Building Treasury Careers – How Houston’s Top Treasurers Make Themselves and Their Teams Visible

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’ll 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: Anyone that has been to my sessions before. You’ll realize that sometimes Jeremy’s seen this before as well. I try and do this good evening, and then you wake up and then we do it a second time. We’re not gonna bother. We don’t do that anymore. I just give her one Good evening and you give me loads of love back.

Mike Richards: Good evening, Houston. Good evening. Oh, thank goodness you’re awake when a few of you have had a couple of beers. Johnny in particular is one of our sponsors, so firstly you come here tonight. And you made an effort to come here. Thank you for joining us, but you have to join us. That means put away your phones.

Mike Richards: Nothing’s that important this evening. The babysitter will wait for at least an hour. So give this time back to yourselves and your treasury careers. Who’s this big head on the screen? That’s me, Mike Richards. Sorry about that. Head. I run the Treasury Recruitment Company have done for 25 plus years, and I just love talking to you guys about your treasury careers, how you’ve developed them, how you’ve grown them.

Mike Richards: This then also led to, that’s the team, the Treasury Career Corner Podcast. Now, a few of you guys may have heard about it and seen the announcement this week, so by coming here tonight. With the support also of HTMA, but also you get CTP credits. But also after this, we are recording this session, it becomes one of our podcasts, and you take a quiz after listening to the podcast, whether you are walking your dog or the gym, whatever else.

Mike Richards: And we have the lovely Ryan who took the first ever quiz that we had, and you get CTP credits for actually listening to a podcast about treasures. But without further ado, I wanna get onto our treasurers. This is the structure of the evening. We’re just gonna quickly talk through. Each of the panelists are gonna give their backgrounds so you can learn from them.

Mike Richards: Then we’ll talk about how they’ve developed some of the challenges they’re facing. We’ll do some q and a. So ask, when was the last time you got to ask an amazing panel like this? Questions. I made them tough questions, but not Jeremy. I don’t want him asking the questions. Right. Brooke, we’re gonna pass over to you and make sure you do go straight into the microphone.

Mike Richards: They turn it up a bit. There you go. Love it. Over to you.

Brook Ballard, Former Treasurer of Oceaneering International: My name’s Brooke Ballard. I’ve done treasury my whole career. I started out at Anadaco Petroleum actually doing credit analysis and then from there I went to a company you now know as Live Nation. It was PACE Concerts. If you, I’m dating myself, was.

Brook Ballard: In Houston, it was formed outta PACE concerts and we acquired about 24 other concert companies and made Live Nation. So I built all the processes, the systems, the ticketing, integration to treasury, the forecasting, and then Clear Channel for a time bought it. And I had this very serious girlfriend that I met in Darko.

Brook Ballard: And guess what? I did not want to move to San Antonio. I wanted to be with that, that treasury professional. And so I went to, uh, went to Cisco. Cisco was the very first corporate to set up. So from there, I, uh, a company named a IG so me speak at a conference and I was recruited to, to work with actually some folks who are in this room to help help a IG kind of fix themselves.

Brook Ballard: So we spent. I know four or five years is probably the best years of our lives, right? That’s right. So it’s real, real intense that we got to be pretty close outta that. And then we were told they’re gonna move the whole operation to Ireland after we fixed it all. So we got to train the Irish folks to run, train them about treasury and to run all the systems and processes.

Brook Ballard: And controls we built. And then from there I went to a company called Chene. They’re the largest exporter of liquified natural gas. Won an in and out so treasury award there, and I can talk more about that later. And then from there I became the treasurer of Oceaneering. So that’s kind of my history.

Mike Richards: Cool.

Mike Richards: And pass over to Jordan if you would explain something.

Jordan Timberlake, Vice President, Treasurer and Investment Operations at Memorial Hermann Health System: Great. Thanks. So I’m Jordan Timberlake and I started my career actually in banking. And so all throughout my career, I believe it has been kind of tracking to a combination of decisions, timing, luck, and then ultimately me determining what the why was for each of these roles.

Jordan Timberlake: So when I graduated from college, my why was I worked as a teller in college, and so I wanted to continue my career in finance. And one way to do that was to work in retail banking at a national or global bank. So that was my why, and I determined that I wanted to have formal training from a large institution as well as secure my financial licensing, and so I was able to accomplish that.

Jordan Timberlake: After doing that, I decided I wanted to work more with the corporate role. So I applied for a position at a regional bank, Amadou Bank. You all might be familiar with. And was hired as a treasury management analyst and had the opportunity over the next six years to really grow in the treasury profession, making decisions to set myself on the path to be an industry expert for certain specific industries like healthcare and energy, and partnering really well with my relationship managers to, to go on that journey from analyst to vp.

