What you'll learn
- How to navigate career challenges as you ascend the career ladder
- Stories from the forefront of honorees' own careers
Transcription:
Allissa Kline (00:09):
Good morning everybody. We're going to kick off our second panel this morning. My name is Allissa Kline. I'm a Reporter at American Banker. I've been covering the banking industry for about 15 years, and the last five at American Banker. I'm joined today by three ladies, three of our honorees for women in banking, and we're going to talk about how to build and navigate your career in banking and finance. Let's see, so we have Hope Dmuchowski joining us from First Horizon. Hope is CFO at First Horizon in Memphis. Hope has previously worked at Truist and then before Truist, its predecessor BB&T. I have Jessica Payne, who is Managing Director at the Raine Group, which is a global merchant bank that focuses on financial advisory services and principal investing mostly in tech media and telecom. Jessica joined the firm in about 2018, I think it was. Okay. And then I have Cristin Reid next to me. Cristin is Chair and CEO of Capitol National Bank in Lansing, Michigan. You've been in that role since 2019? Yep. Okay, great. So I'm hoping we can kick off with an icebreaker question that I'm curious about. I'm wondering if each of you can talk a little bit about what you wanted to be when you were growing up, if you had any leaning toward banking at all or wanted to be Madonna or something like that.
Hope Dmuchowski (02:02):
Sure, I'll take that one. I grew up in a very middle class working family neighborhood. My mom was a single mother with a high school degree and so I wanted to be a teacher because the only women I knew that had jobs where I grew up were either teachers or nurses. I actually went to school for special education, took some business classes and got an internship and saw a world I had never seen before. Somebody was talking about curiosity. I was like, I don't know anything about investment banking. I had an internship with Deutsche Bank and then started my career there and every day I was learning something new. And so for me, it's so important for events like this. I grew up never seeing women in business, never seeing them as executives, and so that did dictate my career major and the career I thought I wanted.
Allissa Kline (02:46):
What about you, Jessica?
Jessica Payne (02:47):
Yeah, so I think as a child there was a lot of different things. I wanted to do some more on the silly side, some more on the serious side. I think on the more silly side, I really enjoy tap dancing as a child. I'm from the New York area, I wanted to be a Rockette. I thought that would be such a fun thing to do. I love seeing the show every year here in New York. I take my kids now. I think on the more serious side, I've always been so interested in how things work. I've always had a fascination with robotics and building things. I studied mechanical engineering and MIT and I eventually went straight into banking. But I recently came across this photograph of me in elementary school at a science fair where I had done a presentation on robots and it's really has really come full circle for me because now in my work at Raine, I focus on a lot of frontier technologies including robotics and logistics and AI. And so in some way I kind of have come full circle with wanting to work with robots.
Cristin K. Reid (03:51):
I grew up in a family where my father was a litigator who worked a ton of hours and I wanted to do everything I could to avoid going to law school. So I did the typical, I want to be a vet, which transformed into I want to be a doctor. I was a biology major in college and in the December of my senior year, I announced to my dad I wasn't going to medical school, which he then had a heart attack. So I went to law school and during law school I interned at Society Bank and trust in the legal department and got some exposure there. But I realized that my true passion was problem solving and strategically trying to bring resolution to challenges and that could be accomplished on a day-to-day basis in the banking industry, especially I'm in community banking, so I have a far different world than probably 99% of you are up there. But to be able to be hands-on and to be able to make a difference for my community, not only providing the service where the larger banks can't fill the need because it requires so much and then dealing day to day even as a CEO with the customer. So my passion for banking grew when I identified all the opportunities for making a difference in problem solving.
Allissa Kline (05:08):
Nice. That was my next question, which is when did you each realize that banking was where you wanted to head in terms of your career? Was there a specific moment that where a light bulb went off and you said, this is it. This is the path I'm going to take?
