Treasury Career Corner LIVE in New York with Dana Laidhold and Christian Kochan

Foreign.

To this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they build their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. And a special thanks to Flywire, our fantastic sponsors. If you've ever wondered whether there was a way to ease your international transaction hassles, they're the guys to talk to. If you follow the link in our show notes, you can see me talking to my mate Greg Leon, their senior VP of sales. I get to ask Greg about who are Flywire and how they can help you and your treasury team with your cross border payment headaches. Just follow the link to the interview in today's show notes. And now let's get on with the show. This is another one of our special edition episodes from Treasury Career Corner Live. This one in New York, we have the amazing Chris coaching from Endeavor Brands. He'll explain exactly who they are and what they do. And Dana Laidhold, treasurer at nasdaq. Amazing guests. We've got lots more coming up with lots more Treasury Career Corner lives. We're doing them in Vegas, we're doing them in Texas, we're doing them back in London, then we're doing across Europe and then we're back to the US So doing them right the way across Chicago. And we'll be doing my AFP later this year. We're everywhere. We're loving doing these and I love you guys listening. So enjoy the episode and let's get on with the show. For those of you that were here last night, we start with a bit of energy. We shall see. So we'll do a good evening, New York. There you go, crickets. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you. So we're all going to wake you up again. Good evening, New York. Thank you very much. You're all awake. I know a few of you might be falling asleep like Chris in the front row with his Stella. He's very happy. He's in a happy place. So a couple of ground rules. We've just put away our phones. Well, Chris is just keeping it a little bit tanned because we want to be engaged. You've made the effort to come out of your home offices, a lot of you to actually come here for this evening. Give us an hour of your attention with two amazing panelists and an English recruiter. But you can't have everything. But that aside, put your phone away, switch on the silent because I said this the other day. That afp. I was doing it all the time in a couple of sessions. I wasn't engaged. You have got this opportunity. When was the last time you sat in a room with two amazing treasurers? They've got to tell you some of their licenses. Yeah, I know. They're begging cheese. So congratulations on making the time for your treasury careers. Firstly, we're going to say a big thank you as well to our host, Chris Fulton from Prior Cashmere and Tabitha and Maggie at the front. Be nice to them later on your way out. No trouble. I'm Talking to you, Mr. Viney. There you go. Our sponsors, Kyriba at the back, but say hello to those ladies afterwards. They are paying for your drinks, as are the lovely guys at State Street. Be nice to them, they're the only bankers allowed in the room. I know you'll thank me for that later. And also we had some great speakers yesterday. We've got lovely Burak over there as well and we've got Brian coming as well. So thank you for last night. So who am I? I'm a Treasury recruiter. Been recruiting treasurers just like yourselves, treasury analyst, a group treasurer across the world, particular on the US for the past 25 years for little known companies like Blackstone, Chanel, Hartree, GXO, Porsche and everything else. That is not a sales pitch, that is more to explain why I'm here this evening. And I've managed to persuade these lovely two individuals to come and talk to you guys about their treasury careers. So I started to do treasury so they really enjoyed. There's the team, they have some other bigger heads, but they're okay. And I did a podcast. So I started the podcast Pre Pandemic. So maybe I'll talk to maybe 10, 15 of you guys and record it. We're now at 320 and it doesn't show any sign of stopping. 100. And I was crazy. 150,000 downloads, something crazy like that. But each and every week. So we have a lovely person like Dana who's been on the podcast twice, once when she's at Peloton, more recently when she was Nasdaq. And we talk through her career story and it gives you tips, if you like, to the secrets. What's the secret sauce of your treasury career? That's what it does. We've got Monique, she's a regular listener. I know that's what she listens on the subway all the time. But this then event came from. I was having a coffee with Chris. I've got to say he does make the worst coffee imaginable. That creamer was terrible. But that aside, I was sitting with him in his office and I said I should do my podcast live. He was like, oh yeah, you could do it in America, so why not do it here? So do be nice to Chris afterwards because he is giving us this. This evening with the podcast. I'm going to get each of we're going to go through the structure of the evening. Let's give you this. There you go. Structure is talk about this. Switching your phones off. I'm going to get each of my panelists to introduce themselves and give you a quick run through of their backgrounds. I'm going to start the beginning up to now, do take some time over at both of you and then we'll go from Dana to Chris. Then we'll come back and talk about some of the keys to their success. The secret sauce. If you like, we can talk about education, we can talk about working from home, and then we'll have Q and A at the end. Do be nice with the Q and A. There were a couple of tough ones yesterday. So firstly, past the wonderful Dana, Dana, over to you.