Jordan Timberlake: Then from there had what I call my most exciting opportunity, which was transitioning from a banker, no offense to bankers, but from a banker to a treasury practitioner. And I was able to do that through my client. So my client was Memorial Herman, and I had spent years cultivating that relationship, bringing solutions to the system, and then ultimately the system reached out to me for an open position.

Jordan Timberlake: And so I joined Memorial Herman in 2014 as the treasury manager, and in my first role was really focused on cash operations, cash management, bringing that lens of my banking background to the role I had the opportunity, as I talk about kind of timing and those opportunities that are presented to work really closely with our debt manager.

Jordan Timberlake: Our debt manager was executing large capital market transactions as well as commercial banking. Loans, and I did not know much about that, but I took the opportunity to say, I wanna learn more about this. And that individual really took me under their wing and let me see the entire process. As luck would have it, that individual also decided that they wanted to retire.

Jordan Timberlake: And so when they retired, they said, you need to go in there and ask if you can be the debt manager on top of the cash manager. And I said, yes, I will do that. So I walked in and I asked for that opportunity and I took debt on. And then as I continued to grow in my role at Memorial Hermann, I found a hole with our investment operations.

Jordan Timberlake: So I determined that so much of what we do on the cash management side applied to the investment piece too. So was able to take over the investment operations, supporting our chief investment officer as well as our allocators. And now today am the Vice President and treasurer of Memorial Hermann.

Mike Richards: Fantastic, and I’m going to go to my lovely assistant Tracy, who’s gonna change the slide. Thank you very much. Well, in fact, hey guys, so Fred,

Fred Schacknies, Vice President & Treasurer at TechnipFMC: thanks. Hi everyone. I, I think I should start by explaining my response earlier on, on saying I, I wanted to be a treasurer actually, so I was the treasurer of my sophomore high school class only because that was the only position that no one else applied for.

Fred Schacknies: So my friend suggested go for that. I didn’t know what treasurer meant to be honest. But somehow the concept stuck with me. My interest in in finance. So I studied economics and international relations in high school and in college. So somehow like banking, finance appealed to me largely because it’s gonna get a little bit personal.

Fred Schacknies: It meant you can deal with money and numbers and not have to worry about people. And so I thought if I can just go into banking and finance and like I’ll be in a happy place of just kind of numbers and equation. I ended up actually starting in banking as well, in sales and trading and foreign exchange.

Fred Schacknies: Spent the first five years of my career in sales and trading, and that was very, very exciting and very energizing. Eventually I realized just kind of bibs and asks all day. Got kind of mind numbing and likewise, I saw what the practitioners were doing and I thought that looks kind of interesting. I wanna maybe do that.

Fred Schacknies: So I went back for a graduate school and then went into kind of practitioner world. I worked start, my first corporate gig was with a company called Loosen Technologies, which no longer exists, but was a long time ago. Bell Labs after that, another company, constellation Energy. After that, a company called Hilton and the last four years have been with with Tech, FMC, so very much industry agnostic.

Fred Schacknies: I wouldn’t say I know anything about any one industry in particular have always been in treasury, have always been somewhere close to kind of cash and currency. And to kind of complete that cycle from before I started my career journey thinking if I can just focus on numbers and not worry about people, things will be cool.

Fred Schacknies: I realized like not just about managing for daily p and l, but managing information flow is really what was gonna drive. So that kind of got me into like process improvement and systems, and that was really the middle part of my career. And I realized then towards the end of it now really it all is about people because the numbers will eventually manage themselves.

Fred Schacknies: The systems will manage themselves. It really is about kind of getting the people motivated and and on point. And so I’m kind of coming full circle to realize I probably should have been dealing a lot more and thinking about more people early in my career. But it took me a while. But here I am.

Mike Richards: Fantastic. There we go. Thank you. Next slide, please. Thanks very much. So. I was actually gonna cover about education, but I think actually you, the three of you have actually covered it more or less there. I could go back in and we’ve got more of a more mature audience in here that have got more experience of treasury season.

Mike Richards: Thank you. Thank you, Brooke. So, but what I wanted to talk to you guys or ask you about was, so Fred, I’ve had you on the podcast before, so I’ll come to you first as well. You just talked there about not wanting to be a people person, despite the fact you are a people person. You. You say you’re not, but you are.

Mike Richards: Yeah. Well, what I was gonna say is coaching your treasury teams, and a lot of you guys, and I’ve seen this within treasury, gets thrown into this leadership position. You start off as a contributor and then you develop, oh, hang on. Now you’ve got two staff, then you’ve got five staff, then you’ve got 80 staff, you know, and you accidentally do it.

Mike Richards: How do you approach that? We’ll come to you, Fred, and then go across the panel with Jordan and then to Brooke.

Fred Schacknies: Yeah, sure. And, and I will admit, I am not fundamentally a people person, nor am I gonna sit here and say I’m a great leader. As, as I got three members of my team here who may or may not attest to that.

