The Power of Personal Connections in Treasury with Ara Hamamjian

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 them about how they've built 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. This week's show I'm joined by Ara Hammam Jiang, the executive director and treasurer at Biomarin. Founded in 1997, BioMarin is a global biotech company dedicated transforming the lives everyone's lives through genetic discovery. They develop and commercialize targeted therapies that look at the root cause of genetic conditions to treat those with rare genetic diseases. But I'm going to get Ara to explain that a little bit later on the show as we do each and every week. And he's got this great history within Treasury, a lot of different industries and everything else. So that's something we're going to explore as we go through. But as we do always, we start off with Ara's origin story. If you like how you first discover finance and then treasury, you've got some great companies in your background. So we're going to walk through that. Take us back to the I know it's a dim, distant past hour, but take us back to the beginning if you would. Over to you, sir.

Certainly. And happy to be here and thanks for engaging. It depends on how far you want to go back. I suppose I'll do the best with the memory that I have.

Well, university and then because obviously you've got an economics background degree but of course did that then lead you into finance and treasury or how did, how did it all kick off?

Yeah, no, I stumbled into it but found a passion early on so was studying economics at university and actually took the role of treasurer from my college fraternity. That would be my first foray into the career. After I graduated I actually went to work at an asset management firm. So got quite familiar with primarily the equity markets but understood currency a little bit at that time, found that I liked it, found that I liked engaging with financial partners. The thing that was hard for me was the cold calling and building a business. So actually in around 2000 time dwell to the dot com bubble, I decided to leave and try to figure out what I wanted to do next. And took about a year and a half, two years of different consulting and contract work before I saw a role at Hewlett Packard come up as a Treasury analyst doing cash management. And I figured well, between my deep college experience as a fraternity treasurer, I'd Give it a go. And was lucky enough to start my career at hp.

So you were doing that just after the turn of the century. Was that post Agilent and the spinoff of that?

Yeah, it was post the spinoff. It was actually during the time of the HP and Compaq integration. It would have been 2002. Fall 2002 is when I started and.

Talk us through that people. I, I'm. Well, I'm on talking to you through an HP computer today, so there you go. But with hp, I know the firm rather well. But for those that don't, can you give us an idea of what HP was like back around then and then how it changed throughout your time and then we'll link that into your treasury career, if you like.

The HP way was a known cultural, corporate culture. And so I found it quite fulfilling both to have a large population of employees that were, call it legacy. So 15, 20, 25 year plus folks understanding the history of the company, but they were also in this period of merging with another large company, sort of redefining some of the organizations that included hiring into treasury to account for a new, much larger company. And over my sort of eight years there, the company was acquisitive as well, which, which led both to, you know, differences in experiences, M and A integration. They created quite a bit of development from a professional perspective just because of the growth of the company at that stage and integrating different cultures and different profiles of team members. So I, I found myself in three different roles during that time, which was a great way to sort of move across the treasury function, get different types.

Of exposures and how was it structured then again, I'm trying to put it to one side. I know how it was structured because I recruited for the group. So I, you know, in both the UK and across in the US with a lot of people were transferring as well. But you know, you went treasury analyst up to treasury manager. Was that a program that was there or what was the size of the team in Palo Alto?

So sure, yeah, I'd say the global treasury team was between 90 and 100 people at that time. I moved within what was at the time called the Treasury Service Center. So that was sort of your traditional daily treasury operations, fx, back office, sort of debt, interest rate settlement and back office as well. Moved into a project management group which was at that time primarily focused on either large global projects or M and A integration, which is what I tended to spend a lot of my time on. It acquired a company called Mercury for a vaguely remember somewhere in the four or four and a half billion dollar range. So that was a great way to see across the functions outside of sort of core treasury, you know, the typical legal, business development teams, accounting of course, and onward, and then actually moved into foreign exchange sort of strategy and front office team. So that would have set within debt, capital markets, FX group and then you would have had outside of that, another dedicated sort of IM systems project management team, plus of course the benefits plans and onward from there.

