Overcoming Adversity in your Career with Gloria Griesinger

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 treasures about how they built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, I'm joined by Gloria Grasinger, as we just repronounced it before the show started, to make sure I got it correct. Gloria, who I've known for many years, is the assistant treasurer for Global treasury and Pensions at Cummins. Now, for those of you who do know, they are, Cummins are an American Fortune 500 corporation founded way back, well, 100 years ago, actually, 1919. They design, manufacture, distribute engines, filtration, power generation, lots of other things, heavy industry, trucks, the lot. Well, I'll get Gloria to explain exactly the company a bit later, but let's jump straight back in. Gloria, perhaps you could tell us, or take us back to the beginning of your career, how you first ever discovered finance and then the wonderful world that is treasury, if you would, over to you.

Well, it was kind of an odd way that I discovered treasury because I really didn't know what it was. I was working at Eli Lilly and Company, having just graduated university a few years earlier and was designing systems to simulate genetic engineering. Had a degree in quantitative business analysis, but was interested in the science side. And apparently someone took notice of my mathematical skills and analytical skills and a position opened in treasury for an analyst and in the pensions area. So I actually started as a pension analyst. They wanted me to design an asset liability model in house, which I now pay consultants to do for me. Right. But back in the early 80s, I did that in house and that's how I ended up in Treasury. And from there it launched me into other parts of Treasury.

And you say that's how you came into it. What do you mean by that? Did you get to know the treasury guys and said, oh, we've got a role over here, or how did you sort of move into the treasury field?

Well, somebody kind of knocked on my door and said, hey, there's a position open here. Would you be interested in interviewing for it inside the company? And I said, sure. And I really had no idea what it was and was initially isolated in my little hobbit hole, as I call it, of pension investments, but had interaction with treasury operations, clearly on fund movement and some interaction with the people doing mergers and acquisitions because we did venture capital in house. So little by little, I got introduced to the other areas of treasury foreign exchange. So I got an introduction to that. But it wasn't until I actually left Lilly and went to work at Ball Corporation that I really started undertaking roles in the other areas of treasury, was given responsibility and that was great fun. But I had a great boss who trusted me and figured I'd learn it.

What was it like? As you say, you've moved through some very different industries, which is an interesting part of your career, I think, and the effect it perhaps has on treasury and some of the maybe drivers around you, treasury and your treasury career. So Ball Corporation, for people that don't know packaging containers have just done a couple of big takeovers and mergers with some of the firms in Europe. But maybe talk about what was that like? Very commodity focused, I'm imagining, or very.

Different from pharmaceuticals, which are research focused and then a very sales focused and very different industry than where you're basically bulk corporation, you're buying commodities, buying aluminum, making aluminum beverage cans or making glasses. Very different focus. It really introduced me in a great way to, and gave me the opportunity to do commodity hedging. And we've not done any of it. And I knew there were exposures and risks there that impacted the business and we. My boss gave me the leeway to kind of undertake it on my own. At the time I worked there, they still made glass containers and with J. Aaron at the time did the first ever natural gas pipeline basket hedge in the United States to hedge the gas going to multiple glass manufacturing plants. So things that I didn't know were earth shattering I had the opportunity to work on. And they were quite big and quite different at the time. And people started writing about them. I said, wow, I didn't even know this was that important. It was. I was a bit naive, but having.

A great time enjoying it and getting stuck in. And as you say, it was, you know, that was a while back. So that was quite groundbreaking at the time. How did they, you know, how did that affect you in what I mean by this is treasury terms. So you know, your treasury learning, you've come up through this great career path, but how did that change you as a Treasury professional? You know, you're here are some commodities, you need to manage them that, whoa, do we do that in Treasury? You know, what was that like?

The good thing about that was is it actually got me very close to the business.

Right.

