How Taking Calculated Risks and Strategic Moves Created a World-Class Treasury Career

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome 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. Let’s get on with the show.

Mike Richards: In this week’s show, I’m joined by Meredith Barnes, the Senior Vice President and Treasurer at NTT Data Americas Inc in Plano, Texas. NTT Data is a trusted global innovator of business and technology services, helping their clients innovate, optimize, and transform for long term success. I’m going to get.

Mike Richards: Meredith to explain a little bit more who NTT data are a bit later on in the show. But first of all, we’re going to go back to how she first started in her career, discovering finance and treasury. Meredith, over to you.

Meredith Vance, Senior Vice President and Treasurer at NTT Data Americas, Inc: Thank you so much, Mike. And such a pleasure to be with you here today. My, my career starting is a little, was a little bit unique in terms of how I found the treasury profession coming out of MBA school and wanting to You know, knowing that finance was a career path that I wanted to take, but not knowing which art in, in, you know, university, they, they teach, you know, finance classes, accounting classes, tax classes, but not so often treasury.

Meredith Vance: And I, and I actually found my career by the newspaper and circling one day, the role of a treasury analyst for a large company here in Texas. And. Thought, wow, what a unique opportunity to maybe do something different. I didn’t know exactly what treasury was at the time. And from what I had understood, you know, going into this, I thought maybe is it just, is it just the put it in management, but throughout my career learning that it was so much more.

Meredith Vance: And I think that’s really where I, you know, thriving as a Treasury professional over the last 25 plus years and really growing in the profession and taking every opportunity to learn and develop in deep expertise areas of the Treasury organization. Has just been a fascinating journey.

Mike Richards: And when you first started, you know, what was, as you said, and I know we spoke about this before you circled in the paper, I used, I remember putting together adverts that went in the financial times and everything else.

Mike Richards: And people are like, really, you advertise in the paper and they’re like, yeah, that’s, that was a thing back then. What, so as you say, you didn’t know what treasury was, what was it like? Cause you joined flow serve, who were flow serve or what, what was that like for you as a newbie starting out in treasury?

Meredith Vance: Absolutely. So I had the wonderful opportunity of starting out my career as a treasury analyst with flow serve here in Irving, Texas, and very large global company, and it, it was, you know, essentially trying to understand what this treasury organization does. Is it. Is it simply cash management learning that it wasn’t?

Meredith Vance: And like I said, it was, it was so much more and trying to understand and get my arms around exactly and learning. Like I always, I always say earlier in my career, I feel like I was a sponge, just learning all that I could. About liquidity management, debt, capital markets, foreign exchange, implemented my first treasury system at low serve and had that opportunity.

Meredith Vance: So early in my career, um, having that first treasury analyst role at low serve was, was just. Little did I know, 25 plus years later, the step that, you know, led me towards a thriving treasury career.

Mike Richards: And so from there, you were a flow serve and then you went into practice. So for Arthur Anderson, how can we made that move?

Meredith Vance: That was, oh my gosh, again, a unique opportunity to take what I’d learned in the first few years as a treasury analyst and really use and build upon that knowledge. And the ability to learn about various areas of Treasury for companies commensurate in different complexities, different sizes, different industries, and the ability to go in there as a Treasury advisor.

Meredith Vance: And really again, build upon my expertise in all functional areas of treasury and do it with companies, you know, fortune 500 companies in various industries. Like I said, various sizes and different places around the world, to be honest. So I had the ability to travel around the world, meet with different treasury organizations, really learn and understand their challenges and help them develop solutions to.

Meredith Vance: Optimize their infrastructure

Mike Richards: with that. And you’re, you know, you’re, you’re quite early in your career. And I’ve had other guests on the show that have taken that route. They’ve gone into consulting, but you’re thrown in a deep end a lot of the time. And I know, you know, looking through this, you were helping on some big projects.

Mike Richards: What was that like for you at an early stage, if you like?

Meredith Vance: Absolutely. So being kind of junior in my career and still trying to learn, right, and also trying to advise clients on solutions for, you know, their treasury operations, I really had to lean on my colleagues, lean upon, you know, my partners, my, my managers to learn.

