Feel The Fear, And Do It Anyway

My Life in Treasury: Aimee Cullen

Aimee Cullen, Head of Treasury, CarTrawler, is on a mission. As a committee member of the Irish Association of Corporate Treasurers (IACT), she is leading an initiative to raise awareness about the world of treasury “in the hope it will attract more people to the field”. She talks to TMI about her motivation and what the profession means to her.

A career in treasury offers an abundance of positive attributes – and for many professionals who have featured in TMI’s My Life in Treasury profiles over the years, the fact that there is no such thing as a typical day is one of its strongest. Of course, for some individuals this may be a challenge too far. But for those, like Cullen, who have taken up the mantle of treasury, it really is a source of constant satisfaction.

Aimee Cullen
Head of Treasury, CarTrawler

Summing up the profession in three words – real-world, challenging, variety – she feels that treasury offers the kind of career that will suit anyone with an interest in lifelong learning and problem-solving. The diversity of duties, she notes, is due in part to treasury being a support function for the whole business. The department has a vital strategic role in understanding events from a macro perspective, and taking timely action to protect the organisation from an ever-changing accumulation of risks.

This combination of the real world meeting challenge and variety head-on is no better exemplified than in Cullen’s recent return to Ireland. Having armed herself with valuable extended overseas experience within a multinational, she found herself not only having to adjust to life within a much smaller business but also, just five weeks into taking on her new role at CarTrawler, she was thrown into a world where she had to adapt to a new regime under pandemic lockdown.

The dynamics of the profession are an ongoing inspiration for Cullen to keep progressing in her own career. Joining CarTrawler in early 2020, her initial remit for the newly created position of Head of Treasury was to shape, define, and expand a new treasury function. This demanded both knowledge and experience, but now she also needed steady nerves to handle the onset of the growing global crisis. Clearly these are commodities of which she is not in short supply.

Building blocks

Cullen had previously worked at American multinational corporation, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) where, over her 10-year tenure, she had risen to Senior Manager, Capital Markets & Global Cash Analysis, based in the firm’s US headquarters. This was a role that she took on following a period as Treasury Manager, Regional Treasury Centre LatAm, Brazil, and before that, Senior Treasury Analyst, Belgium, and Senior Investment Analyst, Ireland. These positions of increasing responsibility were preceded by a 10-year stint in banking.

That decade of experience in banking has helped Cullen in her approach to the profession, she says. Indeed, with seven years managing