Embracing Growth and Change with Rick Barrett

Foreign welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to them about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. Let's get on with the show. In this week's show, delight to be joined by Rick Barrett, the director of treasury for Rotary International and the Rotary Foundation. Rotary is a global network of 1.4 million, as it says, neighbors, friends, leaders and problem solvers who see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change across the globe. Now, these Rotary clubs cover the world and I'm going to get Rick to dive into that later on the show. But actually it was a, you know, not the conventional start, if you like, into finance and Treasury. I'll get Rick to describe that and I'll shut up and let him do the show. Rick, over to you. Talk us through your career, how you originally discovered the world of finance, treasury, and as I say, it's slightly different for yourself. Carry on.

Good afternoon, Mike. It's good to talk with you. Probably not the most conventional start to my treasury career. My undergrad is actually more in arts administration, theater management, and as part of my journey, if you will, I took an internship with a local symphony orchestra and just had an opportunity to work closely with their controller. It just kind of sparked an interest in accounting and finance. When I considered more growth there, it really seemed that I needed to take a more traditional accounting or finance job and so moved into the tax department of a large staffing agency. Their full time headquarters worked there for about a year and the tax department happened to sit next to the Treasury Department and I had a chance to hear more about what they do, talk with them, really had a chance to learn from their treasury manager about how he got to where he was and just sounded so interesting and made a choice that if I'm really going to pursue this, I need to go back, get a graduate degree in finance, which I did, and then pursue a Treasury career from there.

You know, that's quite a decision to make. That must have. Was there a lot of agonizing or was it just, you know, actually this seems the natural thing. It was, yeah.

Yeah, it was a natural progression. And I always kind of knew I was going to go back to grad school. I just wasn't sure what I was going to study. And I knew that if I'm going to spend the time to invest in a graduate education, I need to be sure what I wanted out of that. And one of the best pieces of advice that I got from the head of tax that I worked for, if you're going to go to grad school, go full time. Don't try to balance working and going part time. If you can go full time, go full time. I was in a position where I could do that. I was fortunate that I had parents that welcomed me back as a roommate for a couple of years while I pursued my education away from which I did in full force. I took a part time program in master's level finance and did it in 18 months. And it was at that point in time one of the hardest things I had done. It was more than, more than a job. I mean, I worked on, I worked on it between classes and homework and papers and things, six days a week. I took the advice and I took it seriously and I got it done. And then I was able to move on into my career. Right after the dot com bust, which was wonderful timing to be looking for a job and was lucky at the time to find the one that I did with a technology company that had happened to survive the bust. They had not gone public which probably saved them. And it wasn't so much my treasury or insurance experience that got me into the position, it was that I had done some tax work prior to which ended up being the bulk of the job even though it was intended to be a mix of tax, treasury and insurance. So I was there for not quite a year and a half and then moved out of there into a more traditional treasury role with a healthcare organization doing typical cash management, working a bit with their investment program and then about 25% insurance, which really more like was 100% treasury and 25% insurance, which is what tends to happen with those types of shared positions. But definitely learned a lot just from the basics of, you know, daily cash management, working on a little bit with their investment program. As I mentioned, I had a chance to participate in a few manager selections, got a little bit of the investment accounting experience that I hadn't had previously. Worked more closely on a broader insurance program which was kind of fun.

I was going to say what was it like working for a health provider or you know, health company, health system company that, you know, versus look at it now with rotary and things. What was that like? You know, Rick, you and I, we spoke just briefly before the show about treasury in different industries, you know, whether you're doing widgets or doing financial services or doing, you know, health, you know, systems and things. What was that like for you, I.

Think at the time, and again this goes back almost 20 years when I first started the healthcare organization. I mean it was so much more, was just very desktop based. It was so much more in the office and dialing in, if you remember that, to get your bank statements and that produced almost from a DOS based system. You think about technology today, I mean it was a more traditional environment, I would say suits four days a week, which was definitely a difference from my previous employer, which you could wear jeans every day. We certainly didn't have snacks and beverages in unlimited supply in the office though over time in the technology company those went away as they did in many places. It was a much more structured environment, I would say hierarchy was probably a little more rigid and just larger, just much, much larger. I mean in the prior company it's a small office, it was one floor mostly of a 21 story building downtown in Chicago versus you know, several thousand people that were part of this healthcare organization. You know, outside of the corporate level, finance and accounting staff and then some of the field, field based controllers and some of their direct reports, you know, you just didn't get to know many other people.

