Unleashing the Power of Data and Thought Leadership in Treasury with Christina Easton

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 Levin, 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.

In this week's show, delighted to be joined by Christina Easton, amazing experienced treasury professional. She's going to talk us through her career, how she first got started, some amazing career steps through their different companies. We'll go. I tell you what I mean, I'm.

Going to shut up.

I'm going to let Christina go on with the show. Christina, if you would talk us through how you first got started in finance and then the world of treasury. Over to you.

Sure. Thanks Mike. Pleasure being here today. A little bit about my background. I majored in marketing and I started my professional journey in sales at a local bank in Seattle focusing on Fintech. I swiftly progressed through various roles including being a youngest branch manager at the bank and later transitioning to financial technology sales which was selling treasury related solutions to small businesses and medium businesses. Having grown up in Bonn, Germany, I always knew I wanted to go back and work in Europe. That was a given. The question was timing. So I decided to take up a job in the UK with Bank of America and there I advise treasurers of large multinational clients on treasury matters across Europe. And after about a decade in banking I thought, you know what, I need to really test out what we've been selling companies to see if this stuff really works and how it works. So there I joined Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. They were a client of mine as well, but I joined them as a program manager in their treasury department and swiftly moved into senior leadership positions, managing cash management. And that pretty much started my treasury.

Profession so to speak and just location wise. So you said you were based in the UK at that period of time and then. So you were UK and then what, straight away across to California? Is that all the way?

Yes, that's exactly it. So I was working in, in Bromley, UK for several years and from there I got the job offer to work in San Jose, California. Francisco.

What persuaded you to go? Hang on, I could be in, as you say, a bit of sunny southeast London to.

All the way to the west coast.

Of America, surely not the sun and surf and everything else.

How come I was open to moving? You know, at the time I was like, hey, I've been in the uk, I've traveled a lot in my sales job. I was single, so why not? Let's move now.

You and I both know Cisco and a big brand name and everything else, but you made this move from banking in, in London, made the move right the way across, as we say, to the West Coast. Joining Cisco in the role. Cash management at Cisco, was it? Or you know, who were they? What were they? Explain that for the audience.

Sure, absolutely. So Cisco was an IT tech up and coming company. It was a very large company, in fact, global presence. And my role coming in was to be a program manager to help them get some of their projects done within the Treasury Department. And one of my focus areas was actually being innovative and thinking through what could we do differently. And we actually were able to sell a solution to various banks to say, this is what we want as a company versus the bank saying, hey, this is what we can sell to you. So that was my first role and it was really very exciting because I could play two hats. One was from a banker's perspective, this is what we sell. And from the other, this is what companies really need.

And when you got there, I know that treasury was still in its earlier days, if you like. It wasn't all lovely AI and everything else on PC. I know you were in high tech, but it was quite different, wasn't it as well?

It was very different. In fact, I remember going to the printer, or it may have been a fax machine, I think it was the printer because we had print jobs and the first thing you do in the morning when you come in to cash position is you'd open up your Excel and you would go to the printer and you'd take that print job off the printer and you'd type in into the cells your cash position for the day. That is one thing I do remember. And fortunately things have changed for many companies in that regard. But for others, Excel is still working very, very well for cash positioning. So in that way things haven't really changed. But the efficiencies of cash management and cash positioning certainly can change through automation and leveraging. The various tools and systems we have today.

And I know that's one of your passions about, you know, evolving from traditional cash management to hang on, how can we, why are we doing it like that? You've got a big why question mindset and things like that. Can you then talk how that came to bear, you know that group?