Meredith Vance: And to be able to grow so that I can be the best advisor to my clients. And I actually learned from my clients as well, having the opportunity to sit down and interview them and understanding, you know, the very specific mechanics of how their treasury. Operations function really helped give me also the ability to learn.

Meredith Vance: So I learned from my clients. I learned from my managers, the partners in the organization, and all of that, you know, really, really helped me, I guess, progress my career. Very on a very, you know, on a fast track.

Mike Richards: And then from there you did the consulting piece and then you went back into corporate treasury itself with Siemens and then walk us through some of the next moves because some really great roles that you did there.

Meredith Vance: Absolutely. So the next roles were very purposeful. I would say going back into being a corporate practitioner, I felt like it was a great time and a great opportunity to take what I had learned. From Arthur Anderson from Ernst and Young from all of the clients that I had worked with. Over those years, take what I had learned and go back into a corporate practitioner role and use, you know, use my knowledge and use it to transform the treasury organizations that I was working with.

Meredith Vance: So for instance, at EDS was an opportunity to leverage my knowledge and deep dive into capital markets and planning. That was a tool in my toolkit that I felt that I needed to. Really dig deeper in from an expertise level. And so that will gave me the opportunity as well as world Caribbean cruises, the ability to learn how to negotiate debt agreements as we’re building ships.

Meredith Vance: And like I said, another kind of skill set in my toolbox to be able to leverage as the objective to be a well rounded treasury professional. Which leads to eBay and PayPal, the opportunity there to again, shift industries a little bit creates, you know, a more diverse portfolio of my treasury, my, my treasury opportunities.

Meredith Vance: And like I said, skill set and really dig deep into global cash management, liquidity strategy, and structuring. As well as I had the opportunity to do something very unique and help split eBay and PayPal. And so the each step in my career beyond treasury advisory and going back into the corporate practitioner role was to fill a specific.

Meredith Vance: role that I wanted to dig deeper in from a treasury perspective, so that I could meet my own career objective, which was to be a very well rounded treasurer.

Mike Richards: And when, when you say that, do you, did you have a checklist? Did you think, you know, you say you, and you’ve proved it, you’re very driven with, with the things, but did you think, right, okay, so, And again, for the listeners, you went from Siemens as a global treasury manager.

Mike Richards: Then you were doing capital markets and then both EDS and Royal Caribbean. Then you got to PayPal and then with eBay and things like that. Were you ticking a lot off a lot of those? Do you think other treasury professionals should. Try and do that. Okay, I’m weak in this area. I need to get more experience.

Mike Richards: Is that something you’ve done deliberately?

Meredith Vance: I, I believe so. And it’s not so much that I just had the checklist that said, okay, in this next role, I need more cash management, or I need more capital markets. But it was also Where the opportunity presented itself, and I think a lot of that has to do not only with, again, as mentioned, my goals and objectives of digging deeper into capital markets or digging deeper into global insurance or cash management liquidity strategy.

Meredith Vance: But it was also with the complexity of the company wanting to, for instance, you know, gain more experience in a large public company. Or, you know, or going to a private company and understanding the dynamics of working within each type of organization and the level of complexity and globalization as well and making sure that I was also understanding the challenges of working in a global treasury organization.

Meredith Vance: Around the world, the challenges of regulatory environments in APAC or Europe or Latin America. So I think those were all pieces of the puzzle that I was considering in my career with each step that I took. And I would say networking as well was. a huge benefit and advantage of knowing folks in and knowing other professionals within these organizations that saw me as, you know, a value added professional to be able to come in and Do the things that, you know, they wanted to achieve in the treasury organization and knowing that I was the right fit to do so.

Mike Richards: And just, let’s just focus in on that, if you could, about the networking piece, cause I know that you’re strong on this, we will come to AFP and some of the stuff you’ve done there, but more you’re, you’re into a great internal network. I had this as one of our recent video blogs and the video blog, and it was a junior treasury guy.

Mike Richards: And he went to his boss and said, I don’t feel I’m learning enough. And the guy said, go have a coffee. So what do you mean? So we’ll go with this head of a department, go and take them for a coffee. And he got about six weeks in. He said, Oh, this is great, but I want to learn more. He said, drink more coffee.

