https://www.listennotes.com/e/91d0acc2b3b94d6ba8aea50df1ea5ffe

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 treasurers about how they build 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. Anyone that has been to my sessions before, you'll realize that sometimes Jeremy's seen this before as well. I try and do this good evening and then you wake up and then we do it a second time. We're not going to bother. We don't do that anymore. I just give her one good evening and you give me loads of love back. Good evening, Houston. Thank goodness you're awake when a few of you have had a couple of beers. John in particular is one of our sponsors. So firstly, you come here tonight.

And.

You made an effort to come here. Thank you for joining us. But you have to join us. That means put away your phones. Nothing's that important this evening. The babysitter will wait for at least an hour. So give this time back to yourselves and your treasury careers. Who's this big head on the screen? That's me, Mike Richards. Sorry about the head. I run the treasury recruitment company, have done for 25 plus years. And I just love talking to you guys about your treasury careers, how you've developed them, how you've grown them. This then also led to, that's the team, the Treasury Career Corner podcast. Now, a few of you guys may have heard about it and seen the announcement this week. So by coming here tonight with the support also of htma, but also you get CTP credits. But also after this, we're recording this session. It becomes one of our podcasts. And you take a quiz after listening to the podcast, whether you're walking your dog at the gym, whatever else. And we have the lovely Ryan who took the first ever quiz that we had. And you get CCP credits for actually listening to a podcast about treasurers. But without further ado, I want to get on to our treasurers. This is the structure of the evening. We're just going to quickly talk through. Each of the panelists are going to give their backgrounds so you can learn from them. Then we'll talk about how they developed some of the challenges they're facing. We'll do some Q A. So ask. When was the last time you got to ask an amazing panel like this questions? I made them tough questions. But not Jeremy. I don't want him asking the questions. Right, Brooke, we're going to pass over to you, make sure you do. Go straight into the microphone. They turn it up a bit. There you go. Love it. Over to you.

My name is Brooke Ballard. I've done treasury my whole career. I started out at Anadarko Petroleum, actually doing credit analysis. And then from there I went to a company you now know as Live Nation. It was Pace Concerts, if you're. I'm dating myself, was in Houston. It was formed out of Pace Concerts. And we acquired about 24 other concert companies and made Live Nation. So I built all the processes, the systems, the ticketing, integration to treasury, the forecasting. And then Clear Channel for a time, bought it. And I had this very serious girlfriend that I met in Darko. And guess what? I did not want to move to San Antonio. I wanted to be with that treasury professional. And so I went to. Went to Cisco. Cisco was the very first corporate to set up. So from there, a company named AIG saw me speak at a conference. And I was recruited to work with, actually, some folks are in this room to help AIG kind of fix themselves. So we spent, I don't know, four or five years, probably the best years of our lives. Right. So it's real, real intense that we got to be pretty close out of that. And then we were told they're going to move the whole operation to Ireland after we fixed it all. So we got to train the Irish folks to run. Train them about treasury and to run all the systems and processes and controls rebuild. And then from there I went to a company called Cheniere. They're the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. Won an international treasury ward there. And I can talk more about that later. And then from there I became the treasurer of Oceaneering. So that's kind of my history.

Cool. And pass over to Jordan, if you would, and explain yourself.

