I started off my career as a tax professional providing tax consulting services within KPMG. I then broadened my finance experience with a move to treasury at GSK and I am now practicing broader finance concepts as a Commercial Finance Manager.
Money makes the world go round, and within an organisation the treasury team are at the centre of cash forecasting and management. I like being at the heart of the funding equation, working in collaboration with business leaders within my organisation to understand their needs and challenges, and to work with them to see how best to engineer solutions that drive the business forward. I have also enjoyed working with our banking partners and it has been rewarding to see solutions developed jointly being adopted across their other clients.
Having been charged with the responsibility of heading treasury, I felt that it was important to buttress the hands on experience with a solid understanding of the principles of treasury to enable me orchestrate world class treasury services for my organisation.
Taking an ACT qualification is undoubtedly one of the best decisions you will make in gaining treasury knowledge and plugging into a wonderful community of treasury professionals with diverse backgrounds and experience.
Of all the projects I have participated in, a full ERP transition project provided an unparalleled opportunity for a broader understanding of the entire enterprise, interplay between departments, project management and a good chunk of systems deployment.
This particular project was unique in that it started two months before the COVID-19 pandemic and when March 2020 struck, we committed to retain the initial project timelines and work through the unprecedented headwinds with technical consultants, training and deployment teams spread across different jurisdictions, time zones, different levels of lock downs and infection rates. It was a demanding, but fulfilling experience.
Learn how to clone yourself – this has enabled me to effectively delegate, build capacity within my teams, and free up the time for me to stretch into new areas and advance my development.
The highest form of knowledge is empathy. It teaches you to look past your ego and self-interest by putting yourself in another’s shoes. This has been of value not just from a professional team management perspective, but even in my personal life with friends and family.
The Treasurer magazine and the newsletters which enable me to remain updated of treasury matters now that I have moved from a mainstream treasury role.
My phone simply because of the convenience and utility I get out of it; communication, idea curation, knowledge at the palm of my hand. I was pleasantly surprised to find some notes I took back in 2012 available thanks to cloud storage.
I have just finished The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today by Linda Yueh. It was a great read with fresh perspectives on the challenges we face from Central Bank involvement in economic recovery to slow growth in wages despite a declining unemployment rate and growing economies. My next read on the queue is '100 World’s Greatest Speeches'. I think this will be an interesting read with diverse insights from renown figures throughout history.
I believe I will be further along in my reverse journey from specialist to generalist including in my scope of practice auditing, risk and commercial operations leadership. I believe that I will be in an environment that allows me to plug in my management experience, talent management, finance and business strategy.