Only recently graduated, Cologne-based Alina Kerich works as a junior treasury consultant with business support services firm ConVista. At the same time, she volunteers for a local fire brigade, which has led her to play a part in the clean-up effort following July’s severe flooding in western Germany.
We spoke to her to find out how she’s establishing herself in the profession, and how her treasury and volunteering roles inform each other.
I was in my sixth semester at university, where I was studying international business management, and the plan was that I’d go to Spain for my semester abroad. The trip happened – but after just two months COVID-19 blew up and I had to come back home.
Ahead of me was a potential gap of about a year before I could resume my studies. So, without any courses to focus on, I decided to get some work experience instead. My interests had always been around business, finance and accounting, so I thought consulting would be a great area to go for, because you get a big-picture view of how companies work.
After I applied to several consulting agencies, ConVista hired me as a working student on 20 hours a week – mainly to carry out research, but with a bit of project management in there too. That was in September last year. And it was only two or three weeks later that I was all in on the treasury side!
ConVista gave me some articles about banking regulations in Germany, and I did tons of other research, and after a week I was totally immersed in treasury. In November, I had the opportunity to take part in my first project – which was international, too, so pretty big – and the business made me responsible for the training aspect of the treasury division.
It all moved so fast. My boss always tells me you have to be thrown into cold water to learn. So, that’s what he did!
I wrote my Bachelor’s thesis, which explored the subject of real-time treasury dashboards. Essentially, I set out my own design of what an optimum dashboard should look like – a tool that could be used by treasurers and CFOs alike that would give them all the information they needed in one place, really intuitively.
I did some research on what treasurers need from dashboards and what sort of key performance indicators they tend to apply to dashboard experiences. And from that, I visualised my own concept and wrote some guidelines on how it would work.
I also came to some broader conclusions about why dashboards are so important for providing treasurers with a single point of truth – particularly in such a dynamic and changeable global economy.
Right now I’m handling three different in-house cash projects. My boss decided to put me on the in-house cash side because it seems to be an area that a lot of really big companies are focusing on as they try to centralise all their cash transparency needs.
This is a big field for ConVista – we have a lot of companies asking for our help on this issue. I’m doing a chunk of the project management work across those three projects, as well as configuring the SAP module that supports that work.
On top of that, we have some internal projects at ConVista that I’m working on, too.
Anyone who knows me says I’m the most impatient person ever. Before this job, if something took longer than 10 minutes, I couldn’t deal with it – “This isn’t working!” But in my role, I’ve really had to learn how to stick with things until they sink in.
Part of that is about learning to be more patient with myself. The company gives me so much information about new things – it’s simply impossible to digest it all on day one. So, I’ve had to accept that I won’t be able to know everything either immediately or even in two weeks’ time.
I’ve also had to be very patient with our clients because I can’t assume that they know everything that I know. No matter how much is explained to me, I have to explain twice as much to them. They don’t know everything about the software modules we implement for them, so we have to assist them very closely to help them understand the technology and what it does.
That sort of mindset runs right through every aspect of client work.
Exactly. Communication is a huge factor. Each client has so many other things going on besides the project we’re running for them. We’re focusing on that specific workload for eight hours a day – but they’re not. So we have to be very clear about how it all works.
I’m a voluntary firefighter. My grandpa helped to set up the fire brigade in my hometown, which is 60km from where I live now, in Cologne. So, it’s practically a family to me. And because it’s still relatively close, I can rush down there if they need help with any activities or interventions they’re involved with.
Every time I go back to visit, which is usually every two or three weeks, I try to be as present as I can for the brigade and do as much for them as possible – and that was very much the case with the recent floods catastrophe.
This is the area I grew up in, and it’s been devastated. Luckily none of my family members have been affected, but lots of the friends I went to school with were – and the school itself is not there any more. So many things that I know from my childhood no longer exist because of these incidents, and even two weeks later, families still have mud in their basements. The aftermath is ongoing, and lots of people are required to help.
I also volunteer for an organisation called Experiment e.V. – which offers international youth exchange programmes – because I went to the US on one of their schemes for 10 months when I was 16, and I want other young people to have similar opportunities.
In terms of how those experiences have helped me in treasury, I think they’ve shaped me into a sociable and open-minded person. As a voluntary firefighter, I have an urge to help people all the time, and I also enjoy the process of teamwork and seeing the results that come from people working together.
As far as the youth exchange work goes, I know many people from all over the world and I’m super-interested in other cultures. Any time we have a client from a different country, I try to understand their culture first – you have to get where they’re coming from and then try to adapt to that.
All of this has really improved my communication skills. We’re hiring so many people right now because we need more treasury experts, so I’m meeting new colleagues every month. The volunteering work has helped me get used to that.
Yes – the consulting environment is pressure every day because you have to deliver fast, so the firefighting work has given me that ability to talk to myself and say, “You can do this – you know how it works and you’ll get it done.”
I want to stick with the area I’m working in right now – which is payments, international payments and in-house cash – and become even better at that. But at the same time, it’s really important for me to gain a holistic overview of the entire treasury function. So, I’d also like to pick up experience in risk management, financial asset management commodities-based hedge management and so on.
From what I can see, I’ve got a really good chance to do that, because ConVista offers so many SAP modules in such a wide variety of topics, and I have so many people around me who are highly experienced and could help me gain skills in those areas.
On a personal mindset level, though, I want to keep striving for more. I don’t want to get to the point where I’m thinking, “All right, I know everything now!” I’m the sort of person who wants to learn something new all the time. So, becoming more patient and trusting in myself that I know what to do, and can do it well, are the most important things for me.
Matt Packer is a freelance business, finance and leadership journalist