Great, thanks. So I'm Jordan Timberlake, and I started my career actually in banking. And so all throughout my career, I believe it has been kind of tracking to a combination of decisions, timing, luck, and then ultimately me determining what the why was for each of these roles. So when I graduated from college, my why was I worked as a teller in college. And so I wanted to continue my career in finance. And one way to do that was to work in retail banking at a national or global bank. So that was my why. And I determined that I wanted to have formal training from a large institution as well as secure my financial licensing. And so I was able to accomplish that. After doing that, I decided I wanted to work more with the corporate role. So I applied for a position at a regional bank, Amogy bank you all might be familiar with. And was hired as a Treasury management analyst and had the opportunity over the next six years to really grow in the treasury profession. Making decisions to set myself on the path to be an industry expert for certain specific industries like health care and energy, and partnering really well with my relationship managers to go on that journey from analyst to vp. Then from there had what I call my most exciting opportunity, which was transitioning from a banker, no offense to bankers, but from a banker to a Treasury practitioner. And I was able to do that through my client. So my client was Memorial Herman. And I had spent years calling, cultivating that relationship, bringing solutions to the system. And then ultimately the system reached out to me for an open position. And so I joined Memorial Herman in 2014 as the treasury manager. And in my first role was really focused on cash operations, cash management, bringing that lens of my banking background to the role. I had the opportunity, as I talk about kind of timing and those opportunities that are presented, to work really closely with our debt manager. Our debt manager was executing large capital market transactions as well as commercial banking loans. And I did not know much about that, but I took the opportunity to say, I want to learn more about this. And that individual really took me under their wing and let me see the entire process. As luck would have it, that individual also decided that they wanted to retire. And so when they retired, they said, you need to go in there and ask if you can be the debt manager on top of the cash manager. And I said, yes, I will do that. So I walked in and I asked for that opportunity and I took debt on. And then as I continued to grow in my role at Memorial Herman, I found a hole with our investment operations. So I determined that so much of what we do on the cash management side applied to the investment piece too. So was able to take over the investment operations, supporting our chief investment officer as well as our allocators. And now today am the vice president and treasurer of Memorial Harmon.

Fantastic. I'm going to go to my lovely assistant Tracy, who's going to change the slide. Thank you very much, guys. So, Fred, over to you.

Thanks. Hi everyone. I think I should start by explaining my response earlier on, saying I wanted to be a treasurer, actually. So I was the treasurer of my sophomore high school class only because that was the only position that no one else applied for. So my friend suggested go for that. I didn't know what treasurer meant, to be honest, but somehow the concept stuck with me. My interest in finance. So I studied economics and international relations in high school and in college. So somehow like banking finance appealed to me largely because it's going to get a little bit personal. It meant you can deal with money and numbers and not have to worry about people. And so I thought if I can just go into banking and finance and like I'll be in a happy place of just kind of numbers and equations. I ended up actually starting in banking as well in sales and trading and foreign exchange. Spent the first five years of my career in sales and trading. And that was very, very exciting and very energizing. Eventually I realized just kind of bids and asks all day got kind of mind numbing. And likewise I saw what the practitioners were doing and I thought that looks kind of interesting. I want to maybe do that. So I went back for a graduate school and then went into kind of practitioner world. I worked start. My first corporate gig was with a company called Lucent Technologies which no longer exists, but was a long time ago. Bell Labs. After that another company, Constellation Energy. After that a company called Hilton. And the last four years have been with technical fmc. So very much industry agnostic. I wouldn't say I know anything about any one industry in particular. Have always been in treasury, have always been somewhere close to kind of cash and currency. And to kind of complete that cycle from before I started my career journey thinking if I can just focus on numbers and not worry about people, things will be cool. I realized not just about managing for daily P and L, but managing information flow is really what was going to drive. So that kind of got me into like process improvement and systems. And that was really the middle part of my career. And I realized then towards the end of it now really it all is about people because the numbers will eventually manage themselves, the systems will manage themselves. It really is about kind of getting the people motivated and on point. And so I'm kind of coming full circle to realize I probably should have been dealing a lot more and thinking about more people early in my career. But it took me a while, but here I am.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Next slide, please. Thank you very much. So I was actually going to cover about education, but I think actually you, the three of you have actually covered it more or less there I could go back in and we've got more of a more mature audience in here that have got more experience of treasury season. Thank you. Thank you, Brooke. So, but what I wanted to talk to you guys or ask you about was. So Fred, I've had you on the podcast before. So we'll come to you first as well. You just talk there about not wanting to be a people person, despite the fact you are a people person. You say you're not, but you are. Yeah, well, what I was going to say is coaching your treasury teams and a lot of you guys, and I've seen this within treasury get thrown into this leadership position. You start off as a contributor and then you develop. Oh, hang on, now you've got two staff, then you've got five staff, then you've got 80 staff and you accidentally do it. How do you approach that? We'll come to you, Fred, and then go across the panel with Jordan and then to Brooke.