Mike Richards: He was like, what is that? Do it every single week. Go and meet someone every single week. And rapidly became very well networked where that applies to yourself. Or I was going to ask. Did you make that a deliberate, a deliberate thing, if you like? So, right. I’ve got to go meet someone. I’ve got to try and, you know, network around the, the organization internally.

Mike Richards: Did you, was that one of the drivers for you?

Meredith Vance: Absolutely. I would say both internal and external networking, I believe are extremely important to be able to not only grow and develop as a professional and grow and develop your career, but your skillsets. Your ability to be that strategic partner within your organization for your treasury brand.

Meredith Vance: So internally, like that’s one of the first things I do. If I have somebody that’s coming into the treasury organization from outside the company, the first thing I ask them to do in their first 90 days. Is right is meet with the leaders or folks in the departments within the organization that we work with the most tax accounting shared services legal business teams.

Meredith Vance: So I find that that’s really important for us to continue to be a strategic partner in the Treasury organization to our company is to get to know the folks internally who you’re going to work with and who you’re going to develop, you know, the best solutions for the company and drive growth. For your organization.

Meredith Vance: So that’s internally and externally, I believe in order to keep learning, to understand what’s going on, you know, in treasury with different organizations to develop your career, to develop your connections, external networking, I find is very important as well. So

Mike Richards: you just talked there about PayPal and eBay, and then.

Mike Richards: Can you then talk us through the move? Cause you were again, you were in Texas for a while, then moved around and you’ve moved with your treasury career. Bring us then up to date. Cause I want to, I want to come back to that networking, but I wanted to get into your current role if you like. So you were then TT data, who are they?

Mike Richards: What are they? Can you explain that to people?

Meredith Vance: Yeah. So the unique opportunity again, to come to NTT data at a time when in 2017, we Closed a very material acquisition of Dell services. So integrating into entity data services and there was a very small treasury function again. It was a treasury function that was primarily focused on moving the cash every day and the company wanted much more.

Meredith Vance: They wanted to build a global treasury infrastructure commensurate with other multi billion dollar global. Organizations. And so I had the unique opportunity again, to come in and basically build this infrastructure from the ground up people, processes, systems, strategy, branding, internal networks, and, and the leadership perspective.

Meredith Vance: And so that was, you know, coming off of the heels of eBay and PayPal, where I felt as if I had, you know, really. encompass and took, you know, the treasury transformation of the global cash management organization to its highest level, knowing that, okay, I can do that here and I can do it on a broader scale as well.

Meredith Vance: I can, I can take. treasury organization that is in its infancy and really grow it into a world class organization. What,

Mike Richards: what do NTT data do? And then how does that sort of flow into treasury side?

Meredith Vance: Absolutely. So NTT data, as you said, a global IT services provider, really transforming the way that organizations.

Meredith Vance: Work from a digital perspective, digital transformation of companies very much as a part of an A. I. transformation of global organizations, whether it’s financial institutions, health care, commercial organizations. And Treasury, I’m, I’m so delighted and excited that as a treasurer of this organization, I get the opportunity to learn from what we’re doing for other clients in this space and really understand how we can continue to grow our Treasury organization doing some of the same thing.

Mike Richards: Then break it down for me a bit more, if you would, you’ve gone there, blank sheet of paper was, was it blank? You know, were, were there some treasury operations when you got there? And cause you’ve been there since 2017. So you’ve been there eight years or so, eight, nine years. So what was it like?

Meredith Vance: So I started day one with myself and another individual in the treasury.

Meredith Vance: Organization. Wow. And so it literally like sticking, putting, putting Post it notes on my whiteboard of what we needed to do from a governance perspective. So creating governance framework, creating policies and procedures and. Thinking about how we’re going to do this, the right people. I didn’t have a global organization who at the time would help me drive all of this.

Meredith Vance: So I needed to go find the people. And again, that’s where my network really proved to be extremely helpful in creating this global treasury organization. And being able to get the right people to help me drive this vision that I had for what I wanted to build at NTT DATO.

Mike Richards: So what was the structure? How did you, I’ve had, you know, thinking back to some of the previous podcasts, Ricardo many years ago, and a couple of the other guys said, look, actually, I’m listening back to some of your previous podcasts.

