I started off majoring in government in sociology as an undergraduate. I was planning to go to law school, I did a lot of debate team, a lot of traveling for debate teams as well as taking pre-law classes. After I left school I ended up doing nonprofit work via AmeriCorps Vista. The Miracle Vista landed me in a position where I was working with technology so I was doing a migrant education in California. At that point, I stayed in the nonprofit field working with children immunizations and once again over this time was developing my core competencies, which are my protection detail, project management, communication collaboration. All those skills are being honed about that time. I ended up in Salt Lake City, Utah. that was important times, my first foray into the banking industry. I just did a hard pivot from nonprofit work to the financial services industry through Fidelity Investments. I became a licensed representative or trader and then I was able to get my MBA as well. I basically selected finances too as an avenue for my interest. Fidelity was a wonderful, position and offered me a chance to just jump right into the financing economics, background and I defied my education from my real-world experience. The traitor into my MBA, focusing on finance fast forward I was at that point in the banking industry. From there I moved on from Fidelity to Goldman Sachs, where I was doing a KYC malware. So you're looking at essentially regulatory, which is a huge piece of the financial service industry. From there I moved forward to Scotland that was mostly out of necessity. I had left Goldman and I was looking to pivot. I was curious about technologies. Royal Bank of Scotland found me as a recruiter and to equip included in the Royal Bank of Scotland. I had nothing in-between space between business technology, which is one of those areas that is essentially a growing field. Now I have no formal tech education and I was mostly a finance guy. They hired me on because I knew the numbers and understood finance. At that point, working in the space that I worked in, IT rates support essentially or derivatives trading. I was basically between the business, which is the actual traders and the business side, as you did derivatives and packaged it for the client and technology that supported it. So that was my first foray into a project meant how juggled to two different ways of thinking how to bridge the gap and how do you satisfy them. During that time, I was quiet about my technology skills my sequel, my Lennox. It gave me more of a flavor on the job training for technology which later on pivot Designs Bank, where I became essentially an infrastructure engineer slash business analyst. So in that role, working with sight minder SSO, look at I P addresses opening ports. So setting up things in the infrastructure side for internal users at Zion's bank. That knowledge piece helped play along with San Francisco for Finastra, where I was here to support an application. I did have ACH and wire transfers.I am at Silicon Valley Bank as a business interpretation manager, which is basically a project manager. It's like focusing on technology, integrating, using different vendors and bring them online and how we maximized the vendors, how we no create projects to enhance any functionality in my rule with a lot of compliance work as well. That client's piece was like business continuity. I handled that test exercise I handled the Identity Access Management Sale point. Bring it, tie it all together is that like there are a huge compliance and regulatory element to what I've done before because the industry I sit in is highly regulated. The skills that come with exposure to and work in the compliance field was part and parcel to being. In fact, the service industry. I was lucky enough to be in the front office, middle office, back office. Through that journey I have acquired technical skills and attitude. My career path has been pretty much like it's involved naturally and organically. As the industry has all technology being oppressing elements within financial service is given that a lot of tech firms realized that they are actually a technology firm. You look like you know your credit card being available online to use your app to make a purchase, being able to view your information, your balances online. The Web and the technology offerings of a bank are on other applications and so with that said, a lot of companies are realizing the first market really means first. too. Move the technology needle forward to implement the technology. To implement cloud service is to offer as much as if not better than the regular traditional applications due to customer service applications. So that realization and the evolution of tech has kind of dragged me along. In my industry I happened to be in being basically back end. So even the applications that are related to finance like entertainment application or Netflix they'll have a billing element to it. That's the way they move money this way to reconcile money is awaiting so that peace is there. I think that peace makes somebody the finance, background or MBA doing economics.

In the role, we are essentially working for the asset management group that's a subsidiary of the bank. In that space, we have products cash sweep, cash repo, and those products need to be hands-on. Although it's seamless for the client perspective as far as sweeping the money in and investing the funds, there is a whole community of operations. Work has to be done to make it happen. As a project manager and implementation manager in that space in that subdivision, what we do is basically carry up projects to ensure the client experience is continuously untenable. for example password resets so at the time when I was there we had tightened password complexity requirement, and the vendor that we were using cash matrix by BlackRock, had a loose password complexity. Now, some parts of the system we work in which means basically the user's internal and even external, depending on the portals are coming in at would be authenticated by our higher complexity password. There were some other subsystems that they were not in. The clients would log in and that did not have a certain complexity so, from a security standpoint, they were at risk for hacking. That piece of bringing those complexity standards up to date for the vendor, for our client's behalf, was a full project. We had basically the client outreach to the remediation looking at who's account was inactive. Looking at people who have never logged in and what do you do with those clients, Do you send them a letter or an E-mail, Do you post a message in the portal or something like that. So all of the project manager pieces come together to create an essentially multi-project. I'll say it was a six-month project it sounds very simple, but a six-month project, given the fact that, have been notified people about environments I was towards the fall so they would freeze periods on our side, freeze periods in the sides of the client that it could not move forward. So all those pieces come together to make a full project out of something that seems very small yet it has consequences. If you don't do it right there are possible hacking, possible people leaving their companies and not being terminated on their side. Trying to capture that, trying to create safeguards, policies and procedures and also forming a regulatory piece. Regulars want to see that you have robust idea security and that procedures and policies to catch things in case things do go sideways. Diligence was done, it was documented and then the vendor was encouraged too. I'm not forced to comply with your standards and so it's a multi-layered piece. It involves multiple characters and stakeholders. IT finance Risk department IT security compliance and legal all those people to make it work so what sounds very simple and small requires a small army to get it done.

We use certain tools to get things done. We had tableau for our reporting excels. I have an advice for the students, become really good at Excel. Excel skills are valuable because Excel is basically the back up for everything. When you pull data from a sequel query you get data in Excel format. I had to manipulate that pivot tables huge tableau. If you can access it, I would definitely recommend it. Tableau does offer a free 30-day trial. So I recommend just going in and downloading tableau and then get some videos first. You would love playing with it and get any certifications. That area is quite advantageous, but certifications cost money. Things that are free on YouTube as far as videos and balloting, a free trial software are advantageous to cannot add that to resume to build it in. Once you get to your employer, find out what tools do you use regularly and then ask to use them. It depends on your role any kind of software aptitude is beneficial. The common ones I've seen across the industry right now that are there are prevalent are Excel, tableau and PowerPoint, So it's not a matter of just slapping something together. You wanted something that makes an impact and I will go even further to say you really want to focus on the content. You can touch tableau, you can put together a PowerPoint, but ask yourself a question is it delivering the right message? So as you get further, your career messaging matters. So knowing what the person's looking before, does it look person looking for a decision right there were looking for a 2 to 3 page PowerPoint that has to be impactful and can summarize and is concise. You don't want a lot of words there. You don't want a lot of images unless the images have meaning. So essentially everything you present has to be distilled information for someone to make a decision or to be informed about what is going on and then add another layer that would be your conclusion. It should consist of the next steps and recommendations if needed. That way shows that you the presenter, you the worker, have gathered enough information that you can say, Hey, this is not how I think we should go or something like that you'd make a decision. That way, at least the person could see that's personal. Together we think of PowerPoint to answer my questions, but also is giving me a look forward and they made me not agree with your decision. It shows a lot of foresight in your part of planning ahead and that you understand the mission enough to actually make a recommendation.