Yeah, sure. And I will admit I am not fundamentally a people person, nor am I going to sit here and say I'm a great leader, as I got three members of my team here who may or may not attest to that. But I think it starts with acknowledging how difficult it is leadership. I don't want. Maybe some people are naturally born with it. I don't know many who are, especially in finance. I think it starts with a bit of humility I have found in the bits of success that I've seen in my career with respect to leadership. Just starts with sort of honest acknowledgment of needs. And there is a. There's a building of talent of individuals. That does not happen. Sometimes you need the coaching to get the best out of someone. They might not realize what the best is in themselves, but it's not just about kind of getting individuals. It's fundamentally and more importantly about getting the teamwork, getting the culture built across, all of that. And this is something, a lesson that I will admit I learned late in my career. You've probably heard of the no ask rule. And in its most practical application, fundamentally it's what we're trying to achieve as organizations, Treasury. Otherwise, it's all about shared objectives. And the shared objectives come from everyone working together towards a common purpose. And so it's much more important that everybody understands and acknowledges that than to have them sort of individually going after their own goals. So leadership, I have found, is about kind of getting a common purpose and inspiring people towards that.

What about when you say about everyone pulling in the same direction? What about the flip side? You just talked there about having the no ask rule. How do you deal with that when it's a difficult situation and then I want to pass that through to the rest of the group.

Yeah, there's a balance. And in particular, as a group of treasury folks, you know that treasury is a bit of an ivory tower within a bit of an ivory tower within a bit of an ivory tower in the sense that there's highly specialized skills. And this is something I struggled with my own career in dealing with others. You need those experts. And there's a balance to be struck between those prima donnas who are exceptionally good at certain things, but may or may not be good at dealing with groups. It's not as easy as saying you never have those people on the team, because at the end of the day, the things that you have to get done are very difficult to train. But fundamentally, what I have found is the pendulum swings most effectively when you've got the focus, first and foremost, on everyone pulling in the same direction. And if you can give up a little bit of that, a little bit of that sort of edge in exchange for a little bit more of that camaraderie, that is almost always a winning combination. In fact, I'm thinking of the visualization you've probably seen it of.

Who's it?

Was it Simon Sinek? The reference of kind of the Navy SEAL graph. You probably think you know what I'm talking about. That exchange is, to me, is kind of the sweet spot, not only for Navy seals, but for treasury, too.

So, Jordan, is you came into treasury, as you said, into this role 11 years ago. I think you said when you were there, were you a part of the team, or how was it structured and how did it. How's it grown since then?

Yeah, so the team has changed quite a bit over the last 11 years. But I would say we run as a fairly lean team. So everyone has a lot of responsibility. And so that responsibility, I do believe, creates a culture of all pulling in the same direction. We also. I had mentioned the why, my why. It's really important as a leader to understand the individuals on your team and their why, what's driving them. Brad mentioned some expertise or what they're trying to achieve in their own career. So I think meeting them where they're at allows you to be able to all move in the same direction.

Brooke, Happy people are productive people. That's what I would say. So I learned this a couple hours ago, but because the ADU folks are in the room, and we had a pretty tough assignment. We had a boss, his name was John Wells, and he was intentional. The one thing we did in AIG is the leaders hate terror every day. And when we did films, it was production because he got to know one another and because we got to know 100 on a personal level and relay on the personal level. When it got really tough. We worked hard. Yeah. And A is pretty close because we were with the Fed Federal Reserve in Europe to check our progress and we had like a pre meeting. We would talk about all the metrics where our liquidity was, how many bank accounts we close and we built our resounding gaggler. And it was early those discussions at the lunch table about how we could rescue aig, that's how that started and why it was successful to who?

And obviously the world of work. I talk about this all the time on the podcast with you guys. 10 years ago a hybrid was barely a car. People like, oh wow. And then suddenly five years ago, the shutters came down. Right, everyone, you're in your office, home office, you're working from home. And we can start with you, Brooke, and then come back around the panel. Talk us through if you would, the what happened with you guys and Covid and how then it affected treasury coming out of it. And then we'll come back to Brooke and to Fred.

It's hard to train on hiring, training people here in Houghton. And we went to the office. In the office we wore a mask so I could look at him in the face and, and assess how to. How to do stuff. And some people were very green that I was shame. So there's no substance here for the face to face contact.

And how did you make sure that it was effective? If you like, how do you do that in that situation? You talk about then breaking bread with people and actually looking them in the face. But you also have some. I've said to people, treasury is collaborative. If someone comes to me and said I want to work. In fact there was a guy the other day, I want to work 100% remotely. I went get out of Treasury. Treasury is not a remote discipline. Go to another finance display. It was like a bit shocked. I was like, sorry, I don't think it's right for you. How do you do it?