Hi, I'm Dana Leithold. I'm the treasurer at nasdaq. I can take a minute just to go through my career journey here. I started my career actually in public accounting and then very quickly realized I was much more interested in understanding why things were happening within a business instead of what I had companies go public, I had two through IPO, equity IPOs, one through a debt IPO. And I was very involved in the nuts and bolts and the ticking and tying of the audit world and was way more interested in understanding the strategy behind the business. And so as I went back to business school then and came out with my mba, I was at US Airways and did a rotational program there where I got to see a lot of different elements of finance. And as we kind of talk through things in our careers and where highlights are, that's always one that I like to emphasize and I always encourage when I talk to groups of people who are younger and just starting out their career. That that ability to really see a lot and do a lot early I think is a really great accelerator. US Airways, I then was at the Carla Group, and that's where I spent the bulk of my career was in asset management. I started just in the finance group, but then was asked to be the treasurer about a year and a half later. Carlo, at that time, which is such a massive organization, it's hard to think that you know, 20ish years ago, it was smaller. There were just a couple hundred employees. It had launched a fund in Asia, launched a fund in Europe, and had started to have really complicated treasury, lots of bank accounts, lots of currencies, and really needed to create a Treasury function. So the CFO had come and said, hey, you've been doing this and this. That's great. Can you be our treasurer? And I was like, awesome. What does a treasurer do? He was like, I really don't know, but I know we need someone to do these things, and I think you can handle that. And so I always like that. As a takeaway when I think of my career is I think instinctively what I said, like, well, I don't know what to do here, but dove right in and took that as an opportunity to come out of my comfort zone, completely, learn career in the profession inside out and through, and take time to build that organization and grow. Then, as Carlyle grew in complexity, and then I had the privilege of being asked to come to Peloton when it was at kind of the same stage as when I was at Carlisle. Peloton was brand new, had gotten very big very fast, was looking to go public and didn't have a Treasury function, and really needed to build everything out from the Bottoms up again. And so I was able to come and do everything I had done in 16 years at Carlisle, in about 18 months over at Peloton, which really highlights sort of the value of learning and experience and then being able to rinse and repeat that over and over and over again to be able to accelerate, move fast, take all the things I screwed up along the way, and do it right this time. And then sort of a third piece of my story is then sort of where the value of networking comes in. Adina Freeman, who is the CEO at Nasdaq, was the CFO at Carlyle for a period of time, and we had worked very, very closely. And then about two years ago, when Nasdaq was looking for a treasurer, through that connection, I was brought into the process, and now I'm the treasurer at Nasdaq. So I think it really highlights for me the value of how to think about your network as a community of relationships rather than just individuals, touch points. But, you know, having those deep, meaningful connections that can really lead to something over time.

Chris, over to you.

Definitely not as interesting as that. For sure he is.

And he's got an even bigger head on the side.

I do. That's not a good picture. So, Chris, coaching. Where do I start? Penn State University. I got two degrees out of Penn State. One was in accounting and one was in business logistics, which actually started my career in. So my very first job out of college was a freight broker. And I don't know if anybody knows what a freight broker is, but basically you call up a bunch of truckers and you try to sell a load for least amount of money that they'll do it for. And then you work for a company that doesn't pay their bills and the truckers yell at you. So that. And make death threats and stuff like that. So that wasn't going to work. To Dana's point, my network kicked in and I landed my first accounting job. And like most of us, like, you're not thinking treasury at the time, right? You don't know anything about treasury and. But you eventually landed up there. From that point on, I went, I did about every possible job in finance. I was a staff accountant, I went to public accounting. I was an auditor, I was a tax preparer. I did. I was a revenue analyst when I worked for two cellular companies. And I just kind of just. I was like a finance lost soul. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was looking into going back in the police academy. Like, I was all over the place. So the network kicked in again and the guy from my first accounting job at aaa, that's the auto club, called me up. Kind of similar story to you. And he's like, hey Chris, you know, I used to love working with you. It was a treasurer there and I need somebody to be my treasury manager and run all of treasury and all accounts payable. So do you want the job? And I'm like. And it was like at a Starbucks. And I'm like, oh, this is an interview. And I said, yeah. I was like, yeah, I don't know anything about Treasury. He's like, ah, you'll figure it out. So I absolutely fell in love with it. I loved working with the banks. I loved. And I was like, wow, I'm actually dealing with money. I'm not like fake debit and credits on balance sheets. Like, I'm like, really? I'm like, this is awes. So fell in love with it and the rest was history. I just kind of built a Treasury career from there. I hated the accounts payable parts. I got rid of that quick. But I kicked around. So I did AAA for a while. So I came back to AAA for the treasury job. I was in insurance for a while. AAA had moved down to Delaware, became awful. And then again, network kicked In I was asked to come interview at a company called Jones New York, which was female apparel. So they own Nine west and Anne Klein and some of those brands. And that was the beginning of the start for my 17 years in apparel. So I went there as the director of treasury, kind of built the team there. They went private and I had just got out just in time and I landed at PVH Corp. Which was Philip Van Heusen. They owned Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. And fell. Well, not at first, it wasn't great. But then I eventually fell in love with the company, stayed there for about 10 years and now I work for a company called Endeavor. It's a great move.

Fantastic. Now we had our pre call, if you like. We connected on Zoom and we talked about your early careers and you both touched on that, how you developed. Couple of MBAs thrown in there and everything else. What power would you say that? You know, we've got an audience here maybe tonight. Last night was a little bit more junior, some of the guys, more treasury analysts, managers, whereas this is a more experienced audience, more mature, should we say? I'm just not looking at anyone in particular, John, but joking aside with education, qualifications, what kind of did that play in your career success or as a foundation and with your teams and things like that? Because I know you were on the AFP board as well.

