How to Build a Solid Treasury Career Overseas with Roshun Tulkens

The act and having the network and the qualifications has been vital in my career in a number of ways. I mean, I'm involved in the future leaders in treasury, which effectively focuses on up and coming treasury professionals under 35 and how we can help them support them in their early careers through networking, through access to key material within treasury webinars in place network and events and aspects around that. I also sit on the Advisory Panel for the Middle east, which again gives me a good insight as to what treasury activities we're doing in the region and help shape some of the landscape around where treasury needs to get to within the region. So all of these for me are great foundations in building a career. Having the qualifications first and foremost gives you that knowledge. So when you're in interviews, when you're talking to senior treasurers, you've got some understanding around what they're talking about and also the ability to learn and focus on bits that maybe your department isn't doing or maybe other ideas for your company. For me, I've always had a career plan, so I think whenever I've moved role, I've always been looking at the role afterwards. So there's always got to be, for me, something to aim for, something to focus on which drives me forward and, and particularly focusing on areas where I don't have experience because this is where putting myself out of my comfort zone and pushing myself to understand and experience new things. So I've always had that in the back of my mind and are they linking onto that? So the biggest challenge I've ever had within Treasury, I think, was when I joined Reckitt, Ben Keyser. So moving country, moving company. I was studying for my mct. You can imagine there's a lot going on and for me, I just had to focus around what was needed in the short term. You have to trust your ability. You've got to back yourself in a certain way. You have got the ability to do it and just put the time in to get it done. Throughout my studies, there's been a lot of hours spent studying, reading, not being able to go to the pub with my friends, things like that. These are small sacrifices that need to be made. Absolutely worth it in the long term. And you can look back at it and think, you know, wow, that's kind of what's been accomplished. So, yeah, always, always focus on, you know, expanding your own knowledge and putting yourself out of the comfort zone, I would say, were the two things that I've tried to do. At least one aspect I really liked at Burberry was, you know, how it is multinational, multicultural, you know, dealing with many different markets and ways of working. So I thought to myself, what gaps do I have? And I think, you know, working in treasury, in another country isn't something that I've for a long period of time, and I'd like to try and do that again. So the role came up at Reckitt, Benkiser, and it's a very attractive role in the sense that there was a lot of responsibility in the role. There's a lot of things I was comfortable with, but other areas that I knew I'd be challenged in.