Successfully Transitioning Through Treasury Roles with Summa Simmons

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 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. In this week's show, delighted to be joined by Summer Simmons, Director of Treasury at Victoria's Secret now Victoria's Secret and Co. Through the Victoria's Secret and Victoria's Secret Pink, one of the world's most recognizable retailers with unparalleled brand awareness. 72 countries, 1400 store locations globally. Exactly as I just said to some of their 80 million followers on Instagram. Just a little bit ahead. Me, I don't really do Instagram. We know this, but we're going to come back to that. It's an amazing brand which we'll explore a little bit later on the show. As I say each and every week, I'm going to shut up. It's Summer's show. Summer, if you would perhaps take us back to the beginning of your career, how you first got into finance and then developed the wonderful world of Treasury. Over to you.

Absolutely. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. So my story of getting into finance, I think I've always known that I wanted to be in the finance space as young as elementary school, went through college, had a bit of a circumstance that required me to transfer back to a school in New York State, ultimately New York City. And so I worked full time overnight at an emergency room as an ER registrar while I finished up my last two years of my accounting degree. As luck would have it, I was wrapping up just in time to coincide with 9 11, which quite impacted my ability to step into a job in New York City as I intended given the current circumstances. So wound up taking a job at a regional accounting office for Enterprise rent a car. Just a lot of nuances came out of that that I didn't quite anticipate. So as I mentioned, expected to work in New York City, live in New York City, take public transportation here. I am now traveling out of state from a suburb of New York to a suburb of New Jersey and having to purchase my first car earlier than planned. The work experience was just fine. It was a great introduction to being a staff accountant. I think I started to learn the importance of evaluating commute as it pertains to job opportunity. If anyone is from the New York tri state area, they're very well aware of George Washington Bridge traffic. And so Friday nights took forever to get home So I eventually transitioned to a role in a suburb of New York where I was working for a company that owned and managed skilled nursing facilities and assisted living facilities. So all this time I'm in a month and closed traditional accounting role. Again, great experience at this company. But I felt like I wanted more. I really wanted to step into a bigger organization and see the broader picture of accounting. As again a Follow up from 911 Morgan Stanley was expanding their footprint into the suburbs and opened up a huge office. They actually took over Chevron Texaco's headquarters in Purchase, New York and they were expanding their footprint there. So they were looking for finance associates to join them. Great opportunity. This is circa 2004. I joined Morgan Stanley and I'm supporting products that you can walk in, retail products. So anything that you and I could walk into a Morgan Stanley branch and invest in and or buy into if you will.

So let me jump in there because I just wanted. We went through that which is fantastic. But you made that move from accounting within a corporate enterprise and Cypress and things like that to then the move into financial services. I know we discussed this the other day when we had our call, but what was that like for you? That sort of transition? And I will come on to Chuck and a couple of other people later on but the transition between corporate world if you like and versus financial services, how did that feel?

Sure. So I would say that the biggest impact of the transition was just the sheer size of the organization. It went from a very small family owned company to a publicly traded company, obviously Fortune 500 global footprint. And my immediate role was supporting a global role and just the infrastructure within the organization having defined HR and defined teams to improve or not necessarily improve but to support the employees experience. So that's the first difference from going from these smaller operations and shops to a very well established and highly regarded organization. And then there was the interaction appreciating that people are in different countries and we all have these roles that fit into the broader picture. And at the time I was supporting a product that was roughly $100 million per quarter in terms of just service fees as it pertained to asset management and just the sheer volume in dollars was light years from where I was coming. And so that took my breath away. And I started to really appreciate and understand this idea of ultra high net worth as a retail institute, a retail financial service versus an institutional which obviously bigger dollars, billions of dollars at that point. And my eyes opened up to this new dimension of wow, this is where it is. I definitely see that I have a budding career here.