Treasury, if it's not approached correctly, is like this ivory tower that's distanced in some way from the rest of the business. And people think you often operate in a black box. They don't know what you do. And you may not understand the business that well. And it's really about going out and understanding the business. And then as you interact with banks and investment banks, understanding the tools and then you go back and interact with the business again. So you told me that this is what keeps you up at night or this is what worries you. Well, I have these tools I can bring to help reduce that risk. And it's developing a partnership and showing that sincere interest in the business that is basically covering your paycheck every week. Right. But it's showing that interest. And then people start to come to you. And when once they realize that you and treasury in general is approachable, it's amazing how much more value treasury can add to the business at that point, because you're learning about risks that you can begin to mitigate. Because people are now coming to you saying, hey, do you care about this? Could I do something about this? So it's not just treasury going out and asking, it's people coming to you with opportunities to make improvements or mitigate risk.

And when you were doing that, this was in the 90s. So in terms of technology, what sort of technology were you using? Because I know that a lot of those and a lot of corporations now with commodity risk and everything else use some specific treasury systems that help hedge that risk and everything else. But how were you then blocking and tackling it, if you like? How are you dealing with that at a time when the technology probably maybe wasn't there quite so much?

I had nothing. I had an Excel spreadsheet. That was basically it. And I was working very closely with one or two brokers to understand it. I hadn't really done anything with derivatives before I went to Ball Corporation and was doing some really interesting things on the pension investment side, too. Basically had one of the brokers take me aside and send me, you know, exercises to do to understand, you know, what, how options worked and puts and calls. And I was doing very simple, like textbook kinds of exercises at night so that I would learn what I was doing so I could come to work and make recommendations on how to manage risk.

And with that, you then, you know, great role for sort of six, six years plus. But then you made that step up when you joined Whirlpool. And maybe for the, again, for the listeners, they may know Whirlpool as a name out there and manufacturer, you know, the goods and stuff, but you had a massive role and overseeing a big team and everything. That's a real step up.

How was that that was interesting because when I was at Ball was primarily North America. And when I went to Whirlpool, it was really to get the global exposure. On day one, I was there in meetings, talking to people in Europe and in Brazil and had this responsibility for all of the Americas and the global debt portfolio. And that was really where I got introduced in a much greater way, became joined at the hip, as I like to say, with the tax team because they had a very sophisticated international tax group. And I learned at that time that, hey, these are my greatest allies. They're going to help me come up with ideas, but they're also going to help me add value to the company. If I know what is the most tax efficient way to finance something or move money around, or do I want to put in equity or use debt. I think we challenged each other often. I would show up in the tax director's doorway with my. Back then, Ernst and Young had this very small, now it's huge guide to country taxes. And I would show up in the doorway and say, hey, I noticed there's a treaty between Argentina and Canada. Can I do this? And he would look at me and roll his eyes and go, where do you come up with these ideas? Show me that. And we'd begin to work on something. And at the end of the day, it was sufficient and added value or prevented the losses of economic value. It was a really good opportunity.

And we talked, you know, before the show, briefly as well. One thing we didn't actually talk about is that you then managed quite a team because a lot of treasurers might, you know, and treasury teams might be relatively small and, you know, high level, but, you know, you then had quite a number of people underneath you and things. What was that like being responsible for a larger team? And again, perhaps describe that for the listeners.

I think I had to learn. I wasn't given a lot of training. And looking back, that's where I think it's very important to learn leadership, to learn how to manage people. And at that time, that sort of training wasn't as well developed. To some people, it comes naturally to other people. I think the hard thing for me was is I didn't ever want to feel like I was dumping something on someone, you know, you know, do this. It's how do you guide people and challenge people? And I had some people that I worked with very, very well that I basically said, here, here's something I know you've never done. I'm going to give you some guidelines, you know, you might feel like you've been pushed off a cliff, but I've got the rip cord to your parachute. I'm not going to let you fall and get hurt. And that's really something one of my former bosses said to me when I was a ball corporation. And I applied that when I went to Whirlpool with a couple of the people that were newer in the role. And just to see them blossom and to see them learn and not be afraid was a wonderful thing. But I also had a challenge there. One of the gentlemen that I managed that was there when I arrived looked at me on the first day and said, I think women with children should be at home, not in the workforce.

How did that go?