Jessica Payne (05:28):
Yeah, I'm happy to start on that one. So I mentioned before I did my undergrad in engineering. I graduated in 2006, and during that time there was just a lot of energy and excitement around going into banking, kind of no matter what your background was. And I really thought the connection between engineering and banking, especially investment banking, was lot toing around problem solving, a lot of excel modeling, a lot of math, a lot of teamwork. I just found a lot of parallels between the two. And so I ended up getting a job at Citigroup as an investment banking analyst, my first job out of college. I spent three years there, and then I went back to business school and I wasn't a hundred percent sure when I went back to business school what exactly I wanted to do. I wanted to explore other career opportunities, and I did spend time doing that at business school, and I just found that I wasn't getting the same level of satisfaction from doing anything else. I really craved the fast paced intensity of investment banking. I really love the deal aspect, the kind of the highs and lows, the drama around it, being there when your client has a big win, being there with a team when there's a late night. All of that I find super motivating. And so I think it was that experience of going to business school and really trying something else out that made me realize that banking was really what I wanted to do, long-term.
Allissa Kline (06:58):
Hope.
Hope Dmuchowski (07:03):
I started in investment banking and I loved, to your point, the challenges, but I didn't feel connected to it. And so I actually left banking and went to work for a furniture company. I thought I wanted a product that I could understand, and then I was doing a financial analysis. The average person keeps a couch for three and a half years, and I thought, well, the average person keeps a mortgage for 24 years, maybe banking is a little bit more than I thought. And so I had the opportunity to go to regional banking after leaving investment banking, and I had a mentor early on and I asked him, why have you done banking? He said, it is the only career. And he had done a lot of different things. He said, it's the only career where we make dreams come true every single day.
(07:41):
And that stuck with me. And I said, what do you mean? He's like, you will go to a mortgage meeting, you'll hear about the first time home buyer. You'll go to a wealth meeting and you'll hear about people that are putting their kids through college for their first time without worrying. And that was the moment that I really understood banking, especially regional banking. And I've spent 19 years in it since for three banks. And I love hearing the stories. I love going into the communities. We're a big commercial bank and I get to go meet with our clients. I did a tour at the end of last year for three projects. We were financing and everybody we met with, which was in Middle Tennessee, not a thriving area around the big cities, talked about how many jobs they were creating for non-college graduate people. And I thought, wow, if my mom as a single mom had an opportunity to work like this, what would my life have been like? And so I love regional banking. I see the impact we have in our communities every single day. I just can't imagine leaving that.
Allissa Kline (08:37):
Cristin, anything more on that moment for you?
Cristin K. Reid (08:40):
Yeah, I mean, I still haven't decided what exactly I want to do, but right now it's banking. I mean, I hope to someday be a full-time philanthropist, but I think there's a lot of money that needs to be made between now and then. But it wasn't even out of law school. I was practicing law a little bit and it was involved in building a company and I did the offering circulars and the regulatory filings and that type of thing. And so it was that satisfaction of being in a positive environment, not a negative one where you're creating value, you're building teams of people and constructing companies. And that was very exciting for me and that is the parallel. That's when I realized that I could find that in banking.
Allissa Kline (09:23):
I wanted to ask about opportunities you may have taken early on in your careers that helped you position yourself to the place that you're in today. Were there certain mentorships, internships, different programs that helped you keep going on that path that you decided that you wanted to be on?
Jessica Payne (09:54):
Sure. I am happy to go on that. So for me, I think what's been very influential with how I've gotten to where I am today is some of the things that I've done, which maybe been a little bit more self-directed than even just programs. When I was an associate in investment banking, I decided that I wanted to take a chance and work internationally, which is something I never had done before. And I thought that was really something that would obviously be a big change personally moving to another country and I think would only have gotten harder over time is you kind of get more roots where you live. And so I had just gotten married the year before and my husband and I decided to ask both of our respective firms if we could move to London. And we just made it happen with not knowing exactly what was going to happen once we got there, besides who we were going to work for.
(10:52):
And I think that one decision, it's like the butterfly effect of how it changes everything else going forward. Once I moved there, I decided to change which firm I was working at. That firm I was working at then led me to eventually move back to New York and then to change firms again. But I feel like if I didn't take that chance of changing my own trajectory, I probably would've never ended up doing what I've done today. And so I think doing that early on in my career specifically was really helpful. I don't know if I could have taken that same chance later on.
Allissa Kline (11:29):
Yeah, it gets harder as you get older. Hope or Cristin, any early opportunities that you can think of?