And did you find. Again, I spoke to someone actually just this morning when they were talking about being actually they were in the oil and gas industry and they were a small exploration company and then they went to a shell like a mega major and things like that. And I said, oh, how did you find that transition? They made few that they were one stage team of five and they were quite. And then there was suddenly this tiny cog in this global machine. Now more sounding slightly different. But how was that for you? That sort of step up, if you like, in terms of scale?

That's a great question because it was two part. So I did feel like I certainly was in a smaller role, but I felt like I had access to so much more. Even though I was coming from a mom and pop shop, it felt like I had access to. To so much more by way of the Internet so I could navigate the company essentially virtually and understand the remit. I think when my eyes really opened, Mike, was when I moved from the retail side of Morgan Stanley to the institutional side. Retail is small in the grand scheme of things. At an investment bank, once you get on the institutional platform and you have access to this broader view and all of the different products and services and ways in which the company shows up, that's when I feel like the real transition happens. Like that first step felt like a. It was like a half step and something that I was anticipating. Switching over to the institutional side, where I stepped into more of the unique disciplines of finance and accounting is really when my eyes opened up and I thought, wow, from a professional experience, I had no idea that these were options for roles. And I'll talk a little bit about what those roles entailed. And then from a service provider, what Morgan Stanley offers the globe. I couldn't appreciate it being on the retail side, even navigating the organization through its intranet, there's a separate intranet for the institutional side of it.

Just as you grew your roles and people can see this on LinkedIn, they'll see you moving up to Morgan Stanley and then county controls and then transfer pricing before then you transition into treasury and started to get that. But I know that you and I had spoken about some of the internal challenges and things like that, but talk us through your progression there if you would.

Sure. So as I mentioned, supported retail products for maybe 18 months or so. Then I switched over to the institutional side of the house and I stepped into the more unique discipline. So I started working on things like parent company accounting, where you are responsible for managing investment in sub and equity at the subsidiary level. That then nicely dovetailed into a role in Treasury Controllers, which, admittedly, I didn't love that role. It was probably one of my least favorite from a work experience perspective. I didn't feel like I understood the why behind what I was doing and the timing behind that was really interesting as well. We were unbeknownst to the world, we were about to step into a financial crisis and I had what felt like an incredibly mechanical and mundane job that I just couldn't wait for my next rotation and I made the best of it. I didn't necessarily understand the why, as I mentioned, and so it was important for me to, while I spent time in that space, to go and engage with the folks that we were supporting in the role. So I reached out to our traders and got a better appreciation for why what we did mattered and how it impacted their day job. And that was incredibly helpful in shifting how I thought about the role. The other part of this role, before we get to the financial crisis, was the opportunity to watch deployment happen. So this role wound up being deployed to colleagues in Glasgow and I had the opportunity to take my first business trip and transition work and really meet my global colleagues in person and spend time with them and be in their space and hang out where they hang out after work. And I think all of that really made that experience, looking back on it, so precious and so different and gave me this really different perspective for a job that I loathed. Like my first three weeks in that role, I was like, when can I go do something else? Fast forward, financial