Fred Schacknies: But I think it starts with acknowledging how difficult it is. Leadership. I don’t want may, maybe some people are naturally born with it. I don’t know many who are, especially in finance. I think it starts with a bit of humility. I have found in the bits of success that I’ve seen in my career with respect to leadership.

Fred Schacknies: Just starts with sort of honest acknowledgement of needs. And there is a, there’s a building of talent of individuals that does not happen. Sometimes you need the coaching to get the best outta someone. They might not realize what the best is in themselves, but, but it’s not just about kind of getting individuals.

Fred Schacknies: It’s fundamentally and more importantly about getting the teamwork, getting the culture built across all of that. And this is something, a lesson that I will admit I learned late in my career. You, you’ve probably heard of the no ASK rule and in, in its in its most practical application. Fundamentally, it’s what we’re trying to achieve as organizations treasure.

Fred Schacknies: Otherwise, it’s all about shared objectives. And the shared objectives come from everyone working together towards a common purpose. And so it’s much more important that everybody understands and acknowledges that than to have them sort of individually going after their own goals. So leadership I have found is about kind of getting a common purpose.

Fred Schacknies: And inspiring people towards that.

Mike Richards: What about when you, what about, when you say about everyone pulling in the same direction? What about the flip side? You just talked there about having the noar world. How do you deal with that when it’s a difficult situation and then, then I wanna pass that through to the rest of the group.

Fred Schacknies: Yeah. It is a, there’s a balance and in particular in as, as a group of treasury folks, you know that treasury is a bit of an ivory tower. Within a bit of an ivory tower. Within a bit of an ivory tower in the sense that there’s highly specialized skills, and this is something I struggled with my own career in dealing with others.

Fred Schacknies: You need those experts, and there’s a balance to be struck between those primadonnas who are exceptionally good at certain things but may or may not be good at dealing with groups. It’s not as easy as saying you never have those people on the team. ’cause at the end of the day, the things that you have to get done are very difficult to train.

Fred Schacknies: But fundamentally, what I have found is the pendulum swings most effectively when you’ve got the focus first and foremost on everyone pulling in the same direction. And if you can give up a little bit of that, a little bit of that sort of edge in exchange for a little bit more of that comradery. That is almost always a winning combination.

Fred Schacknies: In fact, I’m thinking of the visualization. You’ve probably seen it of who’s it? Was it Simon Sinek? The reference of kinda the Navy Seal graph. You probably think you know what I’m talking about. That exchange is, to me, is kind of the sweet spot, not only for Navy Seals, but for treasury too.

Mike Richards: Cool. Jordan, you came into treasury, as you said, into this role 11 years ago, I think you said.

Mike Richards: Were when you were there, were you a part of the team or how was it structured and how did it, how has it grown since then?

Jordan Timberlake: Yeah, so the team has changed quite a bit over the last 11 years, but I would say we run as a fairly lean team. So everyone has a lot of responsibility, and so that responsibility, I do believe, creates a culture of all pulling in the same direction.

Jordan Timberlake: We also, I had mentioned the why, my why. It’s really important as a leader to understand the individuals on your team and their why, what’s driving them. Brad mentioned some expertise or what they’re trying to achieve in their own career, so I think meeting them where they’re at allows you to be able to all move in the same direction.

Brook Ballard: Brooke. How many people are productive people? That’s what I would say. So I learned this a couple s ago, but because the, yeah, you folks in the room and we had a pretty tough assignment. We had a boss is was John Wells and he was intentional. The one thing we did in a is saved terror every dad and what we did because it got to know one another.

Brook Ballard: And he just got to narrow one another hundred level and relay on the purpose model. When it got really tough, he worked hard together. And in a is pretty folks ’cause being there with the Fed Federal Reserve in Europe and chat our bond grants in we, we had like a pre meeting, we would talk about all the metrics where all liquidity was crow and there was home younger and it was early.

Brook Ballard: Those discussions. At a lunch table about how we could ue IG, that’s how, why it was

Mike Richards: successful to, and obviously the world of work. I talk about this all the time on the podcast with you guys. 10 years ago, a hybrid was barely a car. People were like, oh, wow. And then suddenly, five years ago. The shutters came down, right?

Mike Richards: Everyone, you’re in your office, home office. You’re working from home. And we can start with you Brooke, and then come back round the panel. Talk us through, if you would, the what happened with you guys and COVID and how then it affected treasury coming out a it and then we’ll come back to Brooke and to Fred.

Mike Richards: It

Brook Ballard: is hard to drain on our premium people during And uh, we went to the office. We went to the office, we wore masks. So our head contain in the face. And, and it says how to, how to do that. And so think the, were very green that I was saying. So there’s no substance for the face to face

Mike Richards: contact. And how did you make sure that it was effective, if you like, how do you do that in that situation?