Hope Dmuchowski (11:37):
For me, I volunteered for everything, and that's always what I tell young people. It's not about the role you're in when you're here. They're starting a new project. If you hear they're working on something, volunteer. And I remember when I went to bb and t, I had come from Deutsche Bank where we weren't allowed to leave before 9:00 PM It just wasn't allowed if you were the junior person on the desk. And so about six months in, I volunteered to work on a new group. They were starting. They're like, well, you don't have time. I was like, well, I don't know what to do when I go home at five o'clock. What if I just do this after hours? And so I did. I stayed an hour or two each day after work and worked on it, which led to my next job. And then in that role, I had an opportunity to join.
(12:14):
We're doing wealth acceleration. I said, can I be on that team? And they're like, how are you going to fit into your workday? I was like, I promise I will. I'm on the wealth acceleration team just to learn. And then I got an offer to work in wealth. And so I would say that the best thing to do is just keep learning. I think one of the worst things I could have done for my career is to set out 25 years ago and say I wanted to be A CFO. I've spent about 60% of my career outside of finance in technology, in sales and trading in wealth, and that's made me a better CFO because I understand what our business partners are going through, not just what's in a budget or what the analysts want to hear.
Cristin K. Reid (12:51):
I echo the learning. It's creating a personal culture of learning and being curious, asking questions sometimes to a fault. Carolyn mentioned that the nun at her Catholic school, I was at a Catholic school, my sixth grade teacher called my parents in for a special conference, and the complaint was that I was questioning him and as again my dad, the litigator said, and so not being afraid to ask questions was something that comes unfortunately natural to me, but also not being limited to whatever you think your career path is going to be and educating yourself in all areas. I mean, I went from everything to attending a regulator school to law conference or SEC filings. And then I formed a relationship with a CFO at our company in a mentorship role. He was my mentor because that was the one area I really knew nothing about with my background and always having the desire to create opportunities to give yourself a full understanding of what's going on at the company.
Allissa Kline (14:00):
Do you all find that you have to, you've had to go out and seek those mentors or have you been fortunate enough where somebody's taken you under their wing throughout your career?
Hope Dmuchowski (14:15):
I've had to seek those mentors, and I consider it a little bit like dating. Many told me no. So there was many women, there was many men that said, Hey, would you be willing to spend time with me? Would you be willing to mentor me? And I would say about 70% of 'em said, no, I have too much on my plate. No, I've already done this. And I had to be persistent looking for the type of mentors I wanted that were outside of my group or outside of the backgrounds. I understood. So absolutely my most influential mentors I've had are ones that I sought out.
Cristin K. Reid (14:44):
I agree with that. I mean, I had to seek out the mentor relationship and I honestly didn't do a great job at that. I should have had more confidence to do that more often because as I sit today, I wish I'm more than happy to help anyone who asks me for help or become a mentor. And I always felt like they would be burdened. And your experience was that they were so I wish I would've been more proactive.
Jessica Payne (15:10):
Yeah, I think mentorship is a topic that some people find. They naturally find mentors and other people need to seek them out. And I think hearing even on this stage, people seeking out mentors, be really proactive about it is a great lesson. I think a lot of times there have been people that have organically kind of become mentors for me, but there are times in my career I can think about where it felt like I didn't really have a mentor during that time. And because I've always had the thought that these things just happen, they kind of click. And I think taking the time to be like, I have to be proactive. I have to have these awkward conversations of reaching out to people. Maybe they say no, and that's okay. I think at my firm, we have this conversation a lot around should we put a formal mentorship program in place for junior people or is this something that has to form organically? And I think the right answer is probably a combination of the two. For some people, it just clicks. For some people, they can definitely benefit from a formal program. And I just think the important thing is that everyone in the end field supported.
Allissa Kline (16:24):
Yeah. Maybe that leads to the next question or area to discuss, which is different challenges I guess that you each have faced in growing your careers. And it sounds like maybe at times, maybe not having a direct mentorship has been a little bit of a struggle. But I'm wondering if you can share some other hurdles that you've had to overcome throughout your career, early in your career or more recently, and how you navigated those challenges. Who wants to be the one to kick this one off?
