Sandra Ramos-Alves talks about calculated risks in finance and treasury careers. She emphasizes being vocal about your goals, building relationships, and getting diverse experience early on to accelerate growth.
Foreign. Sometimes you have to take risks. And I feel like I've taken several risks throughout my career. And one of my calculated risks was whether I wanted to stay with Crystal Meyer Squibb. It was a different location. It did require a move for me and my family. But I really thought about the long game and whether there was an opportunity for me to grow. And I really felt there was a chance that I could grow to ultimately become treasurer, you know, and it certainly played out well for me as I was incredibly successful and was able to get it and a lot quicker than I ever anticipated. But sometimes if you're, if you don't take the risks and if you don't ask for things, they don't come to fruition. So what I have learned over the last few years is you have to be vocal about what you want and you have to tell people what you want, otherwise it just may not happen. Things don't get delivered to you on a platter. It's still something that I have to work very hard at. I'm an introvert, so it's actually very difficult for me. But there's lots of avenues that you can venture into, partner with your banking relationships. The banks all have opportunities for conferences for different things. For treasury professionals, it's actually quite easy to meet other treasury professionals through the banking network. You can join the NOI Group, you know, where I've been a member of the NOI group for, since 2008 and I've met so many FX professionals, assistant treasurers, and now treasurers throughout different industries. There are opportunities out there and we have to really seize them and try our best to network. And you don't always have to network with the highest level of the organization. You don't have to feel like you need to meet all the treasurers or all the CFOs. You can start with, you know, focusing on your peers and building relationships with your peers, and the relationships will evolve. I spend a lot of time actually encouraging my team to speak up. So there's, you know, the folks that are really in the weeds. They're the ones that can come up with the ideas to improve our ways of working and changing. They know where the pain points are. So, you know, it's encouraging people to speak up, to talk, you know, so that we can innovate and improve our ways of working. If people want to really expand their financial skill set, it is important. And Bristol Myers Squibb definitely encourages movement within the organization and we do have a lot of movement and people generally move around every two years. So to the extent you don't want to be strictly a Treasury professional, I certainly encourage team members to rotate throughout finance and learn the business and learn different skill sets. And at some point they want to return to Treasury. They will always have a home and Treasury. But it is important to do, especially when you're younger and you have the ability to move laterally. It's much harder when you're a seasoned professional. You know, for me, it's going to be a lot harder to move into a different function at my level. Level. But when you're younger in your career, that's the time to really take the risks and to move around. And if it doesn't work out, it's okay, you just move somewhere else.