Yeah, I could say I do think one of the most important things I did to help accelerate my career was when I got my mba. And I think that was really important very early on in my career in terms of kind of legitimizing, institutionalizing my base of knowledge and in creating opportunities. But I also then think that as I've gone through my career and become more senior in my career, that's less and less important now, really. Experience in the strategy of things like working on M and A, taking companies through IPOs, implementing systems, building teams, all experience driven things I think are much more impactful on my career today and how, you know, where it might go going forward.

Chris, she read my notes. No, same thing. Like early in your career, you're looking to differentiate yourself from the next person, right? So, and you're trying to, like you said, legitimate show people this is, I'm committed, right? I'm going to go get my master's degree, I'm going to go get my ctp. And maybe that sets you apart from the next guy. In the interview when I interviewed for Endeavor, the CFO who I now report to flat, he's like, what's a ctp like, he. Like it didn't matter. So same deal. It's like, in the beginning, it's helping you move up the ranks, differentiate, creating opportunities for you. And then now it's all about your work experience and. And the things that you've been involved in, the projects that you've been on.

Chris, we'll stay with you for a moment. Mentors, coaches. I know that Dana makes use of a lot of coaches and things, and you've just talked about the power of networking. I scribbled some notes here about that because I want to come back to that as a topic. Topic. But you coaches, bosses, when you look at some of those, what impact have they made on you? What have you seen from them? Again, for this audience that they should be thinking about, would you say.

I've always had mentors throughout my career. Right. So I don't have all the answers. I want to hear from somebody that's been there. I also, I'm very much involved in Penn State's program for kids that are still in school. So I. They're the mentee. I'm the mentor in that relationship. And I always tell every one of them, I get just as much out of it as maybe you do. Right. As my career progressed, too, like some of the people that crossed my path, I had an absolutely phenomenal manager or boss at pvh. Loved her. She was amazing. She was hard on me when she had to be hard on me. But I learned a lot from her. She kept me straight. It was from a career standpoint, I'll never. I can't thank her enough. And I still stay in touch with her. I still stay in touch with a lot of people that I've come up with, too. So all those are a factor in my success.

And Dana, I know when we did both of our podcasts, we talked about, you've got a team of coaches.

Well, I've had a coach, but, yeah, I mean, I fully believe in. I've had many people who have been mentors. I've been a mentor to many people in my career. And I do think one of the more impactful things was I went through a formal coaching program, and I did it at a point in my career where I was. Had just been promoted into a VP position. And that is a turning point, at least in terms of the level of responsibility and the expectations. Really kind of differentiated from things I had been doing to what was going to come. And it was a great time to get very deep feedback from across. The coach starts by taking a very deep 360 and then using that to kind of work through development areas. And it's a little bit like going through therapy and there's a lot of self discovery and self realization. But I think it was a transformational point in my career and the lessons that I took from that experience, I still constantly reflect on and try to work on talking about mentors. You know, again though, as a mentor, as both a mentor and a mentee, I think mentors relationships are always the best when you can really go in with an agenda and think, I've had many mentors or mentees over time where it's like you really just kind of friends and you hang out and you chat, but like, you don't get a lot out of it. But when you kind of go in with like, look, these are things I want to work on, these are things I care about. This is where I am in my career. This is where I want to go. And you can really have those deep open conversations. I think so much more comes from the relationship.

And as you talk about your career there, you're both very successful treasurers. Even Chris depends on a day. He is very successful. He keeps telling me is. But joking aside, have there been. There's always pressures on both of you. What have perhaps been the non negotiables? What have been the. Or the. The challenges you face maybe from previous boss or, you know, don't have to name names. You can if you want and we'll just cut it out on the tape later. You know, any non negotiables that you said. Look, when you know this is my line of sand, I'd have to do this. I know you and I have talked about this again on the podcast. That's why I'm pre re. And then we'll go to you, Chris. So first to yourself, Dana.

Yeah, well, I think one, if you kind of just think of where places that I'd want to be working and affiliated with, you know, core values of ethics, integrity, honesty, inclusion, you know, fundamental non negotiables for me and you know, the people you surround yourself with are most important. I do have a lot of areas where I've had to create non negotiables. I think about work, life, balance and I kind of think of, I can't. I always describe it sort of like my life is a table and there's four legs and I have my career, I'm a spouse, I'm a mother, and I have myself and at any point in time the table is like always wiggling around. Like one leg is always getting ignored at the expense of the others. But it's like you kind of think of your career over a 10, 20, 30 year period, not in the moment. It kind of all evens out over time. So I have a lot of non negotiables. There have been times when my kids have been younger where I have a certain time I need to leave every day I need to pick them up and I have to focus on family and I sacrifice things within my career to be able to draw those bright lines and enforce them. And then there's other times. So for example, I live in Virginia, but I now for about the past seven years have had a job where a headquarters was in New York and that requires travel and going back and forth a lot. And so my family, it was a non negotiable to move and so I had to then sacrifice things within my personal life to be able to invest in my career with having to add in that extra travel. So I think there's always bright lines and they constantly shift around as to where I draw them.