Cristin K. Reid (17:07):
For me, it was establishing credibility. I was most often the youngest and only female in the room, and balancing my desire to be a part of the conversation with their desire to hear me was a challenge for me and knowing when to speak up and assert myself and when to sit back and listen and learn. So it was different, a different world. I did have a female boss at society, but she was clearly struggling with how to relate to individuals and didn't have that mentorship skill. When I went in for my first review, she said, now I'm going to sit on the couch next to you because I understand that will make me more approachable. And I'm thinking, well, you just ruined that. So just finding your right balance and having the confidence to be yourself and to not be perfect and to not overanalyze everything that you do when you're on that path trying to ascend because you're going to make mistakes, just make small ones. So.
Jessica Payne (18:14):
Yeah, I think in terms of challenges, and this is probably even a challenge that I'm still figuring out how to best overcome is just, and it was even spoken about on the prior panel of just around self-promotion. I think that I have struggled with tooting my own horn talking about the kinds of projects and successes I've had. I very much always been a heads down, get the work done team player kind of person, which I think is absolutely valuable and not something that I want to change. But I think the flip side of that is making sure that all the work I've done is visible and people know about it and that I'm not kind of toiling in a silo. And then I'm also not making assumptions that people around the organization know what I'm doing. And so this is something I'm currently working on.
(19:06):
I'm trying to be a lot more proactive, just like setting check-in meetings with people that maybe aren't my mentors, aren't people I work with every day, but people that are important and influential at my organization and making sure that I spend time to tell them what I'm working on. And I think that that's important not just for me, but just in terms of the greater organization, having that connectivity, having that knowledge of who I'm meeting with on a regular basis, the kinds of companies that I'm supporting so that we can kind of use that across the firm to win more deals and help more clients.
Hope Dmuchowski (19:40):
For me, it was advocating for myself. And to your point a little bit like self-promotion is how do you advocate for yourself? There was many times I was passed over for promotions or not considered for a role, and I had a couple executive coaches I've worked with over the years and some great mentors, and I said, how do I approach my boss to understand what I can do differently? And instead of saying, why didn't I get that promotion or why didn't get that job? Using it as coaching moments. So even now when something will happen, you'll sit down and say, what could I have done differently? Why didn't you consider me for this? What are the skills I need? And being very specific when you advocate for yourself, not asking them to explain something, but asking what you need to do to grow. What are the things that I can do so that next time I'll be concerned was something I really had to learn because I think especially as young women we're taught, just keep your head down, work hard, and people will notice that's not an advice a young man's ever given. They're told to advocate for themselves, they're told to be out in front. And I've dealt with that a lot in my career in every company I've worked at throughout the years. And so I think learning to advocate for yourself in an effective way is the hardest thing women are challenged with in an industry that is still male dominated.
Allissa Kline (20:51):
You've each, I think, mentioned this idea of advocating for yourself. So what are some concrete examples then I guess, of how you're doing that? The panel before was talking about keeping a running list of what you do throughout the year so that you can go back to that list and bring it to your boss at review time. Is it more, I don't know, do you have social media? Do you promote yourself that way? What are some concrete examples of advocating for your own self and your successes?
Jessica Payne (21:25):
I think winning this award here at this conference is probably the best example I have of saying there's an opportunity out there. I want recognition. I had a great achievement this past year. I'm going to bring this to my boss, see if he will support me on this. He was of course happy to, but he was not going to bring that to me and nominate me for it. Not because he's not a great caring guy, but just because he's busy, he's doing a lot of other things. It's up to me to find these opportunities to shine a light on myself. So I think this is a great example of that.
Hope Dmuchowski (21:59):
I wish I had a great answer. I think you should buy you time, you get to this point, but I think it's really situational. One of the things I learned probably halfway through my career from an executive coach is when I got feedback from a boss or another senior leader that I didn't understand and I couldn't put in context, and I've probably done this about three or four times now. I say, can you give me example of that? And they're like, no, but you do it a lot. I said, okay, next time you see me doing that in a meeting, can you pull me aside right after the meeting? Give me the real time feedback. And this has happened to me three times now. And then in my midyear end of year review, I said, Hey, you didn't pull me aside at all and have any of those examples. They're like, yeah, yeah, you got better. I didn't get better. And so an executive coach said, have them tell you real time, not just during your review where you're being too aggressive in a meeting or you've done this, and when you ask 'em to do it, you put the ownership on them. And then when you follow back up every single time told, oh, you've got a lot better.