Absolutely. Well, back at Cisco the question was well, why are we doing all this? Why can't we outsource the foreign exchange? You know, let's just provide benchmark rates to the bank and they provide, you know, they do the foreign exchange for us. So going to the solution at the time was the just in time funding solution and we basically outsourced, so to speak, the corporate FX function to the banks at agreed rates and spreads. And it wasn't very popular at the time as you can imagine because people were like, wait a minute, we do this all the time. How are we going to adjust our hedges and all that? There's a way to, to find a solution if you want to find a solution, right? And just because you've done it certain ways in the past does not mean it's the right way for today. So we, we ended up doing the just in time funding, outsourcing the foreign exchange spot trades to the bank and continued adjusting hedges on the corporate side. And that's just one example of thinking differently and maybe being bold enough to say look, there's nothing personal here, it's just business. How do we do this more efficiently?

And then you moved on and joined a very little known company called Microsoft. What was that like? And talk us through that transition and what was Microsoft like in those days? You don't need to explain who Microsoft probably people are listening to it now. What was it like then when you joined back in 05?

Microsoft was very, was very different back then. I mean I had gone from a traditional treasury role at Cisco to a was called a senior Global Payments manager role at Microsoft and it happened to sit in treasury. But it was really a different role altogether. And what I focused on, it had an e commerce slant. So my job was really to work with the different lines of businesses and product teams within Microsoft to help monetize their sales online. And that allowed me to get deeper with the product teams. It allowed me to influence without authority across 20 plus different product teams to say look, this is what we're doing today. We need economies of scale. I have no bias either way. From a corporate perspective we're looking at the best business case and how to be efficient and optimize and so I was very successful in that role. It was a lot of fun. And we also finally were able to create the PCI DSS program, which was new back then, as well as work on a payment strategy for the company.

What does that mean? The p. You know, I know that you and I have talked about this before, but, you know, again, for listeners now, they're a Treasury analyst manager. They're like, you know, what, what does that mean? You know, what, you know, what's that strategy and things?

Yeah, well, the, the PCI DSS was required from a regulatory perspective, but the payment strategy was. How should Microsoft be playing in the world of payments?

Right.

You know, what is our role in the world of payments? And. But we certainly worked on a payment strategy together with a large consulting firm and we're able to identify how we could play in the market.

And I know that consulting and, you know, change and everything else, that's something that's a theme throughout your background and everything else. What happened next?

After a couple years at Microsoft, I decided I love this variety, I love consulting. And I decided to set up my own practice. I started Treasury Dynamics llc and the idea behind it was really helping companies transform in the space of finance and working with VP and C suite executives to give them that vision and to also be there to execute and make sure things get, you know, are completed. It's not just the consulting, but it's also executing and getting it done. And I had some really great experiences. I grew my business holistically through getting additional work within companies. So starting out in Treasury, ERP upgrades, Oracle, SAP upgrades, APAR integration with banks, and then it morphed to procurement and P Card implementations and OneCard, as in travel and procurement across many different markets. And then we worked on working capital management for Fitbit and at smartsheet, I was also an interim product manager, helping them integrate Stripe into their E commerce platform.

And with that experiences, I know that that then gave you the sort of the introduction to your next role and payments and things. Why is that so interesting to you? What, you know, if someone's listening today, they're like, well, you know, payments, you know, surely we just, you know, we give that to a company or why have you got such a passion for that? Why is that so interesting to you?

That's a very good question. I think because I've seen payments from so many different angles. Once, you know, when I first started my career, payments was all around people walking to a teller and a branch, right. And then it morphed into more use of credit cards. Right. And getting, you know, eliminating the checks and all that. And then it morphed to what? How are companies paying each other? Right. How do they trust the person that they're paying? There's just so many angles to payments and more and more pressure to optimize payments from a corporate perspective, but also to eliminate fraud in payments. So I think payments has become, it may have started as a small concept, but there's so many ancillary pieces around payments that it's, it's constantly evolving and it never really gets boring for me.

Yeah.

For payments.

And it started as a bit of a hub. A small hub.

Yes.

And as you say, and then it was like, well hang on, we do this, we do this. Which then meaning it's like, it's like we've rehearsed this and spoke about this. It's then led you become, you took on a role as director of global payments. What happened next?