Mike Richards: yeah, I’m going through with some of your guests and how they structured a treasury. You talked about it about governance control, but then. Breaking that framework down. How did, as you say, you went from the post it notes. What came next?

Meredith Vance: I think the first thing that we had to achieve, so once, once I was able to really hire the right people, so hiring a leader of global cash management of capital markets and global insurance, because global insurance was, is, is a strategic part of our global treasury organization.

Meredith Vance: The first step this and this was very important and led to our ability to further progress. Our vision is implementing a governance policy that was adopted by all legal entities around the world for entity data. And that was 80 plus entities around the world. A policy called our treasury authorization delegation policy.

Meredith Vance: That delegated and it sounds very simple, but it was very powerful. What it essentially did was delegate authority to the treasury organization to execute your basic treasury activities on behalf of all those legal entities on a daily basis, such as liquidity structuring, intercompany loans, executing FX hedges, you know, procuring global insurance.

Meredith Vance: Creating and and executing upon credit support, whether that’s simple as letters of credit, surety bonds, but really what that policy did is it centralized the Treasury decision making and management authority to Treasury, taking that expertise of the Treasury organization and really the trust of the company, allowing us to to do that for every legal entity around the world.

Meredith Vance: Now that was the basis that then drove the building blocks for how we were able to then layer on on top of that developing treasury policies, developing a strategy for foreign exchange risk management and how we hedge and what we hedge and the programs that we put in place. Developing our insurable risk financing strategy for how we were going to leverage global insurance as as a backstop for our risk exposure and in our policies around, like I said, credit support, intercompany lending, and just really Having a well rounded, you know, opportunity to then create the building blocks, like I said, for developing and transforming our treasury organization with that governance structure.

Mike Richards: And when we were speaking before, you talked about So you come in set up and then you’ve also talked about treasury transformation and being a business, a true business partner. What does that mean? You know, we, we hear it as we see it at some of the conferences. What, how do you do that?

Meredith Vance: So it’s really gaining trust in our internal business partners.

Meredith Vance: And the first step that we took was helping them understand what we do in treasury. So what we do, how we do it and how we can help them was most important. Because at the end of the day, our internal business partners that are going out and selling our services to clients and negotiating the contracts, they want to understand not only what you do treasury, but how can you help me?

Meredith Vance: How can you help me speed up my decision making when it comes to insurance limits in a contract or cash flows of this project that we’re working on, discount rates we need to use, foreign exchange considerations with our, with our clients around the world. So really when they understand Not only what we do, like I said, and how we do it, but how we can help them.

Meredith Vance: And that was, we, we went around and we did what we call the treasury roadshow to our strategic partners in the organization, to tax, to accounting, to the business, the sales leads of each industry, to legal. We went and we helped them understand how we can help them. And I think once you do that, and they, and they also understand who are the key contacts within the Treasury organization, who they can come to when they have a question, who can help solve their, you know, and solution for them quickly.

Meredith Vance: That’s how we created the internal partnerships that we are very strong today within the organization and start to develop, like I said, our treasury trusted brand as a strategic business partner.

Mike Richards: And from that, I know that we also explored about how you. Develop and coach your team. And I know that’s a big thing to yourself.

Mike Richards: And, you know, you had awards in the past with Adam Smith awards and things like that. What, how do you do that? What was your ethos around that?

Meredith Vance: Yeah, I think that’s one of the most things that things that I’m very, very proud of in our treasury organization is an Adam Smith award for a top treasury team out of hundreds of global submissions.

Meredith Vance: And I think how we do that is number 1, a team cannot be developed without underlying trust and respect for one another. And that’s exactly what we have as professionals. We are, you know, we are a team of individuals who come from very diverse backgrounds and various experiences within Treasury. And I purposefully created a team that was well rounded, just like that, so that we have different perspectives, different views, different You know, types of experiences and we’re all coming together and sharing those.

Meredith Vance: And we having that mutual trust and respect for one another and understanding our professional backgrounds, maybe are very different within the treasury organization and working with different types of organizations, industries, complexities, sizes, et cetera. That was kind of the basis for how we form our team and building from that.