Cristin K. Reid (22:58):
I don't do a good job at that in my role. I ask for feedback, I ask for feedback from my directors and ask 'em to fill out surveys, but it's inconsequential. So it's something that I need to continue to work on. I try to do it by mentoring the younger people in the bank and in teaching them. And I guess that's the best way for me to do that.
Allissa Kline (23:26):
Let's see. I think when we were doing this prep call, we did a prep call for this panel a couple of weeks ago, and I remember hope saying Your job is a 365 day a year job when work calls you're at work. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how you each juggle work and then the rest of your lives. And there's always discussion about work-life balance. I don't know if that's the right phrase anymore. I don't know if balance is the right word, but I wondered if you could each talk about how you move through your days and take care of all the other things you have to take care of in your life and these very demanding jobs that you're in.
Hope Dmuchowski (24:11):
I can go first since clearly I started this one off in a prep session. I'm very intentional with my children as to what I'm going to be at. I have three boys, a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old and 11-year-old. God knew I was not a girl mom and thank you for three boys, but I'm very intentional. They all play sports. I'm not that mom that wants to see every soccer game. If it's a tournament, if it's a final, I make it, and I don't miss this, but I'm intentional about what I want to be at with them. When I was younger as a mom, I felt like I had to go to every class trip to prove that I was a good mom. I had to be at every soccer game or every basketball game. And now I prioritize. I prioritize me, which is when do I need to be there as a mom?
(24:52):
When do I need to be at work? And sometimes on Saturdays, my husband's at a soccer field and I'm home all by myself, and my boys say, aren't you coming to my game? No, mom needs some downtime. And so I would say prioritization, but my career is part of my home life. This last Thursday and Friday, I was touring colleges. I was at Boston College and then Georgetown with my oldest. I took calls in the car both ways. As we were driving to the campus, I took calls at lunch and I had the conversation with him, you have a choice as you go to college. You can pick a career that you get to leave at work. You can leave each night and go home and you're not going to get calls. Or you can have a career like me. You can have the opportunity to go send your children to college where they can go anywhere they want, where you don't have to worry about financial aid.
(25:35):
I didn't have that opportunity. So I make it very clear to them that this is the decision I've made, why I've chosen the in banking and that they need to choose their decision. And if they choose not to be executives, my one might be an architect. I be like, that's great. You'll know your project timeline, you can go home. And so for me, it's not, I leave work at home. I let my kids know what I do and they see it. They see it every day. And so absolutely on vacations, they hear me on calls. I will schedule on vacation, early morning calls. I have teenagers now, so they tend to not wake up before 10. And so if anything I need to do on vacation, I have seven, 8:00 AM conference calls and then they wake up and we enjoy our day. But when you get to this level, you can't say, oops, sorry, I'm on vacation. But I make that very intentional with my kids and my husband as to why I've chosen this career and how you make it work.
Jessica Payne (26:25):
I can go next. I'm also a mom of three. My kids are a little bit younger. I have a 9-year-old daughter, a 6-year-old son, and a 2-year-old son. Yeah, I mean this job, investment banking, private equity that I'm in, it is 24 7, 365. It doesn't mean that I'm working all those hours, but I have to be available all those hours. And I've known that going into it. And that's the trade off I've made. And similar to hope, I tell my kids what I'm doing. I'm working. I have a work trip. I'm going to be leaving very early in the morning and I'm coming back in two days from now. And sometimes I'll cry about it and that's hard to see, but they understand why I'm doing it and I'm trying to normalize it. And that is what's normal to them. And the other part of it is just a lot of support. My husband works a very demanding job. He's a lawyer. We have a wonderful nanny who's absolutely the backbone of the entire operation. I dunno what we would do without her. And it's just asking for help. It's planning out. It takes time. It doesn't happen by accident. And it's very important for me to make sure that my week, I've planned it out. We have a big calendar on our refrigerator that says who needs to be where and when, and we take it week by week.