Well when you're getting asked when we come to the office and they may be appraised for their, you know, they're well being. You may be at a conference table and they're way over there and you're showing a presentation or and you're talking through it. And then people got accustomed to looking at home and hard to bring folks back crack. He's like, yeah, kind of nice this two days a week the office kind of nice. So you really have to be intentional. Like hey, these days we're going to be together, we're going to work together. Is going to be trans YouTube days. Like you ever go into treasury and you organize your day and you say, man, I'm going to get these five days done today. And then you do none of those things. So after, when you're training, you have to, you have to do at least one of those things. So one, one thing that I, I teach all my folks and this is my tip, the trip to success is I take a piece of paper and I'll fold it in half. A blank piece of paper on the left hand side. I write to do's. Okay. I never write more than five. I try to do two or three. Because when you put it down, I write it not on your computer, but when you put it on a piece of paper, you submit it. That, man, I'm really gonna disappoint myself. Better read those two things down. And then on the other side of the paper, I put my goals for the week. Never more than five. And when you're training folks, I ask them, what is your one or two to dos for today? What did you do this week? I just looked at those lists and every day we look at those lists and so it's not like, hey, let's do this week. It's like my inbox is super clean. It's like, hey, I actually open another vestment now. We managed to open that bank account in music. Whatever my core competency is for them.

And time you actually measured their achievement. So Jordan. Jordan.

So my approach on hybrid might be a little bit different. So we are a health system and we are a hybrid office. So we are required to come into the office a specific day each week as well as we are all accountable for attending specific meetings in person. I do think that there are some benefits to the hybrid remote work style. And I think what the benefits really are for our organization and I think even in the treasury profession is one, you are, as Brooke said, happy. Employees are productive employees. And so they. There have been studies that show that a lot of employees prefer a hybrid work environment. And so I do think that can be beneficial. Also. It helps with retention. So we have hired individuals in a hybrid environment and have been successful in retaining those employees as well as immersing them into the culture. I also want to point out would be remiss. This is not specific to my industry or Memorial Herman, but we have seen numbers of women in the workforce have increased due to the ability to have a remote or hybrid work schedule. And so I think that's Great. And I also do believe that we're very intentional about getting together for in person meetings as well as intentional and respectful of time when you are hybrid as well.

Yeah, a little bit of everything that was just said. I'm 100 agree that an in person meeting is always more effective than teams and the ability to engage and to train people. Absolutely. You have to have that, that face to face communication. However, a teams call is also better than email. And I so have been in very global organizations. Our treasury team has got people in about 12 countries the first four or five months. When I joined this company, I was in teams calls with people in Australia and the US and UK and everywhere else and they're all the same. I found that with COVID you were a global team before, now you really are because everybody is just another face on a screen. And there was a real benefit I found of just that creating that parody. Now that doesn't mean that again like if you go in an office with someone, it's absolutely going to be better. Totally agree. The other issue though which Brooke was mentioning is. Sorry Jordan was mentioning that is the labor retention. And whether it's for parenthood or any other kind of life circumstance, there absolutely has been this shift in the kind of the cost and demand for work. And if your labor, if you're limited to geography, like if you have to hire in Houston or you have to hire in Aberdeen or anywhere else, it changes your equation in terms of like where the labor markets are. If you're no longer limited to that, it really opens things up. So I don't know where that ends up, although I do know where it ends up. It ends up wherever the CEO says it ends up. And that's going to vary by company. But honestly what makes the most sense I think is some bit of a mixture of all of that.

Thank you. I recently did a session just like this in New York had and I was just talking to Jordan earlier that I interviewed Summer Simmons, good friend of mine from Victoria's Secret. And one of the highlights of the session was they identified a Victoria's Secret that no one really knew what treasury was. They knew how to spell it, but that was about where it ended. So what she did was they got together as a team and they did this thing called Treasury 101. They put it together and then they went out to the business and different parts of the business and told different parts of the business and coached them, the tax team and everything else. They sat there and gave them these coaching sessions about what treasury was the benefit was incredible because people were coming back to treasury, asking them questions and saying, oh, we're thinking of doing this, can you help us? So suddenly that's how they got out to the business. What I wanted to ask my panelists was what do they do to get involved in the business? Have they done before? We'll start this time with Jordan, actually. I'll get it. I'll start with Jordan. There you go. Get the name right this time. Jordan, then Brooke, then back to you, Fred. Just any of the ways that you've taken treasury out to the masses or anything.