I did. So I joined a company called Avalara, which was a company that provided tax services to medium businesses, large businesses, and they were software as a service. And my role there was to ensure that the payments from our clients went to the appropriate jurisdictions. So we provided the third party payment platform that allowed the right amount to go to the jurisdictions along with the data. And the key here is how critical the addendum is so that the jurisdiction of various sizes, so these are cities, these are counties, these are states. How can they consume these payments? And the data in order to reconcile that the tax payment was made on time. So that was a very interesting role because at Avalara we were part of the product offering as opposed to just a back office payments function. So that opened up my eyes to being part of a product go to market, also understanding the okrs that are required and how we can achieve optimization not just for ourselves operationally, but for the client.

Yeah. And then what happened next? Because I know that you bounced. Well, you went back somewhere.

It was a boomerang effect. A previous manager of mine at Microsoft sent me a LinkedIn message to say, hey, what would it take for you to consider another opportunity back at Microsoft? And I said, huh, well I'm open, I'm all ears. I met individual and we moved forward from there and I decided to take on a role as director of Global Treasury Financial Services back at Microsoft.

And what's that been like? You know, know that we'll bring the story up to date now, but what was that like? You know, scale wise complexity, obviously you know, that's those big numbers talk us.

Through very big numbers. In fact, you know, I came in and the team was very small that I managed initially, but my scope increased a few months and I was ending up managing a team of 21 individuals and a business process organization. And the team was responsible for not just in house bank, but also integrating with our major banks and managing foreign exchange and investment settlements of large scale. And this was quite interesting because I had the opportunity to look across various functions. So it was banking infrastructure, it was foreign exchange investment back office, it was cash positioning. The cash operations team and the global cash management team. And all those functions had been traditionally working separately in silos. So the opportunity there was what are the common features across the teams? And data is really, at the end of the day, what we're all working with. Great data in terms of forecasting, in terms of payment data, in terms of timing of data. And that's really the common theme that you'll see across all treasury operations organizations.

So how did you then go about getting those teams working together or release the data or sort of use the effect of that?

It was certainly an evolution. I think just like every company grapples with, there's always the point of budget, right? So it's not just who screams the loudest gets the biggest budget. It's really, you know, we go through a process that identifies what's the biggest roi. And there are a lot of things and I think that people may not understand or appreciate. There are a lot of processes that you can change without it involvement, right? So take a look at what you're doing. How are you doing it? Could it be done any differently? Could you simplify it, maybe remove a couple steps? Do you have to do these reports? Who actually reads them? So really identifying what is our key process, who are the different players and how can we streamline that? And that can be done at any point in time. You just need the. The privilege of having time to do it.

And I know were you and sort of jumping in there, but you. It's a very established team, very established processes, very, you know, sort of. How did you then question that status quo, if you like, how did you jump in there? Cause I know that you've got that questioning mind, but how did you do that?

If you like, one thing that's interesting is when you jump in, it's important to understand the culture that you're in as well as the motivation of the people in your organization. And I think having the growth mindset, which is what's always questioning the status quo and looking for ways to innovate. So I think the biggest learning I had at that point in time was how do we get people away from their day to day jobs so that they can have the time and the place to think through processes and to propose changes. Because you want everybody to buy in. You don't just want someone to say let's do it this way. I think everyone needs to participate in order for it to be a successful transformation.

What do you enjoy most about the role? And then maybe in treasury or you know, because you've had all these different experiences maybe more recently or you know, what have you enjoyed most, if you like.

What I enjoy most personally is the innovation part, the thinking through solutions of how to make things better, how to solve problems, not just, just for ourselves, but for the industry.

Right.

So as an example, Microsoft has the hackathon every year and everyone at the company can participate and submit ideas. And I submitted three at one point in time and all of them were successful in their own way. But one in particular was how we can eliminate the need for signatures in KYC and expedite the whole KYC process from weeks to seconds. And that was something that was really fun for me to work on as well as, you know, leading to go to market opportunities for the company and.