crisis occurs and socks become this huge thing. It blows up and everything requires a litany of documentation. And it's interesting to watch this happen real time in a job. It was fascinating to see that and understand how that could happen. And again, really started to take a ton of inventory and appreciation of this opportunity to serve in this capacity. Fast forward and mentioned that the role was deployed to colleagues in Glasgow, Scotland went on to take a role in transfer pricing controllership. So I'm still in the related party space, but I'm now focused directly on ensuring that all of our cost and revenue sharing agreements are aligned with what our tax colleagues have implemented and documented, and that they're showing up in our books and records accordingly. That role was interesting. Again, very global reach. A lot of the stakeholders that I worked with were sitting in the business in different countries and engaging with them to understand whether or not the revenue sharing is happening. As we intended, but also understanding what their local holidays were and just what was going on in their lives. And as an accountant, that's important, right? Because we live and die by the close calendar. Had to schedule my whole wedding plans around the year and close calendar. And so I began to realize that I loved that vibe of being in a global space and enjoying the benefit of living in New York City and what happens locally in the Northeast, but being very much tied in to what my colleagues in Dublin and Asia and Budapest were celebrating and or what was important to them from a work perspective, a cultural perspective, and how we all work together to make sure that Morgan Stanley's work got done. So the transfer pricing gig was pretty cool. Life changed for me a little bit. I went ahead and got married. At the time I was back to a crazy commute. And I thought, all right, given the financial crisis and just the scrutiny that banks are under, it doesn't feel that fulfilling to work back office in a bank anymore. I want to try something new. I really want to take this experience and move it forward. And so I traded a 75 mile commute via public transportation to a 75 mile commute drive and took a role with GE Capital that was based in Stamford, Connecticut. And so I step into GE and I'm excited. I am just hitting the ground running. Most of us grew up using GE appliances and light bulbs and so this felt like the Mecca. I remember going into GE and thinking, I'm going to retire here. This is where I'm going to work for the rest of my career. And the first role that I had at GE quickly made me rethink that. So I'd stepped into a very neat treasury specific role. It was hedge accounting. And the work was fine, but my stakeholders were super limited. Mike. Like GE had over 100,000 employees at that time. And I literally worked with four people that sat within feet of me. And I was like, this is not going to be the way that I network and figure out what I want to do next. My goal was to ultimately, ultimately get to a business, one of GE's many businesses, learn that business from the ground up and really grow in said business. Back then I thought it would be like aviation, maybe healthcare. I was open. At the same time GE was deciding they wanted to become a bank. So here I am running from a bank and have jumped right into the fire of we are gung ho to become a bank. And so they were seeking a SIFI designation. Sifi, Significant Influence in Financial institution, which made sense because at the time they had over $70 billion in commercial paper portfolio. That put a little bit of a damper on things for me because I truly thought I was escaping a banking environment. But the banking environment that we were creating was not an investment bank environment. It was very different. It was quite nuanced. But more importantly, the work that came out of creating that is invaluable. Like there. There's no way that I would have known to ask for this experience. There's no way that I would have been able to ask for. How do you reorganize a company of GE Capital's status and structure and esteem and complexity? How do you unwind that? Essentially get rid of GE capital and go back to an industrial model? What does that look like? What does it entail?