Mike Richards: You, you talk about then breaking bread with people and actually looking them in the face. But you also have some, I’ve said to people, treasury is collaborative. If someone comes to me and said, I wanna work, in fact, there was a guy the other day, I wanna work a hundred percent remotely. I went, get out treasury, treasury’s, not remote discipline, go to another finance, disciplinary or so bit shocked.

Mike Richards: I was like, sorry, I don’t think we, you are, it’s right for you. How, how do you do it?

Brook Ballard: Well, when you’re gonna ask someone to cover the office and they maybe be a praise for their, you know, their wellbeing. They may be at a conference table and they’re way over there. And you’re showing a presentation or, and you’re talking through it.

Brook Ballard: And then when people got accustomed to working at home and hard to bring folks back crying, he’s like, Hey, kind of nice this two days a week that the office kind of nice. So you really have to be intent like, Hey, these days we’re gonna be together, we’re gonna work together. It’s gonna be for. Like you ever go into treasury and you organize your day saying, man, I’m gonna get these five days done in the day.

Brook Ballard: And then you do none of those things. So when you’re training, you have to, you have to do at least one of those things. So one, one thing that I, I seen John, and this is my T trip, is says, is I take a piece of paper and I’ll a blank piece of paper. On the left hand side, I write two dudes. Okay? I never write for the five.

Brook Ballard: I was trying to do two or three because when you pull it down, I write it out on your computer. But when you put on the piece of paper, you submited that, man, I’m really gonna just form. So, but I don’t read those two things on. And then on the other side of the paper, I blew my goals. That’ll be never one than five.

Brook Ballard: And when you’re training folks, I ask them. What is your one or two to dos for today? What did you do this week? I looked at those booths and every day we look at those lists and so it’s not like, Hey, what’s due this week? It’s like, my MR is super clean. It’s like, Hey, I actually open another vestment account.

Brook Ballard: We manage to open that bank account and we, uh, whatever, whatever that core

Mike Richards: author is for that and time. You, you actually measured their achievement. So, Jordan. Jordan.

Jordan Timberlake: So my approach on hybrid might be a little bit different. So we are a health system and we are a hybrid office, so we are required to come into the office a specific day each week, as well as we are all accountable for attending specific meetings in person.

Jordan Timberlake: I do think that there are some benefits to the hybrid remote work. Style. And I think what the benefits really are for our organization, and I think even in the treasury profession is one you are, as Brooke said, happy employees are productive employees. And so there have been studies that show that a lot of employees prefer a hybrid work environment.

Jordan Timberlake: And so I do think that can be beneficial. Also, it helps with retention. So we have hired individuals. In a hybrid environment and have been successful in retaining those employees as well as immersing them into the culture. I also want to point out would be remiss, this is not specific to my industry or Memorial Herman, but we have seen numbers of women in the workforce have increased due to the ability to have a remote or hybrid work schedule, and so I think that’s great.

Jordan Timberlake: And I also do believe that we’re very intentional about getting together for in-person meetings as well as intentional and respectful of time when you are hybrid as well.

Fred Schacknies: Yeah, I guess a little bit of everything that was just said, I’m a hundred percent agree that an in-person meeting is always more effective than teams.

Fred Schacknies: And the ability to engage and to train people. Absolutely. You have to have that inter, that face-to-face communication. However, a teams call is also better than email, and I so have been in very global organizations. Our treasury team has got people in about 12 countries. The first four or five months, when I joined this company, I was in teams calls with people in Australia and the US and UK and everywhere else, and.

Fred Schacknies: They’re all the same. I found that with COVID, you were a global team before. Now you really are because everybody is just another face on a screen. And there was a real benefit I found of just that creating that parody. Now that doesn’t mean that again, like if you go in this in an office with someone, it’s absolutely gonna be better.

Fred Schacknies: Totally agree. The other issue though, which Brooke was mentioning is, sorry, Jordan was mentioning that is the labor retention and whether it’s for parenthood or any other kind of life circumstance. So there absolutely has been this shift in the kind of the cost. And demand for work. And if your labor, if you’re limited to geography, like if you have to hire in Houston or you have to hire in Aberdeen or anywhere else, it changes your equation in terms of like where the labor markets are.

Fred Schacknies: If you’re no longer limited to that, it really opens things up. So I don’t know where that ends up, although I do know where it ends up. It ends up wherever the CEO says it ends up, and that’s gonna vary by company. But honestly, what makes the most sense, I think, is some bit of a mixture of, of all of that.

Mike Richards: Thank you. I recently did a session just like this in New York had, and I was just talking to Jordan earlier that I interviewed Summer Simmons, good friend of mine from Victoria’s Secret. And one of the, the highlights of the session was they identified a Victoria’s Secret that no one really knew what treasury was.

Mike Richards: They knew how to spell it, but that was about where it ended. So what she did was they got together as a team and they did this thing called Treasury 1 0 1. They put it together, and then they went out to the business and different parts of the business and told different parts of the business. They coached them, the tax team and everything else.