Tips for this audience here at Memorial Herman. As a health system, the Treasury Department is really focused on our relationships with finance, revenue cycle, supply chain. And really it's not for us taking a Treasury 101 out to each of these different business units, but it's cultivating a long standing relationship with those business units, not only explaining what we do, but understanding what they do so that we can then provide value back to them. So for instance, if supply chain is working on an agreement and a lease is embedded within that purchase option, they know that they need to go to treasury, they know that they need to go to legal to ensure that we have eyes on it. That isn't necessarily something that happens immediately. That happens because we have built a relationship with Supply Chain over the years to explain what our role is and how we can assist with that analysis to ensure that it's the right decision for the system. So I love the idea of a Treasury 101 and I think that would be great. And we do that within our finance arm so that one, we can attract individuals from other financial departments to hopefully one day I want to work in treasury and also how we can partner with them in the future. But really for the other business units within the walls of our system, I think it's really about collaboration on how we can work together in the future.

I agree with what's been said in the sense that you really have to turn the equation around. Say it's not about you telling me what I need to do my treasury job, it's about let me help you solve whatever business problem you're trying to solve for to add to that, the other thing that I've lately seen success in and lately in this job is in terms of integrating talent. And so a majority of my direct reports, a couple of folks in the audience here had no prior treasury experience to joining my treasury leadership team, which is the first time I've ever experienced that in all my treasury career. And it might sound risky, but it's been, I think, tremendously successful in two ways. One way is that non treasury people have the license to ask a lot of dumb questions and smart questions and asking why and challenging and that. And I credit some Caleb in particular in the corner here who's asked a lot of great questions on foreign exchange. So as a veteran foreign exchange person being asked like, why do you do this or that, Gosh, I haven't thought about that in 20 years. I just assumed it all the time. So that helps not only make the function better but, but it also helps to integrate with. Because the people that have come in, they don't know treasury necessarily, but they know the business and other parts of finance and strategy and operations, everything else. And that really helps integrate because I don't have that knowledge myself. And so the more of that cross breeding that we can bring in, the more enriched the kind of the talent pool is for Treasury.

I want to touch on something that actually you mentioned there, Brooke, about achieving and making your achievements known to the organization as well. So I recently interviewed Emma Hayward, great treasurer and I've also talked, we did New York session recently and saying in the nicest way, you guys as treasurers are terrible at demonstrating your expertise. You work really hard at your jobs, but you don't tell anyone. You just hide your lights. And that's why I do the podcast. That's why do so much stuff with the afp. And I'm saying to you, shout about your achievements. Now when I talk to Emma, one of the things she did because you guys are very busy, she said, oh, I send myself an email each week. I mean, okay, it's a bit weird. And she went, no, what I do is each week I look at, reflect on it, have that coffee moment and just send myself an email with what we've achieved this week, me or the team. And so when my boss comes to me at the end of month, they go, what have you done this month? I don't know. She literally can just go back through and she can track it like her little black book if you like in Outlook. If I come to you again, to Brooke, then Jordan, then back to you, Fred. How do you elevate the mission of Treasury? You've talked a little bit about it there and doing some solutions and things like that. But how have you made treasury visible?

When I was at cishem, I started tracking part when we rolled out cancer to ever in psl and because we were successful in one area, I was able to hire five More people and traffic to seven valued money turning treasury from a cost center to a revenue generator as we say Cisco, over $300 million a year closed at $190. I'm using remote hazard. We celebrated R and so all that time when we do that, guess what? You get an eight more round. Really nice demand Jordan.

