So I started my career, well, so where did I get to where I am today is actually just been a pretty linear process. I started my career in investment banking, so I knew pretty early on that I wanted to go into finance, and I've always loved math and knew early on in my life that I wanted to go into something super exciting and challenging and I grew up in a small town in Illinois, but always wanted to kind of move away so went to a University in Illinois, went to the University of Illinois, but I studied in London for a year and just knew I wanted to be in the big city, coming into my senior year, started interviewing in New York with investment banks and got a job offer, so moved to New York right after graduating, and it was just like, the investment banking for me, it was like it's very much if you work hard and put in the time and do good work, then you progress, it's like it's not that bureaucratic, at least my experience wasn't, right, and so that was great, I got such a strong foundation of what drives a business, how to analyze the business, financial statements, etc. So, went from investment banking, then in 2000, I started investing banking in 2001, September 11th happened, the stock market crashed and ended up after about a year going into restructuring for a few years, which, at the time was not nearly as glamorous as investment banking, but was such a, finding out what's wrong with the company is almost a better skill at finding out what's right with the company, because yes, so that was a really great three years, but in 2005 the debt markets were great, the stock market came back, so it was time for me to make a move, and I moved to Boston to do private equity, so I kind of went from, you're analyzing a business for a different purpose, right, when you're in private equity, you're thinking about making an investment, so versus obviously restructuring, which is trying to help them turn business around. So, I loved my time in private equity and it was just so diverse, and you're always like looking at new companies and analyzing new companies and etc., so loved that, but then in what year was that, well whatever, after four years of doing that, then decided I want to start a family, and I didn't know what it was going to do to me, my mom was a teacher, so she was always home. So I totally jumped ship and my husband and I, we moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and had our first child there, and I started a small business, an online business, and when my first son was about six months old, I just was like, I need my career, and it was a really hard as a female, for me anyway, it was a really hard realization that I was a mom, but I also wanted my career. I knew that, yeah, and I knew that it would make me a better wife, better mom like, because it was just an important part for who I am. So I decided to go back, kind of not the entrepreneurial route, but to financial services and helped start a fund of funds in Jackson Hole and so we had clients all around the US and traveling a lot, moved that business to San Francisco and I was going back and forth between Jackson San Francisco, we didn't want to move to California, and just decided, now I have two young kids and just decided that I couldn't keep traveling, so we actually, I went back to private equity and we moved down to Salt Lake City, and the firm I joined in Salt Lake, nothing against that firm, but after kind of doing private equity, on the East Coast, it was not nearly as fulfilling doing it here for some reason, it just was a different kind of a firm, and so it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't the right fit for me. So I left and took three months off to try and figure out, like, do we move back to the East Coast, do we move to California? What do we do, and met the CEO of this operating company and marketing, yeah, Expert Voice, yeah, a Marketing Technology Company, and he said, "Come, join me." Then I said, I have no idea what I will do here because I remember like, Yeah, but I remember starting their not knowing the difference between a product manager, project manager, and a program editor, and I was like, Why do we have all of these things? Like, why do we have all these people that sound to me like they're doing the same job? I got where I am today, kind of just through a number of steps and every experience has shaped who I am and to the operator that I am today was for sure, shaped by being in investment banking and private equity and looking at all different companies, and being a mom absolutely, 100%. Yeah.

The way my job works, I do think that I'm very unique, so I don't want everyone to assume that a CFO, COO combo role would, this is how it would work, maybe it does. Who knows, but, Tom is CEO and me, we work together on everything. So, all of the decisions of the company effectively are made very closely aligned with the two of us. So I do have, I love that aspect of my job that I am Tom's confidante, to the CEO and everything, we make, but my purview of responsibility of CFO and COO is like, fully responsible for the financial health of the company, and the, like operational excellence of the business. So, everything, so under me is our finance department, so closing the books, invoicing our customers, collecting from our customers, paying our employees, HR is under me, so it's finance and accounting, talent, development, and acquisition, so all of our HR and all of our talent acquisition, so our recruiting function is under me and then from an operation standpoint, I have our customer success, so the team that is working with our customers to make sure that their relationship is successful, we also have an expert success where two-sided network, so we have clients, the pay bills, and then we have an end-user who is part of our audience that engages with the clients, so we have a team that makes sure they're happy, the expert side and then we have a studio, an in house agency that sits under me and then, like all of our not the glamorous parts, facilities management and where our buildings are, real estate and all that kind of stuff, so it's a pretty bride pearth, but, I work, it ebbs and flows, but I'm, my schedule is a lot of meetings, and, I'll start my day, and when I without a commute, my meetings typically don't start before nine and they typically, it's kind of like a 9 to 5 job, right now, because I'm working in my house but when I was when we were going to the office every day, I wouldn't leave the office till 6 or 6:30 just because there's just, that's how it happens. Yeah, but, you're kind of always-on. I get emails and slacks and texts and calls, and, some days like I don't, but other days I'll get one at 8:30, 9 o'clock, and you just kind of, that's the role, so yeah, and I'm fine with that. So, and travel is typically around kind of fundraising, debt restructuring, it's more around the financing side of the business, and then I will travel sometimes, I'm the executive sponsor on some of our largest clients. We kind of split those upon the exec team, so I will have some travel with that, but it's minimal travel.

I believe that my, like my biggest responsibility, is to develop the people that report to me to take over my role, and it's like, I don't do, like I don't have a ton of direct output, right? Like it's managing people, it's developing people, which is like It's huge, like I stripped, strategy work, that type of thing. So but I spend a lot of my energy understanding where, my direct reports like where they want to go, how do I develop them? How do I give the responsibility that I may hold to them, make sure they don't pull in their face? Help them be successful, and that is the biggest challenge, some people are easy, they know exactly what they want, I can give them skills, some people are a little bit more difficult. So that's the biggest challenge, and I think that the way I approach it, and I think how anyone could be successful is like, you have to be human. You have to meet people where they are. You have to listen to them. You have to genuinely care about them. It is like I think it's that such an important part of managing and being a senior, you have to care about these people because that's how you earn their trust, and I am only as good and like, effective as my direct reports are, like that period, full stop, so yeah.