Some of you, we've skipped a tiny bit there because some of the. You and I both know this. I and somewhere we'd had this chat before that with G. The old catchphrase used to be in two years you'll be in a different job, in four years you'll be in a different country. A lot of the time that was changing. But then we also talked about the fact that there was GE and GE Capital and you were in this. But as you put here on some of the notes, an unprecedented time because GE pivoted, GE Capital one stage was over more than half the business, way more. And then suddenly they went, actually we're an industrial business. Can you just talk to that in treasury terms as well? And then we'll talk about how you develop from there basically, if you would.

Absolutely. So in the midst of this revolution to become a bank from a Treasury perspective, the role that I then transitioned to after the hedge accounting role was a true treasury operations managing cash for North America role. And that was a brand new world for me. So here I am taking off my lens as an accountant and living in historical everything to very forward looking. Our team's responsibility was to manage short term cash, which was zero to 10 business days. That is incredibly short term. And it was a ton of fun supporting North America at the time, before the organization had shifted its model, it was still capital centric. And so you were supporting all these capital businesses, real estate, GCAs, energy, financial services, working capital solutions, heavy dollar businesses. And then you had your heavy cash outflows, but not necessarily as much in terms of inflow on the industrial side. So your health care, aviation, your appliances, your lighting, etc. And being responsible for aggregating all of those cash needs on a daily basis, being in the commercial Paper market. At this point, the portfolio is roughly $25 billion. Rolling 25 billion in CP daily, full transparency. I wasn't rolling it someone else on the table, but being in constant communication with your CP desk and your investment desk and ensuring that you had your cash for the rest of the week or at least tomorrow was a high visibility role, but also incredibly demanding. So I'm coming out of a role where everything has happened, everything's over by the time I'm ready to book a journal entry to real time in the moment, get a call from someone that says, I got a plane on the Runway and I need $500 million and the CP market is closed for the day it's having. It was just almost like being on a roller coaster. If you like the adrenaline that comes with it. If you don't love that feeling, this would have been an awful job. I don't love roller coasters, but the fact that I was managing all of this via Excel in a quasi dated treasury workstation really did feel fulfilling and empowering and gave me this big appreciation for how a company of GE circa mid 2000s, how they operated, how they functioned. So that was a very big deal. Fast forward to the business model changes. We unwind GE capital and we pivot to the industrial model. Mike, the job doesn't change. I still am responsible for managing cash for North America. For now, back to these industrial companies that don't necessarily have a ton of cash that they're just sitting on. So the job becomes more intricate because that 500 million conversation feels different when you don't have G capital interest in sitting on, you don't have their cash that you're sitting on to sort that out. And it really put me in a position as a new treasury professional to be thoughtful about how do I make this so that we don't have major errors and I'm not at risk of getting fired every day because we've overdrawn a bank account. And therein lies the importance of relationship. And the relationship was not about teeing up our thinking partners to make sure that they extended our daylight overdraft. It was about establishing a relationship to each of our treasurers at the business to help them understand what lack of forecasting looks like, what the implications are for the company, but more importantly helping them to understand what we do and that we're here to support them. So I want to be one of your first conversations when you're thinking about your next big cash transaction. I want to be so ingrained in your mind that I'm probably the second or third phone call after discussing a deal. And that really helped, Mike. Like, it absolutely transformed how chaotic this role could have otherwise been to how relational and interpersonal it became, and, quite frankly, educational. So instead of just picking up the phone and saying, I'm going to need $500 million tomorrow, it was, hey, so these 15 steps have occurred as it pertains to getting this engine ready. And these are the things that are variable in whether or not we'll be ready to release the engine. And this is what we need in the timing around it. And I won't know up until this very moment. So there was more context, and that certainly helped for me to be more thoughtful in my forecasting as well as for me to have more contingency planning around it.

Talk us through, if you like, for the listeners. So the business had pivoted, you pivoted with it and everything else, and you'd had a very successful time there. But what happened next? We moved. Moved to NiSource and everything else, because otherwise we're not going to cover that. And what was important about that?

Sure. So eventually, as you mentioned, if you work for GE long enough, you will move. GE wound up offering me the opportunity to relocate to Cincinnati, Ohio, rebuild a team and just reconstruct the treasury operations, or the cash desk, as we called it at the time. That team looked closer to local businesses. So aviation, healthcare, et cetera. That was a wonderful opportunity. And, Mike, I just have to add that General Electric being my first, treasury being the company that I experienced, treasury came with a ton of benefits. You're just not going to see treasury at that magnitude at most companies. So I'm super grateful for that. With that said, lived in Cincinnati. Work was going great. Didn't feel like a city I wanted to necessarily stay in forever. And two hours away, about 100 miles away is Columbus, Ohio, which is the headquarter to the majority of retail as we know it, as well as just tons of industries. Every industry you can think of exists in Columbus, Ohio. So wound up being recruited to join a utility company, which admittedly, I had not heard of at the time, but learned very quickly that they were highly regarded within the industry. One of the few fully regulated gas utilities, Pure Play gas utilities in the United States that served seven or so jurisdictions. So I traded in my GE badge, traveled another hundred miles north, and decided to take this role as an assistant treasurer at Nice Source. And it was a much broader remit, obviously a smaller table, but a bigger opportunity for me as Assistant treasurer. I was responsible for the corporate finance side of the House as well as the treasury operations side of the House. Quite a few differences between the organizations, as I imagine anyone would guess. At its height, GE had over 300,000 employees. And I was stepping into a company that had roughly 8,200 and was a domestic entity.

And somewhere on that as well, the sort of change of you'd gone, as we talked about earlier on in the show, corporate side to banking, but then cash and banking, the GE bomb, and then you'd gone to business again and not say GE wasn't quite the opposite. What was that like for you?

