zoom call, but normally speaking, we'd have 1500 people at the Grosvenor House Hotel, those kind of large scale interactions. Then we have the cosy member roundtables. I'll chat with the FTSE 20. I'm also president of the NACT in the US and the act supports them administratively, so we run a roundtable for treasurers, for senior treasurers every month. With them we have all kinds of things. We have a diversity and inclusion agenda, we have a wealth of information on our website and through our online offerings. And of course we have our Treasure magazine, which is both hard copy and online and that really has a wealth of information for Treasury. So we're really trying to support them throughout their career and ensuring that to our mission and vision. We're ensuring that the world has treasury expertise so important. And I think the recent crisis has just demonstrated that more than ever.

You touched on it there, about the virtual events and everything else, and we spoke about this before the show, so I feel we've spoken a couple of times. What have you done internally and externally, and I think that's quite important. You mentioned about some of the provision you've made for your team, you know, more local team members and also within association. It's a little bit different as well, isn't it, because you've got your. The corporate treasury members as well. So you've got the two faces, the two support sites, maybe differentiating between those. What do you do internally and what did you do externally? If that's the right way to put it, sure.

So internally we, I hold meetings with the staff twice a week, just a short meeting, but we're all there so that we remain connected. And of course, my teams, they all have their small team meetings, they have their socials, we have socials, we have book clubs, we have a move club for those who maybe don't want to run, so it's any kind of movement. We have bake offs, virtual bake Offs we have art competitions. We're trying to encourage people to connect as much as possible and to ensure that those. We've got a wide mix, as many organizations will have, of those who are feeling very much on their own and those who are just, you know, struggling to keep going with kids under their feet, partner under their feet, that kind of thing. So the whole, whole range, as you'd expect. We've got a wiki, a wellbeing wiki that we constantly put information on and we do other initiatives through teams chats, like our fireside chats, and different things we name that have different themes that people contribute to. We do a wellbeing survey last year, we did it every two weeks and then we take the results of that, discuss them with the team and see what more we can do. We've had a meditation session from a Buddhist nun, lots of stuff to try and ensure that people are taking time for themselves. And I've done a few sessions on looking at energy versus time so that people can focus on using their energy rather than thinking about time. And I can explain that further if you're interested another time. But just trying to help people in how they manage themselves through all of this and sharing stories. And when we've had over Christmas, a few people did have Covid and then sharing that and all sorts of things. We've shared recipes, you know, you name it, training a few of our staff as mental health first aiders as well.

Wow.

We've got a wealth of material then, that the team internally is using, but they can access what we have for our members and for our members, we have just a vast amount of information and help that we've been providing on wellbeing. We've now got an area of the website rather, that is a wellbeing hub, so that people who are not members can access easily a lot of information that's free for them to access as well, because we want to be as helpful as possible. Throughout last year and ongoing, we've had a Covid newsletter that's gone out every couple of weeks, policy and technical team have prepared and that holds all the information on the technical side of things that people need to be aware of through Covid. So whether it's being around governmental schemes, whether it's about Libor transition, anything else, we've been reaching out to members with that. We've also been calling members, trying to have phone calls with many of them since the beginning of the crisis, just getting their insights on how they're feeling, how they're doing We've continued with our FTSE 20 regular calls. We have had a number of other meetings. We've got our panels in Asia, Middle East, Africa and we have other groups, Switzerland, Ireland and different regional groups in the uk and we've been holding quite a lot of sessions with them just to catch up as usual with our panels. We always have regular catch ups, but also social evenings where we can chat about what things are like. And that, I think has been very helpful for people who have been struggling at certain times, depending on what their lockdown is like, trying to keep really connected and keeping information up to date. When there was initially the outbreak, what we did was we switched round and our next publication of the Treasurer was the Black Swan edition. So we switched all our publications round and had a very, very different focus. And the team did that really quickly because we realized, you know, the program we had planned wasn't necessarily applicable anymore. People wanted to really be helped with the current context. So we did that. And as well as pivoting round and shifting our major event to October, but then holding our International Treasury Week in May and then our Festival of Treasury Transformation in July, and between them, they attracted 6,000 people to attend from 100 countries, which was, you know, really great. We felt again that they were topical. We had people like Mark Carney speaking, the Archbishop of Canterbury in October. We had William Hague, the Middle east, we had the Royal Highness Sheikha Shop Sharma, the President's granddaughter, speaking, which was really great because she's a great advocate for diversity and esg. So just we really worked hard and we tried to get our platform to be the best platform out there for such an engagement. And the feedback we've had has been fantastic. People were missing the networking and although they said, you know, it's not the same as physical, they've said this is probably the best that you could get. So we just tried hard to service our members throughout.