Mike Richards: They sat there and gave them these coaching sessions about what treasury was. The benefit was incredible because people were coming back to treasury, asking them questions and saying, oh, we’re thinking of doing this. Can you help us? So suddenly that’s how they got out to the business. What I wanted to ask my panelists was what do they do to get involved in the business?

Mike Richards: Have they done before? We’ll start this stuff with Jordan. Actually, I’ll get it. I’ll start with Jordan. There you go. I’ll get the name right this time. Go Jordan, then Brooke, then back to you, Fred, just any of the. Ways that you’ve taken treasury out to the masses or any things that are tips for this audience here

Jordan Timberlake: at Memorial Hermann as a health system, the Treasury Department is really focused on our relationships with finance, revenue, side goals, supply chain, and really it’s not for us taking a Treasury 1 0 1 out to each of these different business units.

Jordan Timberlake: But it’s cultivating a longstanding relationship with those business units. Not only explaining what we do, but understanding what they do so that we can then provide value back to them. So for instance, if supply chain is working on an agreement and a lease is embedded within that purchase option, they know that they need to go to treasury.

Jordan Timberlake: They know that they need to go to legal to ensure that we have eyes on it. That isn’t necessarily something that happens immediately. That happens because we have built a relationship with supply chain over the years to explain what our role is and how we can assist with that analysis to ensure that it’s the right decision for the system.

Jordan Timberlake: So I love the idea of a Treasury 1 0 1, and I think that would be great. And we do that within our finance arm, so that one, we can attract individuals from other financial departments to hopefully one day wanna work in treasury. And also how we can partner with them in the future. But really for the other business units within the walls of our system, I think it’s really about collaboration on how we can work together in the future.

Fred Schacknies: I agree with what’s been said in the sense that you really have to turn the equation around and say, it’s not about you telling me what I need to do in my treasury job. It’s about let me help you solve whatever business problem you’re trying to solve for. To add to that, the other thing that I’ve lately seen success in and lately in this job is in terms of integrating talent.

Fred Schacknies: And so a majority of my direct reports, a couple folks in the audience here, had no prior treasury experience to joining my treasury leadership team, which is the first time I’ve ever experienced that in all of my treasury career. And it might sound risky, but it’s been, I think, tremendously successful in two ways.

Fred Schacknies: One way is that. Non treasury people have the license to ask a lot of dumb questions and smart questions in asking why and challenging. And by that, and I credit some, Caleb in particular in the corner here asked a lot of great questions on foreign exchange. So as a veteran foreign exchange person being asked like, why do you do this or that?

Fred Schacknies: Gosh, I haven’t thought about that in 20 years. I just assumed it all the time. So that helps not only make the function better. But it also helps to integrate with, because the people that have come in, they don’t know treasury necessarily, but they know the business and other parts of finance and strategy and operations and everything else.

Fred Schacknies: And that really helps integrate because I don’t have that knowledge myself. And so the more of that cross breeding that we can bring in, the more enriched the kind of the talent pool is for treasury.

Mike Richards: I want to touch on something that actually you mentioned there, Brooke, about achieving and making your achievements known to the organization as well.

Mike Richards: So I recently interviewed Emma Hayward, great treasurer, and I’ve also talked, we did New York session recently and say in the nicest way, you guys as treasurers are terrible at demonstrating your expertise. You work really hard at your jobs, but you don’t tell anyone. You just hide your lights. And that’s why I do the podcast.

Mike Richards: That’s why I do so much stuff with the A FP I’m saying to you. Shout about your achievements. Now, when I talked to Emma, one of the things she did, ’cause you guys are very busy, she said, oh, I send myself an email each week. I went, okay, it’s a bit weird. And she went, no. Well, what I do is each week I look at, reflect on it, have that coffee moment, and just send myself an email with what we’ve achieved this week, me or the team.

Mike Richards: And so when my boss comes to me at the end of the month, they go, what have you done this month? And, oh, I don’t know. She literally can just go back through. She can track it like her little black book if you like, in Outlook. If I come to you again to Brooke, then Jordan, then back to you, Fred, how do you elevate the, the mission of treasury?

Mike Richards: You’ve talked a little bit about it there and do some solutions and things like that, but how have you made treasury visible? When I was at,

Brook Ballard: I started attacking part when we roll out PSL, and because we were successful in one area. I was able to hire five more people in value Mine strategy from a cost to a revenue generator has mistake Cisco over being in the well that hundred $90 by using, we celebrate your warranty on.

Brook Ballard: And so all that times when we do that, yes, what you gonna need? More? Road. Really. Thanks the man, Jordan.

Mike Richards: Sure.

Jordan Timberlake: My suggestion would be in how to elevate what you’ve accomplished is that you don’t have a one-on-one with your leader at least twice a month, where you go in with a list of things you’ve accomplished.