Chris I have three, but two of them actually go together. So. I had an awful experience early in my career working for a micromanager. I swore I would never ever want to work for a person like that again. It was just an absolute awful experience. I also kind of tweaked that to the point where I mean I could land my dream job, make a killer salary and it would kill it for me if I was working for that type of person or if I was working for a person that was just completely obsessed with their career and at my expense. Right. I've had that situation happen to me too. And I swore, I said it's, it's not so much about the opportunity. Sometimes it's the people you have to work for and just I wouldn't ever want to go back to that type of situation again. And then like Dana too, I'm a family guy. So there's been some things over the years as I kind of moved up in my career where I missed certain key events with the kids, you know, some ice hockey games. I really, really wanted to be at that I couldn't be at and I'm not doing that anymore. So they're really the two for me or two and a half.

We'll stay with yourself. Have you ever felt as you've gone through some of those roles you gave pracy of your background and things like that we've outgrown the role, you know. How did you handle that again? We'll have. We're doing that. It's a question the audience might want to ask later, but that's why I'm doing it, first of all. Here.

Yeah, no, I absolutely. So, you know, looked at that question. I specifically can think of my time at Jones New York. I had worked for. They had a crazy structure there. They technically didn't have a treasurer. He was kind of the tax guy, but then he didn't know anything about Treasury. So I reported that a CAO and I'd go up to him and I'm like, Mr. Smith, I'm not going to give his real name. So if so, hey, I'm working on this big thing and we're going to do swift and we're going to connect the bank accounts. And I did everything to try to impress that guy. I was a director at the time. I was like, you know, I can, you know, you go have a conversation with him. Hey, you know, maybe I could be an assistant treasurer and I could do this. And this is how my role would change for that position. And you're trying to sell yourself. The guy never got it. And I stayed too long. Right. I just, I stayed too long and I regretted it. I mean, eventually I got back on course with pbh, but that's the one that stood out for me when you hit me with that question.

And Dana, again, we will edit it out. If you, if it's just Chris and you want to, you know, throw him under the bus, that's fine to say. That was good. No, but joke is I, you know, any ones again that you challenges you've got through in that sense as well.

I will say less on sort of outgrowing. I don't think we. I think we always have the ability to seek out new challenges. And there should be no excuse to outgrow something. There should always be something to be looking forward to and growing into. But I will say I had been a Carlo Group for 16 years, and that's just a really long time to be in a very similar role with the same type of organization, doing the same type of work. And I had reached a point in the last several years that I was there where, you know, I sort of couldn't remember the last time I was asked a question I didn't actually know the answer to. And so, and. But there was a complacency of that. There was like a super deep comfort. I. It was what I knew. And when the opportunity for peloton it came to me, I didn't seek it out, but when it came to me and I started having those conversations, it just lit me up inside. And then making that move and going into that new organization, I was doing the same job as treasurer. Treasurer. But it was a new industry, it was new people, it was a new type of business with new issues. And I did learn through that experience. I think 16 years is a long time to be doing something and I think it's really good to seek new challenges and try to freshen things up every so often and not find yourself where you get into a complacency and yet in a comfort of I kind of know everything I'm doing here, that that's the time I think for me as a signal of it's probably time to find something else.

And that needs very nicely into motivation. So how do you both keep yourselves motivated? Advice, particularly for some of the audience here, they might have had a tough day and like they grumps, how do I keep going? What do I do? How do you particularly do it? We'll go Dana and then Chris, you know, motivation for yourselves.

Yeah, I mean, I find for me most motivating and I think this is true generally of people. I feel like I read an article about this recently. I don't remember the stat though. But like people are generally most motivated in their jobs when they feel that they're contributing value. And that's very true for me. And so I'm happiest when I'm my busiest. I think most people, when you kind of think of like, you know, trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel or I'm getting unmotivated because I'm overworked, I'm sort of the opposite. And if things get too mundane and the day to day becomes all that I'm doing, I get very anxious. And so for me, staying motivated is about always trying to find something else to dip my, my hands into and to get involved in and to try to, whether it's through another project or partnering with someone or something or just kind of taking a refresh look. I try every couple months to take a refresh look at every area of treasury and think about like, what have we not uncovered yet? What's a hard question we haven't asked ourselves yet? And to resurface maybe an old analysis or a new analysis in a different way.

Kind of the same thing, right. So why did I not stay in accountants? Because I hated the month end close. Every month it was the same job over and over. That's why I left it. Right. So to me treasury was interesting. It was like, it was different. So for me, it's the projects. It's, you know, things are constantly changing and moving. You know, when I was in retail for all those years, I love the merchant service side of it, right? Because all the new payment types that were coming out, and I got involved with a project with Alipay, and somehow I became an expert on that and like, that stuff made things interesting for me and kept me motivated. And then the real answer, why am I doing all this? I'm doing this for my three kids, right? I do. I want to be on a nine o' clock call at night? No. But I look across the room and my kids are there and like, that's why I'm really doing all this. So.