It was a little bit intimidating.

Right.

Because here was I mentioned that I went to GE because I wanted to learn a business from the ground up. But eventually treasury became shared service. And so that opportunity to move into a business and learn it from the ground up didn't quite exist in the way it did when I joined in 2012 or whenever that was staring me in the face is the opportunity to learn the utility business from the ground up and understand the nuances of Treasury. And I think that there were just so many things that I was nervous about that I underestimated the cultural shift. I underestimated what that would feel like to work for a significantly smaller organization. And to be frank, I went from small to big and that seemed to be fine. And I thought you could just make that step backwards and that would be just as easy. I underestimated as you change industries, not only does the company have its own culture, the industry has its own culture. And keep in mind, all of my roles up until this point were Northeast based. Even though I sat in Cincinnati, all of my constituents and stakeholders were still Northeast staff and associates. So I am now really experiencing the Midwest from the lens of a New Yorker. And that comes with its own stuff. But I'm also experiencing an industry that in essence runs like a monopoly. So the impact on the bottom line feels very different. The funding model is very different from what I'm accustomed to. And I think I may have shortly, I may have underestimated how I would process that and how I would jump in and show up as myself. And so you have very tenured staff that are brilliant and know the job in and out, but the sense of collaboration doesn't exist as much because there's so much specificity about the roles. So coming in and being bright eyed and bushy tailed and wanting to spend time with everybody and understand what they did and how they did it, that wasn't super. Receptive. Here's this city slicking New Yorker from General Electric wanting to poke around on all of our stuff. I would say that was not very much appreciated at the start. I will say I was relieved that I learned that treasury is Treasury. I was able to jump in day one from the operational side of the house and understand that process, improve it fairly quickly. And the corporate finance side was my learning curve. Like sitting at the deal table and experiencing the negotiation that happens when you issue debt or when you issue equity or even something as simple as a term loan. What those banking relationships look like, that was all really valuable and just not something that I'd experienced in the past. So I was grateful for all of the different that I was experiencing and just navigating. How do you process the pieces that you didn't anticipate being challenging? So fast forward six months into this role. The thing that no one that works for and or is a leader at a utility company wants to happen, happens. We have a catastrophic circumstance at one of our operating companies. And I share this with you, Mike, because as I talked about the culture and how maybe bureaucratic it was, it took this catastrophe to organically shift the culture, something that we've been working on as an organization from the perspective of continuous improvement. It happened overnight. We had a third of our workforce deployed to our smallest jurisdiction and operating company to rebuild the towns that were impacted. But then you had your home office or your corporate staff really running interference and making sure that the day job for the other six legal entities still occurred and that this operating company got the support that they needed. Why does that matter from a Treasury perspective? I quickly learned that treasury can be vocational in some ways in the sense that things that would not necessarily land in the accountant's lap from a how do we solve this in the moment they land in Treasury? When you have to figure out how to get cash to places that may not have a means to get it organically. You call treasury and treasury has to get on the phone with whomever they have to get on the phone with legal bankers, et cetera, to sort out how we solve for this. It gave me a firsthand view or first row view of how involved our rating agencies are in our day to day operations and ensuring that we're keeping them abreast while still managing public relations of a catastrophe. All of that treasury somehow gets roped into it as we support investor relations. And so I'm grateful for that opportunity because it was like nothing I would have experienced, but it wound up being one of the best things that could happen for our department as well as the organization from an organizational elevation, we came out of that more collaborative, less bureaucratic, more thoughtful about overlap and synergies. And it really resonated with everyone, including the leadership team.

And then talk us through. And again, sorry to interrupt because I don't want to run out of time with today's show, but talk us through. You got through that very challenging time and everything else, then maybe bring us up to date or the move from there because again, I want to dig into your current role and everything else, but maybe give us run through from there.