If you, you know, I know it's a while ago, but it's a great way to sort of a great foundation for your career. There someone listening today and they're looking at it, thinking, should I go to a big corporate, like an hp? You know, in the, you know, uk you've got people like Shell and big mega majors and things like that. Or, you know, for you, that was very positive, you know. But some of the people said, well, actually no, I'd like to be in a smaller Treasury. What do you feel that, say, working in a group where there was 100 other treasury professionals gave you that, you know, you've been in all sizes of companies since then. But if you reflect back, was, was that the ideal foundation for you or what do you think?

For me personally, it actually worked out beautifully. I needed to get grounded in the sort of core of treasury and build depth of expertise. And what I would say in a larger company like that, when you've got sort of loads of experts that can mentor and develop you and train, you're well set up for that sort of format of learning which might be focusing on a handful of core functions and becoming, look again, call it a deep expert and then looking for opportunity to rotate within that larger corporate. I still keep in touch with folks there and I still think that's part of their innate culture is this development and rotation opportunity. So it worked well for me at that time. For someone else, you know, a smaller group where you do a bit of everything and sometimes, you know, find one or two areas of passion that you want to get deeper into is a good model. That pace might be a different pace than HP would have been at that time. And that's sort of where I've found myself after HP is going into these sort of 8 to 12 person groups, maybe even 5 at one point, come to think of it, and sort of jumping throughout the functions. You know, frankly between, between calls, you're, you're moving across groups and so you've.

Been there eight, nine years. What, what was it was time to move on, grow, what how come the move?

A bit of everything, a bit of circumstance, of, you know, certainly where, where I was living, where I was at in my life and also wanting to go to something smaller and, and see different aspects of treasury maybe more, more quickly. At that time I'd been pretty focused on building my network, understanding what was out there and it was a bit eye opening again that was my first treasury role at HP and started understanding how the function existed at all different types of profiles of companies and at different levels where you, you might see a bit more of the treasury function. And that, that was ultimately what was appealing to me. What was, was having more of the treasury function either directly under my, you know, remit or having more exposure to it. And so at that time the Levi Strauss opportunity came up and it was effect, it was international cash management, liquidity, some investments and that, that was, that was appealing along with the brand itself, which I thought was very cool at the time. And still is.

Yeah, no, still it's cool but, and then, but you're also involved in a transition of international treasury ops as well, that I just talked about this last week in Chicago that one of my past candidates, clients, he, he'd sort of neglected to sort of mention that on his LinkedIn profile and everything else. And you were right at the heart of things. But you know, transitioning stuff, that's a great thing to do, it's challenging. And how come you were transitioning treasury operations, Brussels to San Fran, you know, what was that like for you as well? And any, any key learnings from that?

That was a unique experience for sure. Levi's at the time was again kind of going through a little bit of a refresh in terms of the brand that would also have some restructuring involved. And at the time they really wanted to focus on centralizing a global treasury team to San Francisco. So me and another colleague actually went out and spent a few weeks in Brussels understanding what they, what they did on a day to day basis. A lot of it was effects focused but obviously international liquidity and intercompany and bringing essentially bringing that expertise back sort of in house to San Francisco. I'd say that the learning there, I mean the first one is amazing. To have an international experience, even if it's for a few weeks. I'd encourage anybody who in particular is in a global treasury function to think about a way to get a, to get that exposure. The other one I'd say is when you're in particular transitioning, you know, someone's role, understand the dynamic of the people you're working with and kind of be respectful of that. A lot of times people just think, oh, train me, hand over the task and I'm done. They don't necessarily think what, what that impact is to the person that you're potentially quote, unquote, taking the work from. So be, I'd say be considerate of that side as well.

And can I just double check? Levi Strauss, I just see it as the clothing retail brand. Is that right? Is that the predominance of it and things?

Exactly. Jeans, clothing, accessories. But they have a number of brands within the company and so they've grown substantially since the time I was there. I want to say there were about three, three and a half billion of revenue at that time. And I haven't looked lately. I know they went public as well since I was there. So the company has changed quite a bit over the last 12, 12 years or so.