Jordan Timberlake: I would highly recommend setting one up, so that allows you to be able to continuously tell your leader what you’re accomplishing. And on the flip side would be as the leader, ensure that every single one of the individuals that report to you has a one-on-one with you, and you ask for what they’ve accomplished, compile all of that for your annual review, but then at your annual review, it’s not a surprise to somebody of what you’ve done.

Jordan Timberlake: It’s actually all the things you’ve been talking about for the last year. Also, I think it’s really important that your organization champions that as well. At our organization, there is a lot of requests for what you’ve accomplished and what you’re working on, and the idea is not to create filler or to create work for you, additional work that’s not necessary.

Jordan Timberlake: It’s for you to actually prove what you’ve been able to accomplish. The other thing would be is partnering, as I talked about, and Fred mentioned, being the solution provider for that other business unit is coming up with a shared win with them. So for instance, AP. Rolling out something like a virtual card program or providing additional support with your banking partner to help them run a successful campaign to onboard more vendors, which then turns into a revenue share back to your organization.

Jordan Timberlake: But you can go to supply chain and say, look at all of the vendors that we paid and that actually. In some cases can go back to re to Treasury as a cost center to create revenue, but could go back to supply chain to say we’re able to put a bit of money in your pocket as well as elevating within your leadership what you’re able to accomplish in terms of cost savings associated with continuous reviews of what you’re doing, as well as ensuring that from a short term liquidity standpoint, you’re maximizing all your relationships as it relates to cost to debt, and then also investing that short term money.

Mike Richards: And get your insights, but I’m just gonna say it to you guys. Hand your questions ready. ’cause when did the last time, has this going done again? You got a chance to ask three amazing treasures. So Bri

Fred Schacknies: Yeah. Love money. Yes, and love metrics too. And our finance goal I would articulate as distribute 70% of free cash flow and more to shareholders.

Fred Schacknies: That translates then to another layer below that of goals in terms of earnings and cash and risk and all that. Another layer below that, operational goals. In my past career and different roles of different companies, I’ve seen a lot of different treasury folks going after, optimizing a lot of cool stuff for what may or may not have translated to bottom line results, and may or may not likely not have been appreciated by others.

Fred Schacknies: What I found is really successful in the current role with Tank FMC. The company is really laser focused on industrialization and on metrics defining progress, and that translates to treasury and finance as well. And so we have a weekly cadence with our CFO leadership team. That focuses on exactly those layer of metrics, and that’s what we drill down below that.

Fred Schacknies: So the goal, this is all an evolution, but the goal we’re trying to get to is that everybody ultimately knows whatever your job is, cash, credit, currency, insurance, whatever. How does that translate to the next step and the next step up ultimately to get to the top goal? So

Mike Richards: let’s see if you are still awake.

Mike Richards: I know there were a couple of drinks earlier. So what questions do you have for the panelists? Please? Hands up anyone. Oh, here we go. Kind straight away.

Jordan Timberlake: Adam, before know him. So I’m

just curious, per when the, the junior generation, every talent, what are some things he recommend we do today to prepare for future leadership prowess?

Mike Richards: Brooke, we’ll go with you first and then Jordan, then Brett and you just, you three share the walk around.

Brook Ballard: We were all at one time, but thank you for recognizing how senior I am now when I was a junior associate. The best thing you can do is make your boss look good because as you make your boss look good, he who looks good, you do.

Brook Ballard: I worked for this lady named Nina, who’s the founder of HTMA in Tex about, and I loved treasury and I really, I worked for a boss that I admired Nina, and he recommended, Hey Brooke, I’d love for you to volunteer to be a part of HCMA. And I volunteered for HCMA. I volunteer for tpo. And guess what you get to do when you’re in that room with those other folks?

Brook Ballard: Get to none. Just like we’re learning now. And it’s really not about attending a session. It’s about networking and saying, Hey, I have this issue at work, my boss is asking about this. Have you ever faced that Fred technique? And you start developing, cultivating those relationships. ’cause the best thing that a leader can do and an employee is admit.

Brook Ballard: So I, Caleb, I don’t know everything back, Caleb. I don’t know everything this, as soon as you say I know everything, I’ve learned everything. There’ll be something that you tri yourself up on. So it’s always best to, as a leader and as a junior associate to be humble. Ask a lot of questions. Those questions sometimes are hard questions ’cause you may have not answered that before, or you took it for granted.

Brook Ballard: That everyone knew it. And then as you learn, your team is gonna make you look good. And so the best thing you can do is ask questions. Be humble. Make your boss look good. Us Okay, Jordan?

Jordan Timberlake: I agree with all those things, but I would also say yes to opportunity that none of your way. And then surround yourself with people you want to be alike.