Meredith Vance: As, as a top treasury team. You know, creating that vision for what we wanted to achieve from day one and along the way, checking in with each other and making sure that if there are any roadblocks or speed bumps that we’re able to manage those. And we’re, then we’re able to get to the finish line and execute upon that vision we created and, and see the results of that.

Mike Richards: And networking we touched on. I didn’t want to deep dive then, but I want to deep dive now. Coming back. I know that’s a key thing for yourself. And we were, I’ve got the full house now, more or less with the AFP board. We’ve had Joel on, we’ve had Fred, Tamara have been great guests before. And now we’ve got you finally.

Mike Richards: I’m, I’m, I’m. Ticking off all the, this is great. Um, I know that you like to give back by doing, serving on the board of the AFP. Why is that so important? And you know, is it just about networking? I know it’s not, but you know, why do you do so much?

Meredith Vance: Great question. Networking absolutely is, is so important with an organization such as the AFP.

Meredith Vance: And just having the opportunity to, like I said, serve on the board with such experienced individuals in, in treasury and finance in general and FP& A. But I think giving back so is so much more because the AFP has been, you know, a very integral part of my entire career, starting out and getting the, what was the certified cash management manager, the CCM, you know, into the CTP.

Meredith Vance: And I think that is in itself just a testament to how far the treasury organization has come within finance, within our corporations. Going from certified cash manager to a certified overall treasury professional and what that means. And the A. F. P. Along the many, many years that I have been a member of the community has taught me so much about The treasury professional and not only just networking and having that opportunity, but really lockstep in my career as I’ve moved from various roles in the organization has grown with me.

Meredith Vance: And I believe that there’s an opportunity for every level of treasury professional in the AFP to continue to grow and develop their professional skills, their networking skills. And that’s why I really, you know, by being a member of the board and I said, giving back to the AFP.

Mike Richards: Hello, it’s Mike here from the Treasury Recruitment Company.

Mike Richards: You’ve just been hearing my voice here talking to another amazing guest, but I just want to jump in. I hope we’re linked on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. com forward slash MR Treasury, Mr Treasury, you and I. That means that then I can share our latest video blogs. I do them each and every week where I talk about how to get your next pay rise, how to improve your career, how to find your next role.

Mike Richards: If you’re looking to recruit, I’m here to help. Connect to me on LinkedIn. I’ll be looking forward to it. Just say, Mike, heard your message on the podcast, thought we’d connect. Let’s get on with the show. Where do you see treasury next? I mean, I know it’s a, you know, we’ve got all these different conversations about automation and all that, but then we, we come back from that.

Mike Richards: I’ve got some treasures say, well, yeah, but we haven’t even got the basics right yet. So, you know, it’s great thinking about all these new tools, but what about the current tools? What about the old tools? So. Is that something you see or what are the challenges you see as a, you know, global treasury yourself coming along with the, the T you and the team have to deal with?

Meredith Vance: I think the continued, well, for, for me, it’s a couple of things that continued growth and complexity of how we operate around the world, ever changing regulation, keeping up with that and making sure that we’re flexible.

Mike Richards: Yeah. I

Meredith Vance: think that’s something that’s very important for treasury today and in the future is that flexibility.

Meredith Vance: And a lot of times in treasury, we’ve been taught maybe that it’s, it’s either this way or it’s that way. And I think that we’ve learned that we need to be a little bit more, we need to be a flexible treasure organization, but while still maintaining right. Our integrity of our tightest controls. And our ability to deliver for the organization, protect the balance sheet, minimize volatility in the P and L, those things are still very important, but making sure that we’re also able to think a little bit, continue to think outside of the box and provide solutions for our business partners that help the company grow.

Meredith Vance: So I think that’s, you know, number one, that we. We’ll continue to see more of, I think in the treasury organization, AI is, is a huge topic, you know, something that, you know, we’ve talked about. It was very material talking about it. Um, and the AFP conferences, that’s something my company, like I said, it’s.

Meredith Vance: What we do, I’m very passionate about it, but how do we use it in the treasury organization? I’ve seen some very, some great examples of using it for foreign exchange for using it to, you know, comb through our insurance contracts, for instance, in client negotiations. But I think it’s something that we’re still trying to figure out from a treasury organization.