And so from there. And again, I'm doing these, you know, quizzing because the worst bit is I know Hewlett Packard very well, I know Levi Strauss very well. You. And I take it for granted. And then I sometimes find myself questioning in a way, if a company is less well known, it's easier for me to ask. And I'm saying, well, you know, explain a bit more. And you know, and in a way that's what we'll do with Biomarin a bit later. But you've got three amazing brand names because then you went to Electronic Arts. Can you again explain what the company does or did at the time and what the scope of it? I again, I. A brand I know well and I think a lot of people. But I think it also, it's interesting how maybe the treasury was different in all three, but just, just to, you know, I was about to say EA Games but not Electronic Arts. What was that like?

Yeah, so the, the transition to EA was a couple things and, and you hit on one of, one of the areas that I had considered over time, which is I, I tended to focus on brand names that people do. My, my joke is those sort of made for easy cocktail party conversations.

Yeah.

You know, at Levi's it was, oh, are you wearing 501s or 559s? At HP, it was about the laptop or the PC you had, and that often devolved into my computer has crashed and can you help me?

Oh, my God.

Now, EA would have been a global games video games company. And yeah, people say EA Games or EA Sports, but it would have spanned quite a bit larger than just a handful of games. You know, they're publishing I think 15 to 20 games at the time. FIFA being one of their largest, if not the largest game along with Madden Football and then a bunch of other games. So in my younger pre kid days used to actually play video games and again it was someone I knew at the company that was hiring and changing their treasury organization a little bit. And so again sort of networking and being connected paid off in terms of hearing about the opportunity. So I was at Levi's for a fairly short time but this role which was again a bit of an expanded role and the company profile were just so appealing. I took a bit of a risk to make a change at that time and that would have been overseeing global FX again sort of international treasury but at a frankly just at a different, a different scale, higher margin business which was unique and fun to see as well, that that profit profile, you know, of higher growth was also quite appealing.

What about size of team? Because when you were hp, as we alluded or talked about there, you're part of a group of 90 to 100 people. Levi, what sort of size were you there globally?

Yeah, Levi's was about 12. And I might touch on that point because it's an interesting one. It was a bit of a culture, not culture shock workshop going from a large, large multinational to that size of group, going from highly specialized in terms of functional ownership to having to do a bit of everything. And you know, having been in FX strategy in front office I thought well I'm just going to. Those are the things I'll do and I'll trade and call it good. But yeah, it was actually getting in to all the day to day operations as well and frankly taking a couple of zeros off the end of everything I did. So it took a little bit of time and then again having grown up in large, large corporate, found that I like that sort of small, medium sized group and Electronic Arts at the time was sort of call it eight to 10 people. And so that transition was easier. I understood that I needed to be a bit more hands on as a director but still balance that with you know, strategy execution and the, the typical sort of management presentations, reporting and analysis. And so I found that to be a pretty good sweet spot for me.

And as treasury director for coming Electronics Arts at the time, what were the key things for you to focusing on with a smaller team? Again I've sometimes talked to people that when you're in a massive team you're sort of part of that and you've got your roles very specialized and everything else where your treasury director of a, you know, with a smaller team you've got to focus on different areas or there's, there's only so much you can focus on. What was that like for you when you were setting direction and things like that?

Yeah, I mean there's another dynamic there, right, which is going from sort of leading people or you know, dotted line managing folks to directly managing 2, 3, 4, 5 people. So you do have to change your mentality from this individual contributor, subject matter expert to more of a coach and mentor. And you have to carve out the time for things like development and training and getting your team up to speed, you know, depending on the function. I was lucky to have a balance of, you know, folks with expertise and some new people moving in from other functions. So we could not only cross pollinate between the groups but create a real development path for folks as they moved again either within my group or across the treasury function. And then beyond that it'd be syncing up with the treasurer at the time to make sure directionally we're thinking about the right areas of priority. So at that time affects which frankly has consistently been a big theme in treasury over the last few years was a big priority, huge effects headwind. So we put a lot of work into deep analysis and back testing of options versus forwards currency mix, all the typical areas to understand how to bed that's mitigate the ASFX risk.

And from there you kept, you, you kept with this idea of had to have a brand name, you know, just so that when you were at that cocktail party, you know, you see being a, an owner of a, you know, in the past actually a Fitbit, I don't know whether it worked very well with me, I don't know. But anyway we'll, we'll keep going. Not the Fitbits. It was my fault, not the Fitbit itself. You made a move from there. What happened next?