My suggestion would be in how to elevate what you've accomplished is if you don't have a one on one with your leader at least twice a month where you go in with the list of things you've accomplished, I would highly recommend setting one up. So that allows you to be able to continuously tell your leader what you're accomplishing. And on the flip side would be as the leader, ensure that every single one of the individuals that report to you has a one on one with you and you ask for what they've accomplished. Compile all of that for your annual review. But then at your annual review it's not a surprise to somebody of what you've done. It's actually all the things you've been talking about for the last year. Also I think it's really important that your organization champions that as well. At our organization there is a lot of request for what you've accomplished and what you're working on. And the idea is not to create filler or to create work for you, additional work that's not necessary. It's for you to actually prove what you've been able to accomplish. The other thing would be is partnering as I talked about and Fred mentioned, being the solution provider for that other business unit and is coming up with a shared win with them. So for instance AP rolling out something like a virtual card program or providing additional support with your banking partner to help them run a successful campaign to onboard more vendors which then turns into a revenue share back to your organization. But you can go to supply chain and say look at all of the vendors we paid and that actually in some cases can go back to rep to treasury as a cost center to create revenue but could go back to supply chain to say we're able to put a bit of money in your pocket as well as elevating within your leadership what you're able to accomplish in terms of cost savings associated with continuous reviews of what you're doing as well as ensuring that from a short term liquidity standpoint you're maximizing all your relationships as it relates to cost to debt and then also investing that short term.

Money and get your insights. But I'm just going to say to you guys had your questions ready because when the last time, as I said earlier, you got a chance to ask three amazing treasurers. So Fred.

Yeah, love money.

Yes.

And love metrics too. And our finance goal I would articulate as distribute 70% of free cash flow or more to shareholders. And that translates then to another layer below that of goals in terms of earnings and cash and risk and all that. Another layer below that, operational goals. In my past career and different roles, different companies, I've seen a lot of different treasury folks going after optimizing a lot of cool stuff for what may or may not have translated to bottom line results and may or may not likely not have been appreciated by others. What I found is really successful in the current role with Tank fmc. The company is really laser focused on industrialization and on metrics defining progress and, and that translates to treasury and finance as well. And so we have a weekly cadence with our CFO leadership team that focuses on exactly those layer of metrics and that's what we drill down below that. So the goal, this is all an evolution, but the goal they're trying to get to is that everybody ultimately knows whatever your job is, cash, credit, currency, insurance, whatever, how does that translate to the next step and the next step up ultimately to get to the top goal.

So let's see if you are still awake. I know there were a couple of drinks earlier. So what questions do you have for the panelists please? Hands up anyone? Oh, here we go.

Crying straight away for any reason. So I'm just curious for when the junior generation talent. What are some things he recommended we do today to prepare for future treasury leadership prowess?

Brooke will go with you first and then Jordan, then Brett and you just you3 share the walk around.

We were all in the Internet one time, but thank you for recognizing how senior I am now when I was a junior associate. The best thing you can do is make your boss look good because you make your boss look good. Guess who looks good? You do. I work for this lady named Nina. She's the founder of hdma. He textbell. And I loved treasury and I really, I worked for a boss that I admired, Nina and he recommended. Hey Brooke, I'd love for you to volunteer to be a part of hcma. And I volunteered for hcma. I volunteer for texpo. And guess what you get to do when you're in a room with those other folks? You get to learn just like we're learning now. And it's really not about attending a session, it's about networking and saying, hey, I have this issue at work. My boss is asking about this. Have you ever faced that fret technique? And you start developing, cultivating those relationships. Because the best thing that a leader can do and employee is admit psych. Caleb, I don't know everything I can. I don't know everything this. As soon as you say I know everything, I've learned everything, there'll be something that you trip yourself up on. So it's always best as a leader and as a junior associate to be humble, ask a lot of questions. Those questions sometimes are hard questions because you may have not answered that before or you took it for granted that everyone knew it. And then as you learn, your team is going to make you look good. And so the best thing you can do is ask questions, be humble, make your boss look good.

Nice.

Okay, Jordan, I agree with all those things, but I would also say yes to opportunity that come out your way and then surround yourself with people you want to be like. Also find peers that you can bounce those ideas off of because asking those questions to appear sometimes is a little bit easier. And then also they might have questions for you that you're able to share.

Your insight, agree and agree with everything said. To which I would add, the more you can build general skill sets, the more broadly applicable and more broadly useful you'll. And ultimately there's nothing aside from my comment about kind of eye retiring specificity of the stuff we do. The rules of treasury were written kind of decades if not centuries ago and they haven't changed and they're not going to change. What is more and more important in the workplace today is things like management skills, leadership, communication, understanding data, understanding business process and improvement. If you can understand those general skill sets, again, the treasury stuff, you'll figure out it's not that hard, but you'll be more broadly useful to the organization.