Jordan Timberlake: Also find peers that you can bounce those ideas off of because asking those questions to a peer sometimes is a little bit easier. And then also they might have questions for you that you’re able to share your insight,

Fred Schacknies: agree and agree with everything that said to which I’ve had. The more you can build general skill sets, the more broadly applicable and more broadly useful you’ll and ultimately.

Fred Schacknies: There’s nothing aside from my comment about kind of ivory towering specificity of the stuff we do. The rules of treasury were written kind of decades, if not centuries ago, and they haven’t changed and they’re not gonna change. The what is more and more important in the workplace today is things like management skills, leadership communication, understanding data, understanding business process and improvement.

Fred Schacknies: If you can understand those general skill sets, again, the treasury stuff, you’ll figure out, it’s not that hard. But you’ll be more broadly useful to the organization.

Mike Richards: Okay, next question. I saw some hands up over this way up. There you go. No, not you actually, you, you can ask them at the beers, but here we go.

Mike Richards: Thank you. Come on.

My question is for, for George, we talked about learning some skills. Early on in cash management that you take the book to invest management. That was key for you. I wondering what the sort is there and how that paid off for you?

Jordan Timberlake: Main thing that I found that overlapped was the operations piece of it.

Jordan Timberlake: So not necessarily the management of cash and investment selection, but being value add to say, I’m going to take these policies. These procedures and I’m going to ensure that they apply to the way that we operate when we rebalance a portfolio or fund an investment manager. So really taking the policy and then also the operational aspect of the work, translating it to say, I can have a team that can support you really well, that is policy compliant, risk mitigating that is going to help you operate at a higher level.

Mike Richards: Our panel do actually have some lovely takeaways for you guys as well. I’ll actually come back to Tracy ’cause she was nice enough to change the slides. Tracy,

Jordan, this little free You as well. Sorry to put you in the hot seat.

Mike Richards: There are other people on the panel.

It’s not necessarily treasury related.

It was wonderful seeing the trajectory that I described of your career. I loved how you said when that debt management opportunity came, you went and you asked for it. What advice would you give the women in this role? To not wait for the opportunity to not weemer permission of going ahead. And

Jordan Timberlake: so one thing that I would say that is very similar to what you just said, but is you do not have to have all of the qualifications to ask for the job.

Jordan Timberlake: The worst thing that will happen is they will tell you need more qualifications for the job. Okay. How do I get those? And I’ve now shown that I am interested, but I want that role. So I think we all, no matter what place you are in your career, you’re always thinking, okay, if I did this, then I would be ready for that.

Jordan Timberlake: But if you wait for that moment to be completely ready, somebody else has come in and they’ve asked for that job.

Mike Richards: Okay, we got time for one more question. Then I want to give the takeaways you will get to obviously mingle with our panelists afterwards. So there was one more question I saw down this way.

Mike Richards: Where are they? Hands up, no takeaways actually. Yeah, we go, we’ll go here and then we’ll go to takeaways.

Johnny. So this is the third summer in a row. I got asked to develop an internship program for people, students high schoolers. Have you ever dealt with the working with interns, what you get out of ’em versus what they can learn?

Kind of help me with what we’re trying to do with interns. Sounds like it needs a bid.

Brook Ballard: Yeah. At Chene, I hired the interns with our treasurer every summer I was there. And so how we did it is we brought in a bunch of candidates and had a dinner, and those individuals that were. Potentially slated to be the treasury intern.

Brook Ballard: We would chat in a more relaxed setting at a table and knowing that if we brought eight, we only needed two. But you get to know them, right? And you’re talking in a more relaxed setting about whether core competitors are generally you’re trying to solve an issue. And it’s amazing how smart. Some of these college students that you may take for granted of their skills.

Brook Ballard: So I’m pretty good at Excel at Shanie. We had some data sets that I knew what I wanted. I could describe what I wanted. I didn’t have the time to work on it, so I asked each of them about, tell me something you’ve done in Excel that you’re pretty proud of. Right, because what’s the business language? Excel, right?

Brook Ballard: We talk about how many people do cash forecasting. How many people use solely a treasury workstation to do their forecasting? Solely, yeah. Excel, right? That’s the business finding and the reason why you did to the result quicker, and then you bring it to Excel, right? Because you even go talk to your leader.

Brook Ballard: And what do they understand? The common language is Excel. So if you may not have the time or inclination that college intern probably knows Excel better than you do. And that’s exactly what happened, and that’s how, and built the forecast at Cheniere. Okay. And the other.

Jordan Timberlake: The only thing I would add is go to the analyst and ask them what they are working on that they need assistance with.

Jordan Timberlake: So then you can pretty quickly build out a pretty robust summer for an intern.

Mike Richards: Johnny, there we go. So we’ve done the questions, Brooke. So this is you. Okay, here That me? No, there. Yeah, there you go. The, your takeaways.

Brook Ballard: Oh, I believe I said it’s really about people and sound technology and the next job you have is probably.