Not. Not well. That day. I just kind of. I didn't know what to say. He was very religious and he really firmly believed that if you had children, you should be at home with your children. He didn't think women shouldn't work. He just didn't think they shouldn't work if they had children at home. And that made it very difficult. Initially. He also thought he should have had my job, and he felt like he was not given an opportunity for it. It was very difficult situation. The first six months, I would say six months to a year in developing a working relationship with this person where I felt like he was giving me all the information I needed to do my job. And for me to really had to go over the top sometimes to get him to believe that I trusted him because he really was good at what he did. He managed the domestic treasury operations, and he was quite good and quite technical and understood the business quite well. So I needed him. But it was hard when you're being pushed away.

I was gonna say, but he came to you with a distinct distrust on day one. How did you. You know, again, maybe other people are listening today and thinking, oh, yeah, I have that situation, or I'm about to. How did you. You know, you worked at it for a year, but what key tip would you give people? Buy them lunch every day, or what did you do to get him on site?

It was difficult. I think he had to understand that I still was able. I had to open up a bit of my personal side of my life to show that he understood that although I had younger kids, I cared about him. I was being a good mom. I was doing things with them so that he would respect me still. Mother. And that's not something that I initially was prepared to do. I was kind of defensive, and instead of being defensive, I had to just be Myself and share those things and kind of demonstrate my whole self to him, not just my work side. But at first, I really. It was difficult. I can't hide that. And I didn't feel like I could tell anyone that. I didn't feel like I could go to my boss and tell him that. I felt like people would view me as a whiner.

Yeah, if you. And you culturally as well, you had to be sensitive because you were. Then also, you were director treasury for the Americas. So how did you find the cultural challenge and, you know, sort of, you know, working across those global cultures. How was that?

It was interesting, really. My first major exposure to Latin America, and for some reason, I just loved it. And I felt very well received. And I went to my boss. We usually, you know, had to budget every year for one large conference or training we were going to do in the finance area. And I said, I don't want to go to a finance conference. I said, I want to go to Mexico for two weeks and study Spanish all day. I want to do an immersion because I want to be more involved in what we're doing with this very difficult at the time, very difficult joint venture in Mexico. And he laughed and he goes, nobody ever learns anything from that. But, yeah, you need to go do it. And, well, that was like, the challenge I needed, you know. And I came back speaking, reading and writing in five verb tenses. And that allowed me to also my sensitivity to the culture there and in Brazil and in Argentina and Colombia and other places I went, it came through, and I think I was able to build trust with our joint venture partners, which was quite difficult. There were only a few people they really trusted, and I was one of them. And I was very honored by that. Such that when I actually left Whirlpool, the best party thrown for me was by the groups in Mexico. And I was the only woman. And so they invited their wives, and their wives came up to me and said, you know, we've never been invited to these things before. We only got invited because you're a woman. And they said, they've never fetched a woman here before. And I said, wow, you know, and. But it was. And those people are still my friends today. And 20 years later, they're still my friends. And. But that led to me, you know, later on, in subsequent roles, I continued to practice and improve my use of Spanish. And it led to me getting moved to Brazil. And I speak Portuguese completely fluently. So that it was really a wonderful opportunity that was created for me. And I Didn't have to put that much into it. I could have said, well, we're an American company, like all my colleagues at World Proven. You know, we're going to go to Mexico or Brazil, and our meetings are going to be in English and tough. You know, you're going to talk to us in English. But after I did my training, I went down there. We had a big meeting. I was the only woman in the room. And somebody said, who's going to take notes? Because none of the men wanted to take notes. And I raised my hand and I said, I'll do it in English and Spanish.

That's great.

And I did it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So things like that. And I. And I took my children down there and left them with my Mexican joint venture colleague for. Left my daughter down there for two weeks with his family. And the chairman of Vitro came up to me on a subsequent trip and thanked me for trusting the people enough to leave my most precious possession with one of his employees.

And then you made the move out of Whirlpool. As you said, you have this amazing exit. But why the move on or what happened?