Fitbit was I would say just about one of the hottest names that time. You know, you can think of the personal fitness tracker path from non existent to sort of all the headlines was, you know, getting your steps in. And again an ex colleague and someone I'd known was leading the treasury function at Fitbit about a 5 person team hyper growth company chance to go smaller and get broader which was incredibly appealing to me. The role was in San Francisco which was kind of a vibrant place to work and it just, it had a lot of appeal. The brand itself was again super strong and I think at the time I was probably on a personal fitness journey as well. So it really resonated with me and so I made, made the change.

And talk us through that role then and headcount because you had a broader role, you know, there as well, which was, you know, started off within treasury but then it was treasury plus plus talk us through that.

Yeah, I think, you know, part of, part of the appeal of the smaller group as, as I mentioned is this, this idea that you can get more involved with all aspects of Treasurying. So certainly as the assistant treasurer, getting more line of sight, in particular to the capital markets side of the shop was incredibly appealing. Fitbit was trying to balance that organic growth and sort of be the M and A profile. So you know that that would imply at any given time there might be a need to do some financing and raise funding. They also had a credit revolver. All the complexity of a much larger company with revenue growth in the one and a half to two and a half billion range over the sort of three years I was there, five person shop means everyone's doing everything. Much smaller company means you're connected to everyone on the floor, which might be the entire GNA subgroup of functions. And that was an amazing experience knowing sort of everyone in HR and legal and IT all being in IT together to push the company forward.

And with that looking back on it, everything's going at such hyperspeed and you're trying to hang on a little bit. Where do you add the value? What was your focus, if you like?

Yeah, I think that's a completely different profile for sure. Right. The larger company is really about you getting developed and fitting into what the treasury function at a large company needs you to do. As you go smaller, it's really about you giving value into the company. So that might mean building up the function, creating the externally managed asset portfolios, evolving the FX function. We were, we were lucky at Fitbit because there were some experts there that had started building a really good foundation. It just needed a bit of enhancement and maturity. And so again, a great way to leverage large corporate experience and ensure, you know, policies are in place and that guardrails to what we do. Risk management strategies in either FX or investments are meeting the management objectives. And you can imagine in a smaller hypergrowth company, like you said, everyone's sort of hanging on and doing everything as fast as you can. And it was a good opportunity to sort of pause and I would say bring in some experts and some, some other experiences to leverage to sort of evolve the function a bit.

And looking at those companies before we come on to your current one, and maybe that provide a springboard, but you've had sort of 19, 20 years of people coming, wanting to come to you, you know, wanting to work with you as a, as a Treasury Department, as a treasurer and things like that. What, what's happening? Is it always been like that, that people are, as you say, you know, a bit growing exponentially and everything else, or tougher times sometimes, or was it. Have you been in that lucky position where everyone wants to deal with you?

So I don't believe in luck. No, of course there's luck. But, yeah, yeah, I think, I think you have to put your, yourself in a position, in the best position possible. And then luck and timing happened to kick in. Look, I would say from a professional perspective, and the companies I've worked at, all of them have had different challenges or times when stress is at maximum capacity and you can always sort of work through that. I'd say in those situations, if you surround yourself with the type of people that can support each other and develop, a group like that is so resilient, they can rally through, you know, almost any kind of business adversity, let's call it. So for me, what that's meant is I've tried to build relationships everywhere I've been and maintain them throughout my career. That, that, that's fun from a personal perspective to get together and, and keep in touch, but it's also great from professional. Right. It's to, it's easy to pick up the phone and say, how are you guys handling your investment policy given the rates, environment and a handful of bank failures? And you can get to any number of companies fairly quickly and get perspective without struggling to find a way for that candid feedback to flow back to you. So it's been quite beneficial, I would say.