And so way back when in 2005, so 17 years ago, you then transitioned to, to join. How would you describe. Well again, maybe for the listeners, you know, people who maybe know Rotary groups or no Rotary foundation or you know, in some format, what was it like then and how has it evolved as an organization? Then we'll deep dive into your career with it if we could. So you made the move. Who were you joining? What was it like?

I mean it was, it was certainly very different from where I had come from. There was much more diversity in not just the organization in terms of our membership, but also in terms of the people that I worked with. I think when I joined at the time I was told that if every person working in our office in Evanston were to speak their first language, there would be 40 languages spoken. Wow. I never worked in an environment like that, which I actually thought was really exciting. Just getting to meet people from all over the world and just to see how smart they all were, how dedicated they all were, was really, really amazing. Getting the opportunity to work in an international environment which my previous employers had not been primarily, mostly domestic. The healthcare organization had an offshore based captive insurance company that was about as international as it got. Rotary was and still is a very international organization. Today we have probably about 70% of our membership is outside the US so we have to be very aware of International.

And what is, you know, what is Rotary? Again, some people know it, some people won't. So what's the paragraph that you sometimes may describe Again, I've got it right in front of me. But I'd like in your words more than anything for our listeners really.

So we're the international network of Rotary Clubs. You know, you may see in your local community the Rotary gear wheel or assigned for Rotary International meets. Here, it's people in your communities that are providing service, that are doing good works. In the case of my club, we're helping to pack food at one of the local food banks or we're helping provide local scholarships to area high school students. It could be support of those types of very local programs. It could be support of very global and international programs. Our most well known is global eradication of the polio virus, which most of us don't even think about because we were vaccinated as children when Rotary started this campaign back in late 70s, early 80s and then made a promise to the world in the mid-80s to eradicate polio permanently. I mean there were still millions and millions of children that got polio every year. And now the virus is endemic only in two countries and Pakistan and Afghanistan. And if you think about how difficult it is to get to some of the more rural areas, given some of the lack of infrastructure, given some of the warlike conditions that are currently extant, the fact that we have gotten polio down to just these two locations and there hasn't been a single case in Pakistan for over a year is really remarkable and I think just shows the resiliency, just how dedicated, you know, our membership is to eradicating this terrible disease. It'll only be the second disease in the history of humankind that has been fully eradicated.

Amazing.

The first one being smallpox.

And, and with that your a charity and that's all you guys focus on. And that's the key ethos behind it or are the other things you guys do?

Peace building is certainly something we're also very well known for. We have a number of graduate level programs in peace and conflict resolution at several universities around the world that we partner with. We have any number of grant programs that address community needs. It can be building water wells, it can be providing supplies or equipment for classrooms. Disaster relief is certainly very big on our minds today. We've, we're providing some significant support for the humanitarian crisis taking place as a result of the war in Ukraine. So wherever there is a challenge, Rotarians are on the ground and trying to help improve people's lives in the communities that we serve.

And for you, as a treasurer, you're in that position? Well, actually just give us a quick walk through because you started there in cash management through to then your treasurer position. What was, you know, what were the steps like? And obviously that's allied. You know, you and I spoke before the show in our pre podcast about how the organization has evolved, how you've grown as a Treasury professional yourself. Talk us through that, if you would.

Well, it's been largely because when I hired six weeks later, my predecessor left the organization. So it was an opportunity to move up very quickly that I hadn't necessarily expected when I joined. And then over time, just continuing to learn more about the organization, continuing to find where are those responsibilities that don't necessarily have a home that I can give some oversight to? I'll take merchant processing.

It just.

It was one of those things that no one was responsible for, but everyone kind of wanted to make sure we had, we had, we had a limited merchant processing. We did US Dollars only for the most part, as an international organization wanting to expand that to an international constituency. You know, we have to have an experience that's in their currency and an experience that is in their language as well. That's probably one of the opportunities that I had. Just as I continued to look for additional learnings, additional responsibilities, I said, well, I'll take responsibility for this. And in that capacity, I had a chance to.