Sure. So admittedly, or not so admittedly, I got a little bored. I woke up one day and realized that I work for a single currency domestic company. My entire career has always been global and I missed it. And we were starting to transition into the pandemic. And so being remote and really just have very singular view of what was going on with just the United States. Like I didn't have global co workers anymore to tell you. How is this showing up for you? And I'm making light of it, I'm playing it down a little bit, but I miss the global side of things. And so I found an opportunity or an opportunity was presented to me that looked and felt a lot like my GE experience and I got super excited, decided to move forward and put the utility in the rear view and step back into this global space and good opportunity from a work perspective, but I just don't think it was the right fit for me. So decided to move on and join Victoria's Secret, which is where I work today. So as many might know and if you don't, happy to share. On August 3, Victoria's Secret spun off from L Brands and became its own publicly traded company with a board of six women, which is unprecedented for the company and has really shifted from a business perspective to a more women's empowerment perspective and amplifying, celebrating and empowering her. Our customer would be she or her. And with that it created the opportunity for me to join as a director of treasury operations, responsible for managing operational liquidity, implementing an investment strategy, really making sure that we have everything we need from a day to day perspective. Open, closing, modifying bank accounts, just all of the fun stuff that goes behind the scenes of any organization from a Treasury perspective. And so I joined the business a little bit under six months ago. So this is now my first foray into the retail space. Like I've not even worked retail as a young adult. Yeah, was hanging out in emergency room and furniture stores. So I guess that was retail.

And some of them. Let me just ask you, and again, this will be for some of the listeners that they might be in a similar situation. They might have joined a company that is a spin off, spin out or whatever it might be. Again, we spoke about this in our call the other day. What were your priorities? You've walked out. It's a well set up treasury, but previously it was run by the PE house or whatever. They had their own relationship, their own ways of doing things. How did you come in? Fresh set of eyes. What did you do?

Sure. So one of the great things I think for me was that when I joined treasury or the way that the transaction played out, it went from the previous parent company treasury team to the spun treasury team. And so the team brought with it the traditional, the historic way that L Brands ran Treasury. And of course if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But with this new opportunity, treasury is not one of those departments that you get to just start from scratch and rebuild if you want to. And so I was really excited to take the role and be invited to bring a fresh perspective. You've worked in different industries. What are we doing that looks consistent with what you've done, which would suggest it's hopefully a best practice versus where do we have some opportunities? And so stepping in, my priorities were all about are we optimizing our treasury workstation? When we think about managing our position, our daily cash position, how much of that is in the trenches? Pulling a bunch of things into Excel versus how much of that does the workstation or can the workstation do for us? And then we're spending more time on analytics. One of the things that I found was that this rolling view of our short term liquidity didn't necessarily exist. It wasn't as clean. It wasn't something that we could just pull up and look at any point in time. And so in a fairly short period of time, we had that view and we had that perspective. And why is that important public information not sharing anything behind the curtain here, but when VS&CO spun, they only had $250 million to start. And that is not a ton of cash for a retail operation. Not for any operation, frankly, especially one that has to for materials and merchandise. And really everybody's on this supply chain lag. So while you may be delayed in your payment, you're still paying more for freight and you're still paying more for air because things aren't necessarily coming as quickly by sea. So that's important to call out. Looking at this rolling 12 week view over our caches and working closely with FP&A to understand where we thought sales would be obviously impacts receipts and helps us to think about what will we look like as we head into holiday season. What does our cash trough look like? What do we expect from a peak perspective? And so that gave me a ton of energy because number one, I like to shop. And so thinking about the business model in the context of a consumer really helped me to step into the business model in this new industry and what that looks like from real time cash perspective. The other thing is because it is retail and there is an E commerce component compared to organizations and industries I've worked in, things are not as real time, right? Like you're not able to see the effect of let's say stimulus checks. What happens when US taxpayers get a stimulus check? Are they spending it with us or are they not spending it at all? You're able to see that real time. And so it just offered a lot of context from that perspective. Some of the other priorities, again in the name of cash, knowing that we're going into holiday season. One of my first projects was to help stand up our investment strategy. Like that was pretty cool. Never worked anywhere where I got to stand anything up. It always existed.