(27:49):
And I think of it as a phase of life. This is a very challenging phase right now. I'm trying to build my family, I'm building my career, and there are other parts of my life that I just can't spend as much time on. I just can't do things with friends the way I used to. I do not go to the gym at all. I'll admit that I just had to put some things to the side. I'll go to hot yoga once every two weeks, and that's a big thing for me, and I love that hour, but I think about it as a season, a phase of life, and this is what I have to prioritize in this phase of life.
Cristin K. Reid (28:27):
Well, God didn't realize that I wasn't a girl mom either, but I have three girls. They're all technically adults, but the middle one just learned how to cut meat when she went to college. But it is a challenge prioritizing and you want to be a hundred percent on in both areas. And I didn't want to short my children obviously, or my priorities at work. And so on a day-to-day basis, I try to make sure that I'm present in the moment. If I'm talking to my kids, I try to stay focused on that and get the work issues out of my mind and then vice versa. But I've also talked about my work with my kids and they're older now. So encourage them to work with me a little bit over the summer and that helps them and throughout their lives help them to understand what I was doing and why.
(29:22):
But when they were younger, I did have an au pair, which helped a lot, just having the confidence of having someone that you trusted in the house and that the girls loved and enjoyed, but letting them know that it's important and I'm doing it because I love it and I want to keep doing it and sacrificing my personal time during that stage, which I'm hopefully just going to get back now that my youngest is off to college. So I recognize it's a choice and be happy with that rather than look at all the things that you're missing, just recognize that that is a choice I made.
Hope Dmuchowski (30:01):
I add one thing to what Allissa said, because you talk about learning. I only learned, I guess seven years ago, I refused to have a nanny. I did not want au pair. I did not want a nanny. My husband was running a NASCAR team. He was on the road. I was building my career in banking. And I said to an executive as we were creating Truist, one of the female executives, I said, I just don't want somebody else raising my children. And she said, they're not raising your children. They're driving your children to carpool. They're making lunch. They're fighting over the homework you don't want to fight about so that when you get home you have quality time with them. And I was like, where were you 10 years ago? And we got no pair from Brazil, and she still lives with us and we're sponsoring her to stay here.
(30:39):
But the guilt was real for me that somehow if I brought in-home house, I wasn't a good enough mom. And it took an executive when I was almost 40 years old to tell me that they weren't going to raise my kids for me. And so for all of you that have mom guilt or don't have children yet, that was the single best advice I got. And in my marriage, it was great because I got home on Wednesday nights when we first had a repair and all the kids had soccer practice. So we stayed home and had date night every Wednesday night. I was like, wow, I get to see my husband on Wednesday night and we're not sitting in a parking lot driving three kids back and forth, and they came home with a nanny and we're happy and all been at practice. And we had Wednesday night date night for an entire semester of sports.
Allissa Kline (31:22):
I know they're older now, but do you still feel that guilt I guess, as you're going through your day to day on missing out on things?
Hope Dmuchowski (31:31):
A little bit, but not too much. I do have boys. Boys, I don't know. They don't do the guilt thing. I grew up with two sisters and a single mom, so all I knew about was high school drama and guilt and all the things. Boys are just like, so mom, you're gone. Do I get to pick the next vacation? Can I get another puppy? And so they've learned the art of negotiation very well. They've got a puppy for every move. They negotiated a, when we moved to Memphis two years after we'd moved to Charlotte, they said, well, they came back and said, mom, the three of us have talked. And I said, what? And they said, we have a roller coaster bucket list and we will move to Memphis if you promise to take us to all these amusement parks. They were 12, 10, and seven. I said, you guys will be really great future leaders. I've taught you well. So we have a bucket list, and we've been to 12 amusement parks in the last two and a half years since I moved to Memphis.
Allissa Kline (32:19):
Those are excellent negotiation skills to develop early. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about looking, I guess looking ahead in your careers, but first maybe look back, what advice would you give to your 25 or 30-year-old self today, knowing what you know now?