Well, you know, it's interesting. I left not because there was anything wrong at Whirlpool, but someone dangled a carrot in front of me to start up a treasury from scratch for a company that was spun out. And for all the smarts I thought I had and the due diligence that I did on this company, I got there, and three days into it, I figured out that it didn't have, you know, a leg to stand on. Yeah. And, you know, three weeks into it, I said, oh, my goodness, I gotta get out of here. It took me 16 long months to get out. And I learned a lot about bankruptcy and going into bankruptcy and managing into that process, unfortunately, while I was there. But it was a private equity company that was basically the private equity firm pulled numbers out of the sky and they didn't understand their cost of capital, and it was spun out without that. It had very poor ethics from a leadership standpoint. I was quite naive when I went there. I thought all companies had good ethics, as we would say in the US Midwestern ethics and things like that. And having worked for Lillian Ball and Whirlpool, and this company did not have that. And I worked for a gentleman who I found to be absolutely evil, but not as evil as the president of the company. And I mean evil. And it just, to this day, I, you know, don't ever even want to see their faces again because they were just not nice people. And they didn't. And when they asked me to basically falsify some receivables numbers, I said, no.

We can't use it as a treasurer that you live and die by your numbers and you're, you know, knowing where you're up to, you know, money wise. And, you know, so if people are again listening and they're sort of doing their due diligence on a new company or something, they might. What would you tell them to look at? What's the, what's the tip you would give them?

I would really research the people, the leadership, the people you're going to be working for, see where they've been, try to understand why they left, see if you can find people who work for them. Because I subsequently met some people who worked for the CFO at the time and those people had the same things to say about these gentlemen. I hesitate to even use the word gentlemen. And it's very frustrating to know that, you know, I didn't perceive that in the interview process. Granted, technology wasn't as good at the time, you know, with resources like LinkedIn and things like that. In 1990, this would have been 1993, technology resources. 97, 1997. Technology resources weren't the same. So you couldn't, you know, but I still could have probably gotten a better idea and said, you know, I think I'll stay where I am for now. But I was really just attracted to start a Treasury from scratch and, you know, somebody giving you a lump of clay where you can implement some really cool things. And it was a smaller company, just under a billion dollars, but with a global presence with manufacturing in the uk, the us France and Japan. So it had kind of like everything in a small package and it would have been great. But at the end of the day, you have only your own reputation.

Yeah.

And if you want to work somewhere else with the banks and the bankers, even though they might switch institutions, you have the same people to work with at all these places and investment companies and it's your reputation. And in the end, I maintained my reputation by, by basically being an advocate for the banks in the bankruptcy and helping them to get what was due them.

And then you moved on from there, keeping this strong ethical stance, ethics. Exactly as you and I talked about before. That key thing about yourself. You then made a move to Ingredient or talk me through the next couple of moves that brought you then to Cummins.

Well, I went to Ingredient. At the time it was called Corn Products International. They'd just been spun off of cpi. And they were expected at the time to probably get bought out eventually, but they didn't. We went on a buying spree and we bought companies in Korea and Argentina and Mexico, joint ventures initially. And that was something I knew how to do and work with quite well. So it was an opportunity for me to get involved in a lot of M and A work in a very short time period. And again, treasury was starting up from scratch. We were small. We started out with just the treasurer, me and one other person. Then added another person after that, another analyst. We were quite small, but we were nimble. We made decisions quickly. It was really nice just to be that nimble and work so close together. And again, very joined at the hip with the tax director who sat two doors down trying to get some really interesting deals done. So two years into it, unfortunately, the finance director for Brazil, which was one of our larger entities, was unfortunately murdered. And I was asked because I'd been down there working on some inside the fence co generation projects. I was working on some really cool cogeneration projects that was great, these energy projects. And I was asked if I wanted to replace them. And so I took advantage of the opportunity and moved my whole family to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Went down there for two years, but didn't what I guess the learning from that is if you go off as an expat, you really have to make sure you maintain linkages back to corporate. And I didn't have a lot of help in doing that. In fact, I had someone really trying to undermine that at the time. But I was down there and working really hard and making some improvements and learning a lot because it was the first time in my life to be really on the business side and be responsible for the financial operations. And I had all of finance in as well as legal in Brazil, which included treasury and tax and AR and AP and payroll and audit. And so learned a lot. But there was really no job for me to go back to at the end of two years. And there's nothing in the U.S. it was a small company, as I said, smaller treasury organization, very nimble. I'd obviously been replaced when I went down and there was not a job to go back to at the time. And I didn't have anyone who was, I guess, taking care of me or protecting me or different companies call it, and people call it different things, but I didn't have that. So my daughter wanted to finish high school in Brazil and that was quite expensive because that's something normally covered by your expat Package. And my husband and son went back to the US and my daughter moved in with a friend, and I started my own consulting business, going back and forth, back and forth. So it was imperative that I really improve my Portuguese at that time and become truly fluent. But when I went down there, initially I didn't speak much Portuguese. I spoke Spanish. And then it became more Portugnole as I mixed the two. But I was the only American and the only female executive in the office. I was motivated to learn to speak, and Portuguese was the language in the office. There was very little English spoken. I would sometimes visit other American companies. I had friends who worked at Lilly in Brazil. And I walked into the office and I heard everyone speaking English. When you walked into my office, that ingredient, you did not hear people speaking English. You heard only Portuguese. So I learned to speak very quickly and very well. So I knew when people were talking about me, it worked.