And you both taught us very comprehensively through your earlier selves, if you like, and how you developed and you've grown your, your skills to this level. Many of the audience here would, and I love this question, would love to achieve the level of success you both have. Looking back, is there any advice. We'll start with Chris. This time you would give your younger self. And we're splitting around just so that I want to pick on Chris because I like Dana. But any advice for your younger self or for the audience?

Again, give me the hard one.

No, no, no. Now, I'll supply these questions to you.

Before we should cut you in the middle.

What would I tell my younger self? You come out of college, you think you have all the answers. You think you're gonna, you know, you get your first job, make it six figures and go out by. I think my dream back then was to buy. None of that happened. It's, you know, you just, you think you're gonna have it all figured out. You don't. Things just, you kind of roll with the punches a bit. Like, you figure out things as you. I mean, you're all seasoned professionals. You know this. You roll. Things come to you and change over time. I used to really stress out over my performance and, and because I was. I wanted to be an A player. I, I wanted to be like, you know, I have these conversations with some of my team members sometimes. Like, you have your A players and then B players, and then you got your worker B's and all those are great roles, right? To be a worker, be. It's not the end of the world. That's what that person wants and that's what that person's good at. I always wanted to achieve more, and I think I put a ton of pressure on myself. Earlier in my career for what? Right. It's like all those stressful nights of worrying about this or that and it all works out. So I guess the advice to myself would be it's all going to work out.

Love that, Dana.

Yeah, I'll spin the question a little bit. Instead of sort of advice to my younger self, I'll say what's sort of one of the biggest lessons learned I've had along the way is really leaning in on technology and automation. And if I think about kind of, you know, how our treasury organization at NASDAQ today is run, I think that's one of the quintessential things that's made it so successful, is leaning in very hard on driving automation and creating a team of strategic thinkers instead of just core processors. And I think that's helped us accelerate how deeply we understand the business, how the ideas that we can drive strategically within the business and the partner that we can be to, you know, across the leaders of the business because we've automated so much of the route every day. And so we don't deal with data, we deal with analysis. And that transition, I think has been really important. So I would look at that as like a key to success rather than sort of advice I give my younger self.

Yeah. And the new technology. Last night we had a really good discussion around the new world of work. You know, it's changed was 100% in office, then went through remote, then hybrid. And we're not, you know, wanting to sort of labor that point, but I think it is important that we were saying that remote is dying out in Treasury. We felt that hybrid is working in treasury and is here to stay more than anything else. What's the work balance with you guys? Looking more at your teams. Coming to Dana first, you know, how do you guys run Treasury? I know you were talking about it before, but maybe for the audience here.

Yeah. So we're in the office two days a week and I love talking about this topic because I think I live the life of it because I live in one state and my team is actually split between New York and Stockholm. So it's between us and international. And I'm in a place that's remote from everybody. And so I've really find that the hybrid solution is beautiful and actually works really well. I think it's critically important for people to be in person together. And I think full on remote has, and I think we've all talked about this ad nauseum, a whole host of issues that go with it on the flip Side, I don't think it's necessary to have to be in an office in person with someone five days a week in order to accomplish the things you need to. But I think it's really changed how we work because I have to now think about my schedule in terms of days that I'm going to be in one of the offices and with people have to be deeply focus on stuff that's best when it's done together. Lots of one on ones, lots of like whiteboarding meetings on really complicated topics, lots of big group discussions. And then when I'm home it can be a lot of review work and desk work and things that are much, you know, easier conversations on less complicated topics that can be done remotely. And as a leader of people, it's really changed how I have to think in terms of how do you bring together people who aren't in the same space? So we do a team weekly and sometimes it's not even agenda. A lot of times we do like a TED Talk and then we talk about it or we have people, you know, everyone on the team. We try to present the projects that are being worked on so that we can all knowledge share. That's something I didn't really do before, but now it's our way of understanding what's going on on the team. And you know, a lot of town halls and you know, it's just a different style of leading when you're not on the room, talking to each other all the time.

Massive evolution. Massive evolution. And Chris for you guys.

So you can boo if you want more four days a week. I was that guy during COVID that was like, I'm, I cannot do this. I need to go back. I can't be wearing my flip flops all day and this is just not working for me. And then when I get a job and I'm commuting two hours from Pennsylvania one way from to New York every day, I'm like, God, I wish I could go back to wearing my flip flops and shorts. So I mean, I'm jealous actually. Two days is nice but. And it's, but it is, it's going to be a struggle, especially if there's staffing requirements because that's the first thing everybody asks. But it is what it is. And frankly, the way our company is set up, I have people spread out all. I have people in. Monique is the only one in New York with me. I have people in Cleveland, I have people in Hollywood, I have people in Singapore and I have people in the U.K. oh, in Las Vegas. So even if I'm there four days a week, it's just me, you. So if we're all doing the zoom calls anyway, so it's a bit frustrating, but that's for a whole other reason.

I wrote this question actually, just as we were all talking. Staying the first. Don't worry, it's not a tough one. I don't think, given what you said, the power of network. You both great networkers and you could have had that as a slide title. Talk about the power of networking. But what I'm going to ask you a bit more is if perhaps in this room, I think a lot of treasurers are more natural networkers, the more outgoing, the future of the business, wanting to go and meet the business and everything else. But if you're maybe not a natural networker, if you've struggled with that side of things, what advice, how do you push through that? What advice would you give to those people? Again, we're recording this as a podcast. People get lapping this stuff up. What would you say with Dana? And then we'll go to Chris.