If you look back over all of the initiatives you've done internally and externally, what would you say has been the most successful? You talked about the baking thing there as well. And one of the things, one I was going to volunteer is that just recently, you know, in this latest lockdown, the third part, the trilogy part that nobody ever wanted, we've started to do this informal thing on Friday afternoon two weeks ago, it's Margarita Friday. Then it was Martini Friday last week and this week is Rum Cocktail Friday. So I'm to going quite looking forward to it a bit later. That was just one way to sort of diffuse things and Just relax. We were just talking before that and you were talking about where you did a playlist, some tunes for some of the guys in the team. You know, what's the thing that's really jumped out at you again? This is going back to your role as chief exec. You know, what's the key thing that's sort of come to you, would you.

Say if I just think of two kind of moments that were really meaningful. One was very hard hit financially by the fact that we couldn't hold physical events and the fact that it had happened just into the year, so we hadn't time to prepare. So we're now prepared for 20, 21 and onwards. If we have to do all virtual events, we'll be okay. But we were really hard hit. And the fact that my whole team agreed to go on to 80% pay in August for six months, there was such support. I found that incredible. And I think that is just a reflection of how the team was so close and how we had shared so much. And I think we'd been really transparent about everything with the team all throughout. So the team felt that nothing was being ever hidden from them. I think that was great. And then, you know, all the different moments that people share. Just last week, someone showing their painting by numbers that they'd done, and we were all admiring her giraffe as an example and different things that people have shared, like, that's been great. The other thing that our team shared, but was also for our members that I was really touched on. I really wanted us not to give into Covid. I was determined we were going to have not the annual dinner. I was just absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do. It was November. People were zoomed out, they were fed up. But we said, you know, please come to this, you'll enjoy it. And we had a fantastic lineup of speakers, including Louis Theroux, whose anecdotes about Tatiana the baboon were hysterical. We had David Mead was the compare and he. He did two mentalist tricks with volunteers who were not prepared. I just don't know how he does it. They were just incredible. I said to the team, look, what can we do to make sure, you know, at a dinner people would have one person on either side of them, and you're probably talking in a two or a three through the evening. How could we do that but mix it up so that people talk to different people? So it's maybe even better than being sat at a normal table. So we had tables of nine. And then with Engineers in the background. People were moved out. We used several different technologies for this. People were moved out into threes between the Mentalist sessions and the Louis Thoreau and the Archbishop of Canterbury. And we had this great cultural anthropologist as well. They moved about in threes so they could speak to people in the way that they would normally network. And people really, really appreciated it. That evening, you know, we had something like 300 separate meetings going on. Zoom was so fascinated because we using our Engages platform that we use for our big conferences and because it gives you a real nice look and feel, it's really great. And for networking you can direct dial people, you can chat, etc. But then we use Zoom for these breakouts and Zoom actually attended, kind of using us as the model. We were the first to do it. And when I got comments afterwards, I got an influx of people thanking me, unprompted and giving feedback. And when people said things like, it's the best night out I've had in stock such a long time, I was just thrilled. And the fact also at the end, people then went into the networking lounge, as we called it, and then were contacting each other directly through the facility to continue the evening. I just thought it was great. And that made me so happy that in those kind of gloomy times of November that I could bring just a bit of joy to people.

Yeah, we all need a bit of joy in our lives at the moment. And it's.

And the team did a fantastic job and so they could be really proud.

Of themselves getting away from Groundhog Week and having something like that. Well, you know, hopefully we'll get back to these real life events as well soon. And I know that you guys organize great conferences and we go along and speak and really enjoy that, and that's obviously part of the future. You know, before we wrap up today's episode and you know, I'm going to ask in a moment about your LinkedIn profile, but before we get to that, I was just going to sort of bit a crystal gazing into that crystal ball. What are you seeing as the, the challenges for. Well, maybe for the act, but more maybe for treasury, just in general. You've got your finger on the pulse all the time. You're talking to all these treasurers more so than I do, even as a Treasury recruiter. But what are you seeing coming at treasury at the moment? And do you think that you're obviously providing support for this? Got things like Covid and stuff, but more generally about treasury and the future of Treasury? Where are you Seeing the challenges coming from and what are you guys doing to support that sort of thing?