Brook Ballard: With inform relationship, our relationships matter. So you cultivate the insured work, or, your Honor, how I gotten for jobs from Mont Avenue soon, wrote the textbook. I was chair for four years. Supposedly people, the really not about technology, about people. Love that. Next slide.

Mike Richards: Thank you, Jordan. Your key take place.

Jordan Timberlake: I spoke about my why and I really stand by that is having your why when you’re looking at your career, the job you’re in. So I think that’s really important. The other thing would be is just like life, we’re all in different seasons, and I think that’s really important to think about when you’re in your career.

Jordan Timberlake: So embrace the season you’re in. It’s okay to pass up on something. It’s okay to ask for something based on where you’re at. The third thing would be is advocate for yourself, which I talked about, but also advocate for your team. There’s nothing better than you going up and your team coming up with you to better reflection on you, that your team is as strong as you are.

Jordan Timberlake: And then the third, last thing, the fourth thing would be seek those that are willing to share knowledge with you and then share it back.

Mike Richards: Bye-bye. Then you pass out first friend, if you would.

Fred Schacknies: Yeah, I think the takeaway is deep breathed, judging by how few words I provided to that. I’ll skip the first three, but the last two is really to the point about, yes, it’s all about people.

Fred Schacknies: It’s the talent and culture, and the issue about helping those around you be better is fundamentally about teamwork. Everyone in the same boat, if one person’s struggling, the boat is struggling, and as that’s a shared collective responsibility for anybody else that’s in the boat. The last issue, which I think is being yourself, bringing yourself to work.

Fred Schacknies: Is is not just about talent, but about individuality and creativity and diversity. So much of what we do is about improvement. And improvement is not just like, how do I tighten this nut or this bolt a little bit more? It’s about finding new solutions and thinking outside of the box, and that requires creativity and that requires diversity.

Fred Schacknies: A lot of different ways of thinking, and that means that everybody has to feel psychologically safe. To speak up and ask a question or raise a suggestion regardless of whether it’s a gender or a season or experience issue, or anything else. So the more that everybody in the room feels safe to bring themselves and bring their ideas, the more creative the team is.

Mike Richards: Fantastic. And Johnny so. First of all, networking with purpose. What does that mean? It’s about paying it forward. It’s certainly what, as Brooke touched on there, is when you are now networking, it’s lovely to have some free beers. Thank you very much, sponsors. But actually there’s a point to here. If you don’t leave here with at least two or three other connections, you failed this evening, that’s your pass or fail test.

Mike Richards: Your great network is when you make an effort, when you don’t. You’re terrible, but you can be brilliant. And you show this because then the visibility, we talked about that as well, about being visible both internally and externally. So external, internally, it’s your black book and everything else.

Mike Richards: Externally, it’s about putting your hand up. So I did the New York Cash Exchange virtual session recently. And I just volunteered. It was a Women in Treasury Month. Obviously I’m not a woman in treasury. No, not this month. That’s next month, but women in Treasury and I said, look, can I help? Oh yeah, actually we want to do one on personal branding.

Mike Richards: That led to then this session get CTP credits because Nicole Crawford and Glia, I’m trying to get that right. She is amazing, and she said, Mike, why don’t you apply for CTP credits? I said, oh, fantastic. That then led to now the podcast. Get CTP credits. Why? ’cause I put my hand up, I said, can I help? So get involved with HTMA, get involved with tpo.

Mike Richards: Just sit on a panel. Oh, not use, hang on. These are three panelists who put their hands up and the final bit is sharing wins from that session. 90% of the people, nine outta 10 people weren’t putting their up on LinkedIn. You don’t have to put stuff that’s confidential, but. You get to your Friday, one of your little black book things.

Mike Richards: Oh, we did this week, we implemented this, we saved this, put it up there. And that’s it. I’m gonna finish with that. So I wanted to put your hands together. Final slide please, Johnny. There you go. It’s wine a bid. Thank you very much on my panel. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode just as much as I did recording it.

Mike Richards: Now, don’t forget to subscribe on your usual platform without Spotify Apple Podcast, wherever you listen to your podcast. So you never miss a future episode. I. Wanna stay ahead in treasury? Fantastic. Sign up for our newsletter. There’s a link in the show notes. You’ll get instant access to my pay review action plan for you.

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Mike Richards: By signing up to the newsletter, you’ll get access to our CB resume templates, career tips, what could be better? It’s amazing. If you’re looking for a role, go to the website, treasury recruitment.com, or maybe even join us at any of our 2025 events and conferences. We are right the way across. We’re going from the US back through the uk, right the way across Europe, Dublin.

Mike Richards: Uh, it’s gonna be a great year in 2025, so looking forward to it. Go to our events page, treasury recruitment.com/events and sign up. Meet us in New York in March, or anywhere else you wanna see us in the rest of the world. Thanks for listening. Until next week, see you soon.