1. I think networking is best, and this has taken me a long time to figure out in my career that networking is best when it's genuine. And so I do think there's something really important about developing relationships and they don't have to be like deep, deep, deep connections. But focusing on the people you know versus the people you don't know, I think is a really important part of that. And cultivating those relationships and having really good conversations with people and then leveraging their, their network, their experience and their knowledge, I think gets further than sort of that sprinkle effect, I think, you know, sometimes I get a lot of LinkedIn reach out and they're strangers, I don't know. But if I come to an event like this and I sit, I talk to someone and I understand what they're doing and what their business issues are and maybe I can say, well, I've done that before, wait, I would love to learn more about that. Like now you have a connection that you can build on and that is much more genuine networking, in my opinion and I think will be much more effective rather to keep it a little smaller but more personal rather than like a big sprinkle.

I'm a big team guy, right? So when it comes to the people that I work with on a day to day basis, mic group work together, I look at my network as an extension of that team. I'm constantly going back to my group like hey, who's that person that just, you know, signed on with IDN for Merchant Services? Let's talk to them. Who's this one that did this over here? Let's talk to them. So it's not just like for career networking, it's just for just doing your day to day. I don't, I'm not the smartest guy in a room. I don't have all the answers. I need points of view from different people to come to make decisions. So networking for me is huge and it's something that's going to have to carry through, through my end of my career and frankly beyond that. And then like I started out earlier, I mean, God, I mean, three out of the last five jobs I got were all through networking. So for me it's critical.

So do the treasury podcast each week to make careers and everything else. We are going to come to Q and A shortly and then we'll have a wrap up with both of the, with us giving you some takeaways and then you can, if you've got specific questions, they're general ones for the panelists. Great. If you've got specific questions, ask them out there. But if I were to sort of say the future of treasury, if you like, we touched on AI a little bit there. You as treasurers are facing challenges every day and, you know, lots of challenges yourselves. What are you seeing as the next things that, you know, perhaps some of the people in here should be thinking about? Is it, you know, you've talked a lot about merchant services. What are the key things that you as treasurers thinking? Right. This is what we need to focus on next for the rest of you, you know, for 20, 24 and beyond.

Dana, first of all, automation. Automation, Automation. I mean I think it, and I think it can come in so many forms, but I think the acceleration of capabilities and what it can bring to an organization, like I said, NASDAQ, I think is saying they've really leaned in heavily on and I think it's been transformational and it one of the things that really attracted me to come and work there because it's not just, well, I'm going to install a workstation, I'm going to connect Swift. I mean those are like basic nuts and bolts, but we've been able to develop things. So for example, our FX function is actually powered by a series of robots and they scrape our balance sheet every single day for exposures, push those into our trading system where the trades get executed and pushes all the journal entries into our accounting system. That process can take days and we do it every single day in like 20 minutes. And so we don't spend our time on the balance sheet, we spend our time fully looking at effects and risk management. We look at the effectiveness of our hedges, we look at all the performance at the end of every month and see did everything happen the way we thought and how much residual risk we have. And then we can get data out of the system because it's all cataloged in there to understand why variances might have come up and how do we tweak the algorithms to get a better result the next month. And the level of tightness and control that's come out of that in minutes versus days is outstanding and incredibly value added. And I think it is so important to always be looking at those opportunities and leaning in really hard.

Cool, Chris.

I mean a lot of the same things, right? Data is the key for us. Tighter forecast, anything we could pull to give a better picture of how the business is performing and where things are going, that's always key. And then going back to the other one, like I was saying earlier with the payment types and how I thought that was just an interesting path forward, especially with the digital currencies and just things are evolving so, so quickly, right? Where we don't know where things are going with cash, we don't know where they're going with digital currencies, we don't know where they're going with wallets. That to me, that's an area where I think it's going to be really, really interesting for treasury in the next couple of years because you know which ones are going to fall away, which ones are going to move forward and then making sure if, especially if you're a retailer, that you have those payment types because otherwise you're losing business. So that's where I see the next couple of years evolving.

One of my previous podcast guests, Dan Ferguson, who's going to join me live on stage in London for our Treasure Career Corner, very reminiscent of what you said about AI he works now for Resolution Knife was RSA insurance. And some of the guys heard this last night and he they have their own internal AI bot in a very similar way. But they insurance is horrendously complex as he said. And he said he went to the bot and asked it and he keeps it all ring fenced and everything else because it's confidential information. But he just went, how do I do this? He knew more or less how to do it, but who do I talk to in the business? What Do I do? And it came out with these answers that literally in seconds, it would have taken him a couple of days to try and track down the right people. And that really makes a difference. And that's what I've got from talking to a lot of your treasurers and finding out. And again, some treasurers will talk about, oh, it's our staffing as this and, you know, internationalization and stuff. Now we're going to come to you guys for questions because I want to leave enough time for these guys. They've got some great takeaways for the evening. Questions from the audience, if anyone's awake.