Cristin K. Reid (32:44):
25 is not old. That's what I thought. That was my worst birthday ever. I used to think that once you're 25, you just don't count anymore, Tom. Just to have more, whatever you exude on the outside to have more internal confidence and not to worry so much about the mistakes that you make and to dream bigger. It's not that it's held me back, but I just have taken things step by step. And for me, it's worked out and I've always done something that I enjoyed because I like learning. But if you have an aspiration to have a senior role someplace to chart that path and go after it, rather than coming up with all the reasons you can't. 50% of bank employees are women. 32% are officers, 7.5% are CEOs. So finding someone who can support you in your dream and asking them for help.
Jessica Payne (33:49):
Yeah, I think the advice I would give to myself is to have more self-confidence. I think it's very easy to get in this negative self-talk loop or thinking that you're not ready yet for the next thing or that someone else has more experience than you or knows more about this than you do. But now I just turned 40, so looking back over the past 15 years, that's not necessarily true. I think that there's a lot of self-confidence that I think other people have had that I wish I could have had about. I am smart enough, I do know enough, I have enough expertise to really add value here. And while it's always been true, it's been hard to believe. Sometimes you think there's always something else to learn and there is always something else to learn. That doesn't mean that you are not the banker that your client needs at that moment or you're not the expert in that moment because it's a combination of self-confidence and that self-talk. So trying to pep yourself up, talk yourself up internally, I would try to do more of that and encourage my younger self to believe in myself more.
Hope Dmuchowski (35:02):
I agree with what both of them said. Dream bigger and believe in yourself. Younger in my career, every time a boss or somebody else had something negative, I heard that 10 times more than I heard the one positive thing. And as you looked up and you saw less women in each level, you thought, well, I'm not going to make it because I've gotten this feedback or I've gotten that feedback. And so believing in yourself and getting that, we talk about that networking, asking somebody else, have you experienced this? How do I get through it? I do a lot of mentoring. I have a rule when I go in a room and speak to young people that they're allowed to call my assistant and ask for 15 minutes, and I spend 15 minutes with 'em. It's amazing. I just started mentoring somebody who's at an investment bank now, the stories she's telling me of the things people are telling her, the way she's being treated, conversations that are intentional to make her feel uncomfortable. I'm like, gosh, it's been 25 years since I was an investment banking. And so just looking for that mentor saying, should I believe this is what I'm being told? Should I believe they don't want me in the room? They've said, this is absolutely the best thing you can do. I don't think I really had self-confidence in myself till my forties. I kept hearing that negative self-talk that other people reaffirmed for me.
Allissa Kline (36:16):
Thinking about, I guess how you can use your own influence to help others coming up through in the industry. Anything that you can add about how to keep, encourage more women to get into banking, how to keep more women in the industry. There's all of those stats about how women, there's a higher percentage of women that tend to leave. So there's a gap then from mid-career all the way up to the C-suite. So any thoughts I guess, on encouraging more women to come into banking and then keeping them there once they're there?
Cristin K. Reid (37:01):
Well, I think everyone in this room is successful. You're here because of that. It's incumbent upon each one of us to identify people that may not have the skills but want to grow and want to learn. I started a program with our interns this summer, not exclusive to women, but where I've met with them every week and had lunch and talked to 'em about banking in general and all the many things that they could do even in a community bank. And that you can learn there's so many different paths and just try to help them understand what they could do if they chose to and put them in a position to succeed. Bring them into senior meetings when you can. So they understand that they're being taught for the sake of their own future rather than for performing a task for the company. But in doing that with the, we affectionately called it the kids club, I learned way more than they did because they were teaching me about their perspective and having their young voice in the room as tremendous value to the bank. So it's to help them, but it's also to help the bank.
Jessica Payne (38:14):
So on this topic, it is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. It's something I care a lot about, but it's so hard because women are all different. We all have different reasons for being in this industry or for leaving this industry. I think women don't only leave the industry because they're concerned about not having the time they want to spend with families or other obligations, but I think they also leave because they find better opportunities professionally for them. It's not just all about, oh, they thought they couldn't hack it so they decide to leave. It's also that they find things they want to do that are different. And so I think everyone should be kind of looked at as an individual. What I like to do at my firm is spend those hours, those times with women that I think have sort of high potential. I like to set up coffee chats with them, spend time one-on-one with them and try to meet them where they are as individuals. I think everyone has kind of a different perspective on their own career and different concerns. And so I wish there was a one answer that we could sort of apply broadly to fix the problem and maybe someone will come up with that. But I think for now, the way I like to approach it is kind of on the one-on-one level.