Okay, next question. I saw some hands up over this way up. There we go. No, not you actually. You can ask them at the beers, but here we go. Thank you. Come on.

My question is for George. You talked about learning some skills early on in cash management that you thought were outside the books and investor management that was key for you. I'm wondering what the story is there and how that paid off for you.

Main thing that I found that overlapped was the operations piece of it. So not necessarily the management of cash and investment selection, but being value add to say, I'm going to take these policies, these procedures and I'm going to ensure that they apply to the way that we operate when we rebalance a portfolio or fund, an investment manager. So really taking the policy and then also the operational aspect of the work, translating it to say, I can have a team that can support you really well, that is policy compliant, risk mitigating, that is going to help you operate at a higher level.

Our panel do actually have some lovely takeaways for you guys as well. I will actually come back to Tracy because she was nice enough to change the slides.

Tracy just joining us on the free as well. Sorry to put you on the hard seat.

There are other people on the panel.

It's not necessarily treasury related. It was wonderful seeing the trajectory that you described of your career. I loved how you said when that.

Debt management opportunity came, you went and.

You asked for it.

What advice would you give the women in this role? To not wait for the opportunity, to not wait for permission of going. So one thing that I would say that is very similar to what you just said, but is you do not have to have all of the qualifications to ask for the job. The worst thing that will happen is they will tell you need more qualifications for the job. Okay, how do I get those? And I've now shown that I am interested, but I want that role. So I think we all, no matter what place you are in your career, you're always thinking, okay, if I did this, then I would be ready for that. But if you wait for that moment to be completely ready, somebody else has come in and they've asked for that job.

Okay, we got time for one more question, then I want to give the takeaways. You will get to obviously mingle with our panelists afterwards. So there was one more question I saw down this way. Where are we? Hands up. No takeaways. Actually, yeah, we'll go here and then we'll go to takeaways. Johnny.

So this is the third summer in a row I got asked to develop an internship program for people's kids, high schoolers. Have you ever dealt with working with interns? What you get out of them versus what they can learn? Kind of help me with what we're trying to do with interns.

Sounds like it needs a bid.

At Cheniere, I hired the interns with our treasurer every summer I was there. And so how we did it is we brought in a bunch of candidates and had a dinner. And those individuals that were potentially slated to be the treasury intern, we would chat in a more relaxed setting at a table. And knowing that if we brought eight, we only needed two. But you get to know them, right? And you're talking in a more relaxed setting about what their core competence are. Generally you're trying to solve an issue. And it's amazing how smart some of these college students that you may take for granted of their skills. So I'm pretty good at Excel. At Cheniere, we had some data sets that I knew what I wanted, I could describe what I wanted. I didn't have the time to work on it. So I asked each of them about tell me something you've done in Excel that you're pretty proud of. Right. Because what's the business language? Excel. Right. We talk about how many people do cash forecasting. How many people use solely a Treasure workstation to do their forecasting. Yeah, Excel. Right. That's the business and the reason why you get to the result quicker and then you bring it to Excel. Right, because you're going to go talk to your leader and what do they understand? The common language is Excel. So if you may not have the time or inclination, that college intern probably knows Excel better than you do. And that's exactly what happened. And that's how I built the forecast at Cheniere.

Okay.

And the other, the only thing I would add is go to the analyst and ask them what they are working on that they need assistance with. So then you can pretty quickly build out a pretty robust summer for an intern.

Johnny. There we go. So we've done the questions.

Brooke.

So this is you.

Yeah, that's me.

No. There you go, your takeaways.

I believe I said it's really about people, technology and the next job you have is probably really permission. If you don't.

Maybe.

Our relationships matter so many issues covering them insure horror family and where you're not. I've gotten three jobs from Hunt Avenue, wrote a textbook. I was a chair for 40 years old textbook is aware people at the end of the day it's really not about technology, about people.

Love that next slide. Thank you. Jordan. You want to get your take place.