There's of course a whole range of challenges. I mean the treasury is really at the heart of things at the moment. I think there is, as you pointed to the well being challenges. The challenges of how do you bring on people joining the team remotely who haven't had that kind of osmosis effect in their development. But how do you also use that globalization to have the best people? Maybe they're not going to be based in the same location as you in the future. And how can you look at that differently and how can you weigh up the pros and cons of both approaches and not kind of take an either or approach? I think is really important. I think that we will get through this and the mental wellbeing issues hopefully will then subside and we'll probably come to a different situation at the moment where as someone put it to me, basically sitting at home in a crisis trying to work. If we were working from home normally, I think we'd enjoy the benefits even more. So I think we won't be going back to people working full time in offices in the future. That's my particular belief and I think it's pushed forward that flexible working agenda as a positive. So I think that's really great. But I think as I say, well being that hopefully things will improve dramatically in the not too distant future. I think that when we look at other things, technology, is that a challenge or is it support? I think it'd be really interesting to see what technology is giving us and I think there are accelerations there through Covid, seeing also the partners of our treasurers, you know, all the banks going to be really getting into this century because some of the situations we've seen through Covid where people are demanding wet signatures and such like, really, really quite outdated. So will that be advancing and will that be an opportunity? I think just touching on that as well. The relationship with our banks, I think the banks that have been very supportive of their clients through this will really thrive. I think many of our treasurers have said there have been banks that weren't terribly helpful when they were in difficulty and that they will be remembering that when they come to choose their relationships going forward. So I think there'll be some shifts there potentially in a bit of a shift round in terms of relationships. I think also it's become very topical with stuff in the news recently about Tesla and Bitcoin and I think we as an act, our position would be somewhat skeptical about treasurers maybe embarking on investing a lot in bitcoin going forwards. As one of our policy and technical people, Naresh Agarwal would say an equivalent thought might be looking at gold. And gold isn't something that people have really been investing in. So I think there needs to be a few more case studies and a few more years behind us before most treasurers who are by nature of course risk averse will be going for bitcoin. But it will be very interesting looking at that and looking at the whole thought of central bank cryptocurrencies. So I think that will be something that will be engaging us and I think just moving forwards. ESG is high on the agenda. All the elements of it, environmental and governance and I think particularly the E and the S, the S coming out of COVID people will be thinking much more around the kind of well being agenda but also impacts further out on what they're doing on society. Because there are a number of things that have come up through Covid where, as Louis Thoreau put it, people sitting in that social media marinade and really pondering on things. And I think part of that was what made Black Lives Matter such a strong movement, the particular situation we were in. And that's a good thing because it accelerated that awareness for many of us to really think more about discrimination, unconscious bias and how people from black or minority backgrounds have often felt the underdogs and felt not listened to or included. So I think that's a really important shift and that affects the S. And I think people will be thinking about that a lot more. Yes, environment from all angles going to be a really major focus. I think treasures have been, were slightly slow coming to it, but now it's really, really on an ascendant, shall we say. So I think that's featuring big in the future.

Definitely. Well Caroline, I said at the beginning of the show we could keep talking. There's loads of other stuff because you've got such an amazing rich background. But as we do on every single week, to summarize, we'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. So if it's, you know, worth connecting to the right people they can do and things. But again people will look at your background there, they'll see this rich tapestry as it were, and all these different roles and they might say do you know what? That's something I'd like to do or have a similar background. What's the sort of the summary advice to maybe treasury professionals or otherwise just people out there that look at your background, say I'd like to be similar to Caroline or follow a similar path. What would you say?

I think keeping an open mind and exploring opportunities and wanting to learn is really important. Having a good qualification, I've got a financial qualification. I've also done some of the ACT ones of course, also been involved in writing some of them. But I think that qualification is really important, holds you in great stead. Also we didn't mention earlier, but I am a trained coach as well. From my time at Unilever, I was the only one outside of HR who did this training on coaching for results and I really feel that that has been very helpful to me. We haven't mentioned it but my mini podcasts that I do, they're all focused on self development and the new series that will launch in a couple of weeks time is focused around self development under Covid specifically. But people can look at back copies of them or listen to them. I should say those are the really important things. I think thinking about your values, that's maybe my one message. Think about your values, what do you hold dear in life and look at your current organization and see if they're the same values if you fit and if not, consider a move. Whenever you're considering joining a new organization, doing something different, look to your values and look to what you think maybe your purpose is in life and see if they match. Because if your values are at variance with where you're spending, you know, a large percentage of your day, then you won't be a happy person, you'll probably not be so successful. But there's loads of other things I could say and advice I'd love to give from the coaching perspective but that's maybe the big one.

And again I was going to say that we'll put that in the show notes because Caroline has a very insightful podcast which earlier on today I subscribe to because like to listen to that when I'm out running and things like that. The latest one, no we're going to call it Strategic Insight with Caroline Stockman. We'll put that in the show notes so people can hopefully listen to that and lots of really interesting episodes in there. You know I was just looking at some of them today that be the change saying no leaving things behind but really great coaching strategies. So yeah I think people will get that, lots of that that so I think amazing and as I say we'll probably have a follow up episode. I think there's, there's so much more to discuss but we'll have to in the future. But, Caroline, thank you very much for your time today. It's been amazing.

Well, thank you very much, Mike, and look forward to that and talking more strategy with you as a future date.

Lovely. Thank you very much.