It was yours, it was yours, it.

Was mine or it is mine. So it's been very refreshing to think about the fundamentals of treasury and really go back to and how I approached it was I went back to the pandemic when we all stepped in as treasury professionals. I know my last day in the office was March 12, 2020 and I specifically remember that day us calling our admin agent for our revolving credit facility and saying in the two plus years that I've worked here, we've never tapped the revolver. How do we do it if we need to? How do we so stepping into this role it was understand what our credit facilities look like, but more importantly what was the team at the time panicked and trying to solve from a pandemic perspective. So it was almost like moving backwards. Let's make sure that we have our contingencies tied up and that we feel really buttoned up about them. And then let's move our way towards the nice to haves like automation and ended reporting. What did we have heartburn about and around the pandemic? How do we have that situated today? What are our triggers? How would we know that cash resolution falling lower than we anticipated and how do we plan for that? So when you ask about priorities, it was certainly pandemic proofing this new team, if there's such a thing and then really stepping into from an operational perspective where do we have some opportunities to again do more with our treasury workstation, spend some time with our support for the TMS to make sure that we're optimizing it and then go from there. Is establishing more of a forecast driven discipline across the organization. I think that was big which translates into relationship. Here I am, new kid on the block again know nothing about the industry. We have a company that's coming spun off from a parent that had a ton of cash. And so oftentimes folks in the business think of treasury as literally a bank or a vault where we just got loads and loads of cash and if they come up with something last minute we can accommodate it. So really making sure that we socialize the concept of we only came with 250 million so we've got to be really thoughtful about how we spend what we have. So it was a little mix of technical as well as I guess interpersonal but a lot of relationship and obviously engaging our banks and figuring out where their strengths were and how their strengths align with the priorities for our team.

Summer amazing conversation about Victoria's Secret and everything else. We spoke about this before the show as well and this is a key area for you and it's not an area we really delve into but as you said, this is, this is. We had recently had International Women's Day. We've got Women's Month and everything else. And not only added to that you're very active within. You're a woman of color. So it's a passion area for you and something you really support as do we. But. But the key thing is can you speak to that a little bit to some of the listeners today that they will either be in a similar situation that is thinking oh actually how should we do this? But I think you're a great proponent of this. So maybe just explain to the listeners today what they should may be thinking around.

Sure. So I would say that during the course of my career and I'm going to take this, I'll probably start it at Morgan Stanley because of the infrastructure at Morgan Stanley where they're were affinity group and there were opportunities for people from all over the organization to convene with people that they had things in common with. So normally there's like an African American resource group, et cetera. That is something that has been a huge part of my professional experience. Whether you're going through a tough time trying to navigate the culture of the organization or you're in a role that you're questioning, is it the right fit? I found that the ERG was where my safe space existed, to get perspectives from people that didn't necessarily work in finance or in my specific department, but to understand how they've navigated the organization. What did mentorship look like for them and really have again, that sense of community and camaraderie to help shepherd what otherwise is you managing your career. And that remained a very salient point in me taking on new roles, making sure that I engaged. So when I worked for NiSource and I left General Electricity, I co led our African American employee resource there. As I've come to Victoria's Secret, I was three months into role and I was tapped on the shoulder to lead the African American and black associates. We call ourselves Mosaic and we also call it an inclusion resource group. So here I am three months in and I'm leading this group. But it is as much a passion project for me as it is fulfilling because I think it's just important for people across the organization to know that roles like treasury exist and to have that safe space where someone might be curious or just embarrassed to ask a colleague or a leader, what do they do? Exactly. I don't get it. Where do they fit into the finance organization? And the feedback that I've gotten over the course of my career, especially being in treasury, is people catch me by myself and they ask me more about the role and how I got here. And I think that's how we recruit. Right. Of those things that you don't quite learn it in college, it is very vocational. It's on the job training. And most finance professionals feel like it's the rotation that maybe they can't take or they're afraid to step up and ask because they just don't necessarily have as much context about the job. And I think that is where focusing on your soft skills and your technical skills come into play. But it's also leveraging your network. And so for me, it really boils down to making sure that I'm constantly recruiting for treasury, but more importantly, that the various companies and communities that I engage in, I represent for others that look like me, the possibility that this exists. So I mentor younger people that are maybe early years in college. And I've worked for some pretty cool companies. I'll be honest, everybody knows ge, one of the other companies I've worked for was pretty popular. But the most Responsive and positive reaction I've gotten to. I've gotten. Is joining Victoria's Secret household brand. Everybody thinks that I hang out with models all day.