Then, you know, you enjoyed that, but also enjoyment wise of your role in Treasury. What were the things that you would say, God, that was fun.

Besides the innovation, I would say what was really fun is mentoring and coaching. I was able to mentor three individuals outside of my team and that to me was very rewarding because I could talk through experiences and help them problem solve in their various career stages or their current situations. The other was coaching. So we had quite a few new individuals join a team and being able to provide them with an onboarding document, but then also checking in with them to say, how are you doing? How can I support you? Are there areas that you're not able to connect the dots? You know, let's make sure you understand those. So I do see, you know, that was a lot of fun too is seeing people learn, develop and grow and really excel in their own roles.

And then the flip side, you know, people rush into the door, you know, they want to come to Microsoft, come and work with, you know, you know, you might put up a role. I've seen actually roles pop up in the past on the container bears like this when you're again, if we've got listeners and they're thinking, actually I'd love to Work there. What are you looking for in candidates? What makes a candidate stand out, if you like?

I would say candidates that have diverse experience. And by diverse experience, I mean in different jobs throughout their career, at different size companies in their career, they also have to have a collaborative mindset. It's not all about what they deliver, it's what they've delivered with others. Right. Are they able to leverage someone else's work? Are they able to build upon other people's work? And are they able to be creative, yet also take a step back and look at the big picture? Project management skills are important. Being able to adapt in an ambiguous environment, that is very important, especially at a large company. And effective communication.

Yeah. And then I know for yourself, you've recently, well, you've actually, you know, come back to market. So this is one of the nice things we can tell people about you and, and your background and everything else, which obviously is great from here. But you've looked at the future of Treasury. You know, what are you thinking that people need? You know, what's the future of treasury, you know, what people are going to need going forward? What are they looking for?

I think the future of treasury is a lot more around the data and the data analytics, the data science. Getting back into knowing what data one needs. Right. What are the attributes you really need? Some of it is not necessary, some of it's critical. So understanding enough to ask those questions and be specific and to also question, but really understanding the data so that you can apply the AI and the large language models to help change what you're doing today. I think it's important to embed the knowledge of subject matter experts in process flows. And I also believe that the value is going to come in the value that you create as opposed to, oh, this is a function of the company. Treasury is a, you know, you need to create value with the data you have and with optimizing how you work. Therein lies the future is really harnessing the data elements and finding ways to optimize and create value for the company.

And I know that you've, I think this is a bit, this is a tricky one actually. I saw, you know, we talked about this before and some of the notes and things like that. There's, there's been a set way of doing things by a number of treasuries and you know, well, we do this because it's not broken. You know, let's keep going, you know, keep turning that handle. This ability to sort of separate yourself from that. How would you. Why why is that so key? And why is that? Why are you so passionate about that?

It's key because treasury needs to evolve. And how you evolve is you also need to look at your organizational structure, how you're organized could be holding you back.

Right?

Right. If you take a look at your process flows, the data flows, how the integrations work, really understanding what are the drivers towards the outcomes. There are so many opportunities to look at how your systems play a role as well as how your individuals play a role, in addition to what is your North Star? Where are you going? What's the end goal here? And that again, takes me back to the whole value creation. How does a Treasury organization create value for the company? It goes beyond protecting the assets. It has to go a lot deeper into the value creation for the company, including if you work for a company like a Microsoft or a company that provides software as a service, using your own products to help sell the products or the services of the company you work for, but also showing that there's real value in adopting newer technology and your success.

You've got this range of different experiences you've done exactly. Say you've got a strength in global cash. We've got payments, we've got all the different areas. What would you say you reflect on that. Why is that so powerful to you? You know, why is that? Why has that been key to you?