And I think anyone listening today, that's one of the things I said on stage the other day. We were just Talking about a LinkedIn profile for some of the more junior candidates. Obviously you're that much more experienced, so you've got that leverage anyway. But there was, you know, some mid managers and they were saying, well, how do I develop this? I said, well, develop your network. And the, the key part about it is network, you know, with. It's not easy. I know you've got your day jobs and everything else, but as you say, then as you've developed your career, you've collected all these great connections on the way that you've got an issue about, you know, your cash Flow or something with your credit facility, you're thinking, oh, I wonder if somebody else, oh, hang on, I'll pick up the phone to Bob or Mary or things like that. Do you find that very useful for yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I, I would, I would say one of the themes that I will probably push here is, is this idea of networking as a key part of your career development. And again, living in a corporate bubble rarely is the best thing, both for you professionally and for the company itself. Right. So I'm an active member of the Life Sciences Treasures group, which is part of the NOI Group. I've been within that networking group for going on over 10 years in some form or another. That's one way of building the relationships. Again, changing roles has its challenges, but also has its opportunity in terms of getting diverse perspective, not only across industry, but within different sizes of groups. And then whenever I can, whether it's, you know, the local treasury symposium or one of these international organizations that comes, trying to attend those and making a point of listening to what other companies do, and you can always choose not to do what they do. But hearing about how other companies and people tackle, frankly a lot of the same challenges is kind of critically important to your development journey.

Fantastic. Well, I mean, that could be an episode in itself, but we're going to keep going. Then you'd have enough of these household names. But you know, just before COVID and everything else, you joined Biomarrin. Can you explain who Biomarin are and then your role there and everything else?

Absolutely. So it's not the most well known name almost by definition. Right. It's a, it's a rare, a rare disease company. So it's in the biotech space. So we're talking about very small global populations of patients that are receiving in most cases, a unique therapy that only Biomarin provides. And I think that's one of the core sort of passions of the company is this genetic disease discovery and treatment to folks that would have never had a path to an improved quality of life. So the company is in Marin, which happens to be where I live as well. And so how the role came about was actually I had known my predecessor who was retiring, and I knew a couple of other folks in the company. And it was an incredible opportunity, not only because of the company's mission and what we do, but also the scope of the role was quite appealing. So a larger treasury function with existing sort of debt and capital markets, all the complexity of a much larger company, but still in that size where you Were going to get to know folks and be connected throughout the organizations. It was a bit of a change from my prior experiences, but it's, it's been, it's been fulfilling in a completely different way. Just simply because of what the company.

And you joined the group prior to lockdown and everything else. What, what was that like for yourself? You know, we, we sometimes touch on it, but you were making that move, you joined it and then everything happened and everything else. Talk us through that if you would.

Yeah, so that's, that's a good one, that one. I'll go with. My timing was lucky, right? I had a chance for about eight months to be in person and sort of build up not only my understanding of the business, but just the relationships across the functions. So eight months on site and then lockdown, March 13, 2020 and we made the transition pretty darn quickly to operating successfully on a, on a remote basis. Actually did a convertible debt deal in May 2020, right when the kind of markets opened back up. And again completely remote, multiple functions, coordinating over zooms, you know, throughout the day, engaging audit committee, board, etc. So that was within the first few months. And I think the company found that people could, could operate in that way successfully. And for me, again, I was fortunate enough to have had some on site time and really get into the culture of the company and get a better understanding over the last three years. Brought folks in either within my team or across other functions on a remote basis. And we're now in this and have been for a bit the hybrid model. And so it's been, it's been wonderful to reconnect in person and frankly just beat people that had been hired remotely that for the first time you're sort of seeing in a room.

What is that transition like now that, what are you focusing on in that hybrid return if you like. You know, I was talking to, you know when we're doing the AFP in San Diego later this year when I'll be with Leanne Perkins who works 100 remotely for specialized bikes, California based, she's in Texas. And then you got Joel Campbell, Trevi Pay. He's, you know, likes a lot some of the hybrid and likes being back in person and coaching the junior team. So you got a balance between the two with yourself. What are you seeing is, is nice about hybrid and you know what, what's working for you guys?