How do you see your role as an advocate for all things treasury within the company? Because you talked about the technical side and automation and reporting, I tend to see my job more as an advocate for I'm the cash guy and the bank guy and the insurance guy. How do you see your role as an advocate within the company? So one of the first things I fell in love with with treasury when I first got involved treasury, to me was the one department that literally touched every other department. Right. Everybody apar, tax, legal were everywhere. So to me, treasury always had that seated at the table. Right. And I saw it more and more as I moved up and we're being pulled into conversations with the CFO and CEO and, you know, planning and talking through things like treasury to me touched everything.

Dana.

Yeah, I'll just add to that that I, when I sort of keep a document that I call like the Treasury Strategy, and I will kind of roadshow that around our organization. And I don't define treasury by cash management or FX and investments. I define it as treasury is the keeper of the balance sheet. And so as you think about anything having to do with capital markets and driving capital and driving security around capital, treasury sits at the center of that. And that's our job, to drive capital and protect it. And I think that for me, that helps get people to understand what we're doing beyond just we open up bank accounts and we move money and we issue debt. And it's so much broader than that.

And I want to take an evolution of that question because that's something that I've talked about with guests like yourself on the podcast as Treasurers. 25 years ago, when I started it, treasurers were great. Yeah, we're specialists. We get more money by being treasury and everything else. But actually the problem was that was treasury in the corner, in the corner office and oh yeah, go talk to the treasury guy. And then it's taken 25 years of you guys battling your way out that office to go back in the business. I've seen it getting more and more in the business. How do you. You know, we've got a lot of team members here going. It's all very well for these two treasurers to talk about it, but I'm a Treasury manager. How do they get out in the business? Chris, do you first, I mean, look.

At, look at Covid, right? I, I didn't talk to the CEO maybe like twice a year. I was on the phone with that guy every single day of COVID Why? Because treasury handled all the debt. We had the covenants to deal with, we had cash to deal with, we had payroll to deal with. Treasury was in every single conversation. So I don't know where I was going with that, but it all sounded good in my head.

Then. How do people continue that? Now you're back and meeting people and everything else. How do you encourage your team to meet the business?

Yeah, no, we're still. I mean, just with the forecast alone, we're tasked with the job of figuring out how the rest of the year is going to look. And as things change and evolve, literally every five seconds of the day. So it's going out and having those conversations with each of the departments to figure out what's what and get the information you need so that you could present that to the CFO for them to make decisions.

Dana?

Yeah. I think you were also asking, sort of how does that resonate to more junior members of the team, is that.

They'Re going, this is great. You're the treasurer. If they, if you call someone, they answer the phone.

Well, like I said, I do kind of have this treasury strategy outline which I spend time with my team walking through. I think it's critically important for every person to understand what their role is in the bigger picture and to be able to understand it, to be able to articulate it, and to be able to think deeply about their area and how they're adding value. I don't look at anything as a process. It is all part of driving value somewhere. And every person should know exactly the value that they're driving. And I think it's also really important for more junior people on the team to be able to have the ability to present across the organization. And so, you know, it is important to bring other people into the room when you can.

It's got some great takeaways. Any one more question?

I think this question is for Gina. You mentioned earlier about leaning into technology. I was Wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of those maybe horizon technological solutions your group is looking at or may have looked at recently. That just kind of speaks to some of the capabilities that are out there that like NASDAQ would be looking to introduce.

Well, one, I will say I've only been in NASDAQ for two years and the technology infrastructure was very well embedded before I got there. So I can't take credit for all the great tools that they have in place. But we do use our workstation as our core. We also then have a lot of different satellite systems that have very bespoke functionality. So we can get a best of breed approach for each different area. And you know, as I mentioned, one of the things that I'm most excited about is because we have a really good foundation in so much automation, we now can think about things like how do we add on robots? And then I talked about our effects robot. We're also. The tax department is also aligned with treasury and we're in the process of building machine learning algorithms to help automate our VAT process. And so we can start. It's like the basement's built and the first floor is built and we're going up and up and up. And so those are the areas where I'm trying to add more value and lean into more now.

Thank you. Good evening.

I've had situations in my career, not with my current employer, I should add, just to be clear where I think other functions.

You didn't say your name. See, it doesn't matter.

Exactly.

That's why I'm being very straight.

I think other departments and other leaders don't necessarily understand treasury or even respect Treasury. Have you encountered that in your careers?

And how have you overcome that?

So on a personal level, it's like, I don't know if you guys got this. Tell me if you did. When you would somebody, they asked you what you did for a living, you're like, oh, I'm in Treasury. And they're like, oh, you work for the government. Anybody get that?

Like every time you be the treasury recruiter, right?

Yeah.

Oh, you work for the US Government? No. So from a respect standpoint, I don't know. I mean, I sold it at certain companies versus other companies. So the one apparel company. I won't. I should stop naming names. The one apparel company again, working for somebody who was an excellent leader, very good at what he did, but he didn't see the value of treasury, in my opinion. I saw it there, but then when I worked for My PBH and I worked for a fabulous treasurer who was a former banker. She got it, and she was like, come on, give me more. So it really depends in my situation. It depended on who I was working for.