So you did this transition, then you stayed down there, as you say, the only female executive in the office. And from that international experience, you then said, I know, let's go to Indiana. I mean, how did you do that? That's quite a shift, you know. How did you then tell them to come back or what happened from there?

Well, when it was my daughter graduated high school, it was time to go back to the US and so my daughter went to university, and I needed a job back here. And I was looking around. There were a number of things available and a couple that I just had bad feelings about because now I was definitely more tuned into the ethics and that I hadn't been tuned into some years earlier. But there was a position at Cummins. My first two jobs. Ball Corporation at the time was located in Indiana when I worked for them. Eli Lilly was in Indiana. I was born in a different part of Indiana, had still had friends in Indianapolis. So I said, well, let me go talk to Cummins. And first turned him down. But then they said, well, we'll really. It was a purely pension position, and they needed the pension plan, which was terribly underfunded, kind of fixed. So they said, well, we'll take advantage of your other treasury skills, your broader treasury skills. And I believed my boss and I took the job. And after one week, I was in Brazil sorting out some loan agreements with the Brazilian entity. Showed up on their doorstep kind of unannounced. They didn't even know who I was. They didn't know I'd been hired. And showed up on their doorstep and got one of the nicest compliments I ever received. From someone. When I showed up on the doorstep, they were like, how did you get in? How did you get through security? How are you here? And I said, well, I showed them my ID and they're like, well, they don't let people come in, in taxis. And I go, well, I drove, and you're not supposed to drive. And they go, well, I have a driver's license. And they're like, how do you have a driver's license in Brazil? I said, told them I used to work down there. And I told them all this in Portuguese and they were like. The guy looked at me and said, I've been waiting 14 years from someone from corporate finance to visit us in Brazil, and God sent me an angel. And that was the nicest business compliment I've ever had. Fast forward a few years later. He was working for me and that's when I began to form the global treasury team at Cummins. And we didn't have one when I joined. And that was really the catalyst, kind of started at that meeting one week after I began working for the company. That gentleman's now retired, but is a very good friend and he was a mentor to me as well as a treasured staff member.

So we're moving later into the show, Gloria, and before we get to the end, what I wanted to do was. But if you just describe how the setup of treasury at Cummins and where you see treasury going forward, perhaps bring those together, because it's a great role you've got there and you do some really interesting work. But maybe just again, for the listeners, they might not know Cummins, but maybe describe that, your role and how you see treasury and has it been developing over the past, because you've been there, what, 14 years? So you've been through a lot of transitions.