Yeah, I think, I think we've. Each function has a slightly different flavor of how we're handling it. But for the most part hybrid models what's working, what's working best? So that's the two or three days on site. The rest is remote. To be fair, I've got two folks in Dublin, Ireland, so effectively they are remote to me the entire time I've been here. So everyone already operated in one form or another on a remote basis. Before the pandemic, if you had any international presence whatsoever, and we all survived with phone calls and emails. So I would say most, most folks with international experience were already trained in how to sort of adapt to this environment. And then obviously the pandemic accelerated it. You had to do it locally. But for the, for the most part, Biomarina is a hybrid culture and I've, I found it to work quite well, making sure we sync up in person, you know, and you, you could expect that maybe there's going to be a complicated conversation or a, a hard conversation or something where you need to align with the other group. Always. I find it best served in person, if possible.

Well, it's an interesting point actually, because I was talking to a lady just last week in Chicago. She's had a team in Ireland, very similarly, but for them, and she's been based in Ireland at one stage, she said it was quite interesting because for her, you know, when they went hybrid or when they went remote, rather, she was used to it. That was her life. And so actually she, she was like, well, now, now we get more regular meetings. With me, it was just like, wow. She. Yeah, it sort of, sort of brought it more mainstream for her, which was a positive thing as well. So, yeah, I mean, the.

There, there is a. There is for sure that has increased connectivity, not just across oceans and continents, but even across buildings, frankly, where now it's like, oh, this is a lot easier to just jump on a zoom. I think for me, there's, there's a couple of other sides of that equation. One, the sort of meeting fatigue that can occur on occasion because you're missing the sort of walk around the building, that piece of it, that, that's probably something that's, I think, settling down. And then I think, you know, the form of communication. Right. If you go from email, which can be ineffective because, you know, nuances would be lost there to. In person, where you can sort of read body language, finding that right mix is always going to be important. And so sometimes video is more helpful, sometimes in person is more helpful. You know, I think that's up to people to sort of sort out how.

To best engage with people and post that. Now when you, I know You're a symposium recently, exactly as you say. What are you seeing that, that treasurers have to be focusing on now going forward? And what, what should be front of mind for those guys? You know, sometimes you want cyber, sometimes different things. What, what is your focus on, if you like?

Sure. I don't know what's not front of mind right now, I suppose, but certainly counterparty risk has been quite topical for folks and whether that's in the form of your investment exposure to financial institutions or whether it's your operating bank structure or the value of your derivatives outstanding, that's a pretty big topic. Something that our management and audit committee has been quite keen to stay close to for Biomarin. We're also thinking about FX strategy and have over the last couple plus years as the euro dynamic changed fairly dramatically. At one point below parity and now having rallied fairly substantially. Currency is always a key part of our business. It's a big piece of our growth story is our international composition and then our capital markets and sort of debt structure is something that we're, we're quite attuned to. The company has traditionally raised funding through both equity and convertible debt and we've got a note maturing August next year. So we want to be thoughtful about how our capital structure evolves to meet the needs, the needs of the business.

And with yourself, I know that, you know, networking and being at those conferences is important. It's one of the things that, that's how we, we've seen that you were, you were involved in some of these conferences. Why do you think that's so important? You touched on it earlier a little bit, but I sort of didn't want that to run away with us. But you know, where do you see it go next? What are the key things?

Yeah, I think, you know, it's just, it's just the diverse perspective is, is one, is one thing and you know, what other forum can you find where you can hear from a two person treasury team or a $1 billion company to a $50 billion company with 100 or 200 people or more? It's almost like this hyper exposure to the full scope of what a Treasury function can do. If you go to these forums, right, you're getting incredible speakers. Certainly there are bank sponsors who have a completely different level of expertise. So the exposure across industry and complexity is hard to find in any other format.

And do you feel, again, one thing I noticed, you know, did the Windy City Summit last week and we were meant to be fuller than it was, but I Think there was a heck of a lot of pressure on a lot of treasurers at the moment. And you know, there are a number of people that are going to say, oh, we're going to meet up Mike. And then they, then suddenly they were pulled left and right. Do you find that self that, you know, you maybe been a lot busier than perhaps you have been a little bit more selective with your time or what are you finding yourself at the pressures, if you like?