It's been key to me because it gives me different perspectives. I mean, starting out in sales, it was one perspective which is very valuable. I think any profession you take on is being a sales, having sales experience, but then moving into the operational element of cash management and then the thought leadership of saying, let's bring in the Federal Reserve, let's ask them questions, let's show them how we use the data that we get from payments. Right. And then going into, you know, the psp, the merchant services area and the E commerce angle, all these are different viewpoints and perspectives that in my opinion, make any candidate a lot more valuable in the realm of the financial ecosystem, which is where I have spent my career and continue to want to spend my career. But all these elements have given me that background to have just a bigger perspective and be much more of a generalist versus just a specific practitioner.

And you talk about where you're spending the next piece of your career. We're going to put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can connect to you because as we said at the beginning of the show, you've recently become available. You're looking out there for different new ideas and everything else. So I know that people will want to connect to you. But if you're looking, you know, we were, we've been talking for a number of months about actually getting this done because you've been traveling and everything else. But if someone, what advice are you going to give to someone if they say, I've looked at Christina's background, it's great, I want a career like her, or what advice are you going to give to those people?

I mean, I would say, you know, to achieve success, first you need to have a plan. You need to identify what success looks like for you. Individuals should be bold because things usually don't be intentional. Be very self aware and know what your passions are. In my opinion, I think developing a project plan for yourself, what is your brand? What do you bring to the table? Where do you want to go? And make sure you check in on that, you know, hold yourself accountable. Check in to see am I achieving what I wanted to achieve or have I pivoted for what reason or do I need to make a move because I need to gain these skills? So I would say all those things would be important to really look at yourself as a product, as a brand and just hold yourself accountable to what you want to achieve.

And going from here, you know, as we wrap up the show, what are you thinking is the next step once you someone says, wow, I want to connect with this lady, it's not going back in sales, in a bank. That's, that's not you anymore. That's, you know, something that was 20 years ago sort of thing. What are you looking for for your career now?

Absolutely. I mean, I look back and I reflect on the areas that brought me joy and passion and honestly, you know, you said sales was something I did ages ago. I really. And what I miss most is being in front of a client or being in front of a partner. Right. Just being able to connect with them. And as a strategic thinker and thought leader, you know, envisioning being with them in a room, solutioning on how to address a problem that they're facing or a problem within the industry is really where I see my next role. I do feel it could be in treasury, it could be in Fintech or a service provider. But my goal is really to drive value creation by solving industry problems and optimizing the customer experience.

Nice. Christina, thank you very much for being guest today. We'll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. People will be lucky to have you in their network. So you look out for it and look forward to seeing you at conference very soon.

Thank you so much, Mike. I look forward to it as well.

Thank you very much for listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Wanted to catch up with you at the end of today's podcast to invite you to Join us in 2024 at one of our Treasury Career Corner Live events throughout the us, throughout Europe, throughout the uk. So we're going to be right the way across and we start the world tour for Treasury Career Corner Live in New York on Wednesday the 6th and Thursday 7th of March. You don't want to miss them if.

You'Re going to be there.

If you're in New York, please look it up, register. You've listened to the podcast, you can actually get to meet some of the guests live. You get to meet me live. I've kind of everything. But anyway, no, I hope you'll come and join us talking treasury careers. Each event starts at 6:00 clock with registration 6:30 to 7:30. I meet with the guests, I talk to them on a live panel. It's live version of the podcast, after all. And then we do networking drinks. So the first one, say in New York in Times Square, then we actually move on. We've only got 65 people per night that so we're booking up. We're as I record this, we're over 60% full on one of the nights, 55% full on the second and then we're hitting the road. We're doing Treasure Career Corner Live in cities across the us, UK and Europe. We'll be at Kyriba Live in Las Vegas, we'll be at Texpo in Houston. We're also stopping off in Dallas and then we've got other of our own events in Chicago, London, Athens, Luxembourg, Frankfurt.

What could be better?

So if you keep an eye on the website, we'd love to see you there. Keep an eye out for dates and venues. We're coming to a city near you. If you want to connect with us, just reach out to me. Can't wait to see you in 2024. Treasury Career Corner Live, the world tour. See you soon.