When I started 14 years ago, we really had a very small treasury ops team in the us and we had two people we pulled out of shared services in the UK who moved money around within the UK and between the UK and the us, and that was basically it. And we relied on finance people in other jurisdictions to move money and deal with the banks. And it was about the time I joined that we were finally starting to look at getting a Treasury workstation and exert more influence on. On bank accounts and bank account ownership. The gentleman who was treasurer at the time, Richard Harris, had been with the company, only he was hired basically to do that, to make it a true kind of global treasury and bring it into the better standards than we had. And he began spending money on Technology and we got a Treasury workstation, which we still are working on implementing better. But we started to bring in technology, take control, take treasury kind of away from the business and make decisions in a centralized fashion. After meeting with the folks in Brazil, I really began a campaign at that time to create regional treasury groups that reported up into our headquarters in Columbus. And so we started by adding staff and formalizing the team in the uk, Then Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, all filtered up through Brazil. Then a team in China, Singapore and eventually South Africa. And I had the pleasure of being able to really form those teams and have those groups report to me. And then last but not least, U.S. treasury operations began and we did a lot of things to again get closer to the business, understand the business and get out of our ivory tower and get involved in things. Because Cummins was growing not just organically, but through acquisitions and expansions globally and get involved in properly capitalizing entities. And we created a capitalization process and a lot of other things, really joining again with tax and legal and using Six Sigma principles, or we use Six Sigma tools to help us do this better. And it really grew the organization. We more than doubled in size, were able to then really serve the business better and do things in a much more sophisticated and tax efficient way. Cominta also had a very simple tax structure when I started. We then hired a whole new tax team, basically come in with a lot more skill and a lot more complex structures. And that allowed us to have holding companies in Holland and other places. And that worked better when we began implementing netting and pooling, which we had not been doing when I started. So all of those things contributed to it and got me to this point where there was just so much going on and Cummins was growing so much that I then kind of really moved out of the Global treasury role into a merger and acquisition so support role, along with the pensions. And so I handed off the Global treasury piece, which was really tough for me because I really felt a very personal maternal instinct toward all the people that I managed to hire and cobble together into a fantastic Global treasury team over five or six year period.

And you talk about those people and people you brought together. What is it you look for when you're obviously with a Treasury recruitment company? That's our big focus on the people aspect. What does it you look for, you know, at any level, you know, from the junior guys, mid level guys, you know, and as they sort of nudge up the more senior end of the ladder, what is it you're looking for in Those treasury professionals, as it were.

Curiosity, you have to be curious. You have to go out and understand the business. You have to ask the follow on question. You have to want to know more about what you're doing, not just do the basic part of your job and say, okay, I'm done for the day. You have to be curious, you have to follow up, you have to go ask people, did this solve your problem or did you get the answer you need? And that's how you learn more. So if somebody's not curious and they don't have a desire to follow up and learn more from everything they do, they're not interesting to me as an employee. I think the other thing is clearly I like, I'm attracted to people on a personal level as well as professional level, people who are analytical. So we're going to take that information and think about it and analyze it. Whether they're doing this through mathematical analysis or just, you know, good logical thought and that that's a real value add. And then I think lastly, you know, somebody who cares, who has good ethics and cares, someone who's not going to say that's not my job, that's their job. I don't want to get involved. That's not the kind of person I want on my team. I want people on my team who care.

And looking back over, you know, that's something I think that will definitely come out in, in your profile and does come out and you know, I know from talking to you in the past, but again what we'll do in the show notes, we'll put your LinkedIn profile so people can connect to you if, if it's right to have them in your network and vice versa. But if you look back over, I mean you've got this incredible treasury career, you know, you've come all the way, you know, from the first days, sort of Ball Corporation, Whirlpool through to now, Cummins and everything else. And someone looks at that and says, do you know what? I want to be like that. I want to learn the languages, I want to travel the world and do all the things you've done. What are the few, two or three or maybe just one piece of advice you would give to the listeners today as we wrap up today's show sort of thing.

I think you have to learn how to do a couple of things really well so that people respect you and trust you. And then once you develop that trust, continue to deliver and learn and ask and it makes it so much easier to learn more because people will open up to you and teach you. And those are things that you can't learn in a classroom or learn in a book. Those other types of learning you have to earn, and that's by demonstrating that you're really good at something first and people are going to trust you. That can be really good at attention to detail or your analysis or foreign exchange or your investments or how you do your reports. And you have to set expectations and deliver on those expectations, and that requires good communication. So you can be the smartest person out of university, but if you can't set expectations that are realistic and you can't keep people informed and they think, well, I haven't heard from Gloria in a month. I wonder if she's even working on this. It's a whole package of things and so you need to, to work on those other soft skills too, and, and ask people for feedback. That's how you'll get better.

Yeah, feedback, communication, being open to that as well. So great advice from Gloria today, as always. Thank you very much for being on the show. You've been an absolute superstar. I know you are. We'll put Gloria's details in the show notes. Just want to say thank you very much for your time. Really enjoyed it from a top treasurer, top treasury lady, and look forward to seeing you soon. It'll be great to see you when I'm back across in the us.

Thank you.