Yeah. I do think it's incumbent on us as treasurers to be able to articulate the value that we're bringing to the organization. And for me, that has been taking it up several levels to talk about risk value, talk about capital structure versus individual functions, because I think sometimes it can be underappreciated when an individual function is doing. But then when you can pull it together and understand the big picture better, it resonates really strongly. And I think when you have a really good financial leader who's trying to drive a business forward, they want to understand how they can manage risk. They want to understand how they can drive better capital management. They want to understand how they can maximize interest income and things like that. I think it's being able to speak in the language of the person you're with in a way that they can understand it and grab onto it now.

I'm really pleased we've actually got time. You had a rush a little bit yesterday. Great session. But we're going to do some takeaways and the questions. Dana goes first, then we'll go to Chris, and then. Then I'll do my takeaways. These are the takeaways for you guys. So, you know, you can note these down. We will be able to give you the slides at a later stage if you want them. So that's not a problem. Dana, you're. I love some of these, your takeaways.

I think we talked about a lot of different takeaways, but for me, some of the. The three most important things are around automation, seeking out challenges, and constantly finding opportunities to grow. And then I've talked a good bit about networking, and I think networking is really best when it's genuine and there's an actual relationship behind it and an ability to relate and help each other.

Chris, yours.

Yeah, for my takeaway, I focused specifically on career and examples of what I did or advice I got. So the first one, don't get comfortable. I learned that lesson. There was a gentleman that told me that a long, long time ago, and he was at the tail end of his career. And he's like, chris, don't ever get comfortable or you'll get lazy like me. So, like. And I got. I got it. And he was joking, but it was. It was at the same time he's trying to get that Point across, like, don't fall into the trap that I got. Honestly, I think it could kill your career. The second one is kind of like what I was saying earlier. Look, you're working together with people, you work with some real good people, you come up together, but at the end of the day, you're really on your own. Right? And I spent some time in some situations where I was just waiting for somebody, like, hey, I'm ready for a promotion and I'm really pushing for it. And at the end of the day, I mean, you're on your own. And if it's just not there, it's not there. Just don't wait for somebody else to do it for you. Right. That's all I'm saying there. And then the third one, I mean, look, it's all about family and your health at the end of the day, right? This is just a job. That's all it is. You get a paycheck, you pay your bills, and you're supposed to have fun with your family and spend time with them. To me, that's what it's all about.

So although it is where we spend the majority of our time, it is.

What do I always say? What do I always say? I said, I see you guys more than I see my kids, right? So I have my treasury family and then I have my real family. Thank God I don't have to pay for their bills.

Particularly in New York and my takeaways. So first of all, give yourselves a pack on the back. You have.

Yeah.

Because as we said yesterday, I mean, tonight was easier. Yesterday was brutal. Your weather. Wow. I thought it rained in England. Then I came to New York.

Yeah.

Biblical floods, lovely. Basically getting. You got out of the home office. You didn't. You know, I know it's for the free booze, but there's that aside. But aside from that, then you were making connections because working remotely, it does, you know, lend itself maybe to some specialist disciplines. Tax. But treasury is collaborative. That's what we talked about. That you guys have come here to get some amazing advice from these guys. But it's actually moments of interaction. That's where the networking comes. Taking notes now, this is little known guy called Chris Fulton. He's sitting here in the front row. And we have done this before at AFP in Philadelphia. Chris unfortunately took me a great networking tip. I'm meant to be the networker, right? It's my job, job, not yours. But he told me about that when he would go meet people at various networking events like this. You might hand over a business card and then he'd. Someone else would go sorry, can you just give me a second? And you would go away. And he would write some notes about that person. Someone saying oh. And it was about having a point of difference about actually properly networking. And Chris, you've told me this before. Jobs again like these two came looking for you, not you looking for them. Which is fantastic. So take notes on there again this evening. Make your. We will be circulating. Make sure you network. It's lovely just to talk to one or two people but talk to two or three. Build a network. There are a couple of other closing points here. That's it. Treasure Creek on live. So we. The next one is in Vegas. Hands up. Anyone going to Vegas. Oh goodness. That's. Yeah, yeah. Charlie in the back. I'm quite scared of that. Okay, doing that next. There you go. The lovely. So we've got to thank our Kyriba guys. Was thank State street being thank them at the bar. But I need to Prior cashmen. Gotta thank this man. But. And all the team here and particularly my amazing panelists. We're going to put the hands together. But the great thing is we're going to give them some lovely champagne as well and. Yeah. And just enjoy it. So hands together please. Hello, treasury professionals. Before you dive into the next episode, could you please help me continue to grow the world's only global treasury salary survey? That's right, our one. So you know your compensation is constantly benchmarked against the market. It's amazing, isn't it? Just go to treasurysalary.com takes less than two minutes to complete, start to finish. You then gain exclusive regular updated access to our salary survey. Keeping you ahead of the curve. The survey is an evolving breathing entity that constantly tracks the salaries of treasury professionals on a global basis. Currently, we have over 1100 participants taking part at treasury salary.