Meredith Vance: How can we use. AI to the best of our ability to continue to foster optimization growth within the organization. We’re working on some. We’re trying to work on some use cases within our own treasury department and. And understanding, you know, the best ways to use AI. So I think that’s going to continue to be a part of the conversation.

Meredith Vance: Absolutely.

Mike Richards: And takeaways from today, I think, you know, I think we’re sort of reaching that point where, you know, we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can, you know, Connect to you and have you as part of the network. But before that, I just wanted to sort of ask people, listen to the show to get advice with their treasury careers.

Mike Richards: And as you reflect back over that, if you’re at more junior stages, what, what advice are you giving to your team? Maybe that if they’re the analyst or, and they’re coming to you and go, right, Meredith, what do I do next? What, what, what are you saying to them? What advice are you giving them in the earlier stages of their career that you think, you know, you’ve got this great career that they should be doing.

Meredith Vance: Number one, take, take the risk when it makes sense. Right. If I, if I didn’t take certain risks in my career and a risk, I mean, moving across the country to take on a role that, you know, I felt to myself at the time, hush, can I do this? Am I, am I really qualified? Do they really want me? Right. But they do.

Meredith Vance: And you are qualified and you should take that opportunity when that comes to you. It is, you know, sometimes it can be scary, but at the end of the day, you’ll, you never know, you never know what, if you, if you don’t try. And I think that’s one, um, you know, area in my career, looking back that I can see taking those.

Meredith Vance: calculated risks in my career and understanding that, you know, this next step really fits an objective that I have for myself and, and being able to do so it was, it’s instrumental, I would say. And number two, you can create those objectives for yourself of what you want to do next. And you may not have all the answers, but lean on folks in your network.

Meredith Vance: Um, mentorship is important. Uh, if there’s, you know, if there’s an opportunity to within your network, you know, create a mentorship with someone who has been there, who can give you advice. What could be the next steps? Because I, one thing I feel in treasury is you can never really get stuck. There’s so many opportunities to do different things in treasury, to learn different functional areas.

Meredith Vance: I feel like there’s an opportunity to grow within each area of treasury.

Mike Richards: And just, I just wanted to go back there. You, you, you talk about taking calculated risks because you’re a treasurer and that’s it, you, you do risk everything in your professional life. But then in your. personal career and everything else.

Mike Richards: You know, if someone is listening today, they go, okay, I’ve got that. But you know, how do you weigh up? What are the pros and cons? How do you, you know, how does you’ve done it? I mean, I think first of all, they should just look at your profile. You you’ve been there, done it. So, you know, do what Meredith has done, but you know, how would you convince someone else doing it?

Meredith Vance: Well, I would say, first of all, does it fit? A need, right? Does this next role that you’re looking at fit a need in, in your objectives, right? And the career path that you want to take, is it? a company that you believe in, right? And when I say that, is it a company that you can immerse yourself in and really want to understand what they do, how they do it?

Meredith Vance: And I feel like as a treasury professional, if, if you’re not invested in the company and really passionate about what they’re doing, right, you can run the course on a day to day and make treasury more of an annuity, but to really make an impact. I believe that you want to work for a company that you believe in what they’re doing and are passionate about the products and services and, you know, and how they serve their customers and clients.

Mike Richards: Yep. Brilliant. Amazing. And I mean, I was going to wrap up there unless there’s any final words from you Meredith or any bits of advice you’ve heard the show before and, you know, and it’s been great. We covered, you know, transformation, networking, getting involved in the associations, any other final takeaways for today’s show?

Meredith Vance: No, I just, I just believe that in order to be a successful treasury professional and to really grow. Your career. Those things are very important. As we’ve talked about understanding, having some objectives for yourself, creating that internal and that external network, believing that with every step that you’re taking in career, you are absolutely qualified to do that.

Meredith Vance: And. Like I said, you may not have all the answers as you’re moving into a new role and escalating and elevating your career, but that’s okay because you’ll learn. And I believe that having the courage to do that is. Is absolutely critical in terms of being able to get to that next level of your career.

Mike Richards: Amazing. Thank you very much for, well, nearly filling out my full house now, you know, spoken to everyone on the AFP board and they’ve been guests and things like that. Thank you very much. And yeah, looking forward to seeing you later this year