Yeah, for, for sure. I think that's been, that's just been a theme for the last few years. And again, part of it is the dynamics we're dealing with in the markets. Of course now the latest one, right. Is the US debt ceiling. So the, you know, how do we juggle that? I think part of it as well is the connectivity model for folks can kind of define their, I guess their bandwidth. Right. So I'm quite keen on the in person conference experience. I think you tend to, once you get there, be able to to some extent gut things out outside of that and focus. But you can imagine these, you know, let's say it's a webinar, right. It's so easy for you to get pinged on your online messaging tool and drop off to take another urgent call. So I would say I've experienced that a bit as well. Right. It's just, it's just hard to balance it and you need to be available to your team, to your cross functional leadership. And so I think we're all kind of trying to do everything as best we can, stay as sort of available as possible. So it creates a bit of a dynamic in terms of the in person experience.

And also, and I love the fact we had Joseph Noy way back and I've known Joseph for many years and the NOI peer, you know, you've got peer groups, other peer groups out there, there are other ones. But the NOI group is obviously leading one of their. That, that in person experience, it was just so great. And one of my clients I met for a coffee, we were talking about a couple of roles we're recruiting for them. So if anyone's listening yet, we're recruiting Philadelphia in Colorado. So do reach out. But the key thing was he said, oh well, we could have done this virtually. I said, well we could. But I certainly got so much more from meeting him face to face because it was just, you know, knowing what he was like a little bit just the nuances of meeting him and what kind of a person he wants. Oh, we could have got this Over Zoom. I don't know if we could. Yeah, you know, I literally just thought to myself, do you know what? I'm getting so much more from meeting you and understanding you as a person that it helps me actually with the matching process. Makes my life a lot, you know, they said, well, have you met him? Oh, no, I've just seen him over, you know, a flat screen. But actually there's nothing like it. That's why, you know, we're doing so many of these conferences. We, you know, we did a number of conferences beginning of the year. We've, we've got, you know, we've got New York Cash Exchange, Euro Finance and afp. And I'm not wanting to take over the show because I was doing well. But what I'm saying exactly as you said that actually there's nothing better than meeting people. That's what we've missed. That's why Hybrid works. You know, people, you know, otherwise we could all just work from our houses. You know, there's no coming together. But Treasury I find very collaborative. And you've really sort of nailed that a little bit with a lot of this, you know, a lot of the things you said that Arab. But, you know, as takeaways today, you know, I know I don't want to take too much of your time. You're very, very kind already. What are the takeaways that you would give? We, as you may have heard, we will put your LinkedIn details in the show notes, but what are the essential takeaways? Advice. If you're a junior in your career, mid stage or later stages of career, what would you wrap up with today?

You don't have to set your career path in stone. You can, you can explore and you can create development in any number of ways. I've done a bit of everything. Whether that's growing and rotating within a single company organization or moving across companies to find different sizes of groups to operate in different industries, I would say there's a ton of value to that adaptability skill set that you build when you move and you onboard and you evolve a function. Say that's a big one. And then I'd come back to the last topic, right, which is I think you're on point in terms of in person interaction and the fact that you're actually traveling and focusing on that is something that folks should not lose sight of the value there. It's been such a critical part of my career development to create relationships through in person interaction and I'm so keen on continuing that both in the large format, you know, conference settings and in the smaller NOI Group professional networks. The way we've sort of talked about it at our company is that you can have the conference call and I apologize for digressing, but I think it's an important point. You can have the conference call and then the meeting almost happens when you hit end on the call and you have that one on one conversation as you walk out of the room, you can't recreate, you can't recreate that experience, right? So people should not lose track of, of, of that. So for me, it's, it's networking, it's in person and it's, it's development. Whether it's industry or group size or function itself, those would be what I would really advocate for.

I'm gonna leave it there. I could, I could. You and I could talk about this for another hour, but they complain that you say, why are you on this podcast for two hours? Amazing. Ara, thank you for your time again, as you say, look forward to seeing you in real life soon. And just, yeah, can't wait for that. And great takeaways, great story. Thank you very much. You've been very kind today, sir.

Mike, thanks for stimulating my brain to talk about it. It's a lot of fun and I do look forward to meeting you in person one day.

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