You don't. That's what you said to me. Someone, this is. Oh, that's fine. Okay, that's changed the conversation, but carry on.

But it has certainly piqued the younger generation's interest. How so? You're a director of treasury at Victoria's Secret. How does that happen? And it makes for a great conversation just around my comic journey and just the different roles that I've had. But Mike, it is more about the story, I think, and creating an avenue for people to see it's available for them as well than it is my specific role. You can be a treasurer of, I don't know, pick your favorite luxury car. Like you can be a treasurer or work in a Treasury Department as well.

Yeah, Porsche. I'm doing a load of recruiting for Porsche. You did that. That was you, not me. And they're an amazing company. So if you want to work for them in Stuttgart in Germany, call me, email me. That's it. No, but you're exactly right. It's that sort of brand name as well. And it's again, if you can help people with that journey that you've been on. Yeah, it's fantastic as well. So some amazing advice as always, as you've just given us there. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes as we do each and every week so people can connect to you and expand their network with a wonderful treasurer such as yourself. As we leave today's show, we do the wrap up, which is the top tips that you give for people. They might be earlier stages in their career. You refer to that a little bit or later on, or maybe their first leadership position or they've been leader for years. What are the tips that you would give to people listening today that you think they should take from you if that's right?

Thanks, Mike. I would say my top tips would be invest the time in exploratory conversations wherever you are in your career. I want to invite everyone to talk to their treasury team wherever they work. And if you're not ready to talk to treasury, just step outside of your immediate box and go find out what someone else does. If you can spend some time shadowing, I think that would be helpful. But in all seriousness, do spend that time across the finance organization to understand the various disciplines that exist. The second thing, which is actually a piggyback on that first one, is to go back and look at your own self appraisals and the work that you've done over the years. And if you're early in your career, it might be the work that you've done over the last year and focus in on your soft skills and then marry that up with your passions. What was the work or a project that you worked on that you were super excited about? What feedback did you get from it? Where did you crush it on the technical skills? Marry those two things up. Go back to your exploratory conversations and ask yourself if I had the opportunity to pick any of these roles, which ones would I be most interested in? If I was tapped for any of these roles, where do I think my skill set lends the best and how would I fill the gap if there was one? And last but not least, I would say we absolutely work your network. If your company offers employee resource groups, please join them. Participate in them. Really make sure that you're showing up from a culture and engagement perspective because that is just as important as your day job, especially if your company is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. Step into that space and lend where you can. Maybe it's serving as a treasurer or maybe it's dabbling in a creative space if you don't get to do that in your day job. But I do think take advantage of the avenues and channels that are offered by your employer to build your resume as well as your experience.

Amazing closing words. We'll have those like literally, they'll be all over the show notes that will accompany this week's show as we always have. I say it too many times. I can't wait to see you in real life. It'll be great to be in the US hopefully later this year and we hope to catch up. But thank you for some amazing advice on the show today. We'll put Summer's details in the show notes so if you want to connect and she wants you in her network, then she'll click accept. But thank you very much and can't wait to speak to you in future years. Good luck with the role as it continues to develop. So thanks very much.

Thank you Mike and likewise.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe depending on where you listen. Whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds, leave a quick review of my amazing guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.