I spoke about my why and I really stand by that as having your why. When you're looking at your career, the job you're in. So I think that's really important. The other thing would be is just like life. We're all in different seasons and I think that's really important to think about when you're in your career. So embrace the season you're in. It's okay to pass up on something. It's okay to ask for something based on where you're at. The third thing would be is advocate for yourself which I talked about, but also advocate for your team. There's nothing better than you going up and your team coming up with you to better reflection on you that your team is as strong as you are. And then the third, last thing, the fourth thing would be seek those that are willing to share knowledge with you and then share it back.

Let me pass that first, friend, if you would. Yeah.

I think the takeaway is debris, judging by how few words I provided to that. I'll skip the first three, but the last two is really to the point about. Yes, it's all about people. It's the talent and culture. And the issue about helping those around you be better is fundamentally about teamwork. Everyone's in the same boat. If one person's struggling, the boat is struggling. And that's a shared collective responsibility for anybody else that's in the boat. The last issue, which I think is being yourself, bringing yourself to work is not just about talent, but about individuality and creativity and diversity. So much of what we do is about improvement. And improvement is not just like, how do I tighten this nut or this bolt a little bit more. It's about finding new solutions and thinking outside of the box. And that requires creativity and that requires diversity of a lot of different ways of thinking. And that means that everybody has to feel psychologically safe to speak up and ask a question or raise a suggestion, regardless of whether it's a gender or a season or experience issue or anything else. So the more that everybody in the room feels safe to bring themselves and bring their ideas, the more creative the team is.

Fantastic. And Jonny, so first of all, networking with purpose, what does that mean? It's about paying it forward. It's certainly what, as Brooke touched on there is. When you are now networking, it's lovely to have some free beers. Thank you very much, sponsors. But actually, there's a point to here. If you don't leave here with at least two or three other connections, you fail this evening. That's your parcel fail test. You're great networkers when you make an effort. When you don't, you're terrible. But you can be brilliant. And you show this because then the visibility, we talked about that as well, about being visible both internally and externally. So extra. Internally, it's your black book and everything else externally, it's about putting your hand up. So you. I did the New York Cash Exchange virtual session recently and I just volunteered. It was a Women in treasury month. Obviously, I'm not a woman in Treasury. No, not this month. That's next Month, but women in Treasury. And I said, look, can I help? Oh, yeah, actually we want to do one on personal branding. That led to then this session. Get CTP credits. Because Nicole Crawford Angusalia. I'm trying to get that right. She is amazing. And she said, mike, why don't you apply for CTP credits? I was, ah, fantastic. That then led to now the podcast. Get CTP credits. Why? Because I put my hand up. I said, can I help? So get involved with hdma. Get involved with textbook. Just sit on a panel. Oh, no, I use. Hang on. These are three panelists who put their hands up and the final bit is sharing wins from that session. 90 of the people, 9 out of 10 people weren't putting anything up on LinkedIn. You don't have to put stuff that's confidential, but you get to your Friday, one of your little black book things. Oh, we did this week. We implemented this, we saved this, put it up there and that's it. I'm going to finish with that. So I want to put your hands together. Final slide, please, Johnny. There you go. It's wine a bit. Thank you very much to my panel. Thank you very much. Hope you enjoyed this week's episode just as much as I did. Recording it now. Don't forget to subscribe on your usual platform with that Spotify, Apple podcast wherever you listen to your podcast so you never miss a future episode. Want to stay ahead in Treasury? Fantastic. Sign up for our newsletter. There's a link in the show notes. You'll get instant access to my pay review action plan for you treasury professionals Free guide to help you prepare for salary negotiations. Maximize your salary at your next pay review. You'll also get early access to our 2025 Treasury Salary Trends white paper. And if you take part in our salary survey as well@treasurysalary.com we can send you our January review of salaries as well. And by signing up to the newsletter, you'll get access to our cv, resume templates, career tips. What could be better? It's amazing. If you're looking for a role, go to the website treasuryrecruitment.com or maybe even join us at any of our 2025 events and conferences. We're right the way across. We're going from the US back through the uk right the way across Europe, Dublin. It's gonna be a great year in 2025. So looking forward to go to our events page, treasurerecruitment.com forward/events and sign up. Meet us in New York in March or anywhere else. You want to see us in the rest of the world. Thanks for listening. Until next week. See you soon.