Hope Dmuchowski (39:38):
Yeah, I agree on the one-on-one level. I think young women as they get to that mid-career and they do have their family or that negative self-talk has really reiterated to them, well, you can't do this if you do that. Being a CFO and a math person, I always have the stats. I said, if you want to be in the C-suite, you realize in a Fortune 500, that's a small group of 4 billion people, you're going to be a one in a 1 billion to get to the C-suite, whether you're a male or female. Getting to the C-suite is hard, and are you committed to doing that? And you may not get there, but if you are wavering, then it is very hard. You've got to commit. You've got to believe in yourself that I can do this. Find the mentors, go through the difficult years. I will tell you, I went home at least twice in my career with a financial spreadsheet telling my husband how I was going to quit the next day.
(40:27):
And he said, no, you're going back to work. Because remember, these are all the reasons you want to do it. And so you've got to be committed to it. It is very easy for men as well in that mid-career when it gets really exhausting to say, Hey, I want to do something that is not as taxing, and that's okay. But you've got to realize in that part of your career, it's going to get harder and it gets harder at each level. The other thing that I have been really impressed with this younger generation is the men that take paternity leave. I love that. For every time I had to tell a boss I was pregnant, I was like, oh. And two out of the three said, well, you coming back. That was their first question. And so I love now when I have these young men that get that tell me their wives are pregnant, I said, how long are you taking paternity leave?
(41:12):
And almost all of them in my team now take it. And so they're gone for three months. And I think that's just an amazing thing for us to see in this next generation that the young men are expecting to be home and have that bonding time so that when somebody says, I'm having a baby, male or female, they're saying, okay, how long are you going to be out? And the workforce is having to adjust to that. I've heard a lot of negative comments in my last two companies from men saying, I just don't understand this. I do, and I think it's such an amazing thing. Yesterday, two of my peers sent me the Wall Street Journal article that talked about successful females that have stay at home husbands. My husband did retire when I took this job, and the stats are that it has doubled. And Jane Frazier was in there. I did not know her husband stayed home. And so I think this next generation is trying to share the burden more. And I'm really hopeful that makes a difference in the workforce. And if your company does not have a paternity leave, go advocate for it.
Allissa Kline (42:12):
Last question. How do you each stay motivated during those moments? I hope you're just talking about coming home twice and saying, I'm quitting tomorrow. How do you, I guess a couple of words, short answer on how you stay motivated during those challenges.
Hope Dmuchowski (42:33):
For me, it's my support group. And so it's the people. I can call my husband being one of those, but other people just saying, this is really hard. How do I do this? I feel like I'm one of the luckiest executives here in that at First Horizons, one of the reasons I went 60% of our executive team is females, our chief operating officer, our chief risk officer, our chief credit officer, head of HR, head of corporate communications, head of market. So I have this huge group of people that I can reach out to and nothing against men, but you call 'em and saying, I'm having a bad day. And they're like, well, do you want a drink? No, but thank you. And a woman will say, what do you want me to do? Do you want to talk? What can I do? Let's walk for a coffee. And so having that network of people I can reach out to, especially now, the ones that after we leave a difficult executive meeting or an offsite that we have an issue say, can we just talk for five minutes? That has been huge for me. Each one of those times, find that person that you can talk to, that empathizes with you. They don't have to give you the answer. Just say, you're right. That wasn't fair. Or you're right. That's a really difficult day.
Jessica Payne (43:35):
So I think for me, I had to say my husband's my biggest cheerleader. He's the one that keeps me motivated. We've been together for a very long time. We've sort of dreamed of this life together, and anytime where I need another boost, he reminds me of what we're building towards, what all this hard work is for. And so that's really what keeps me motivated.
Cristin K. Reid (43:58):
I love what I do. I work with my family. You got bad days in every aspects of life. So I just try to keep perspective and say, today was a bad day, but it will get better. And how can I solve the problem and move forward?
Allissa Kline (44:14):
I like that. Great. I think that's probably a great place to start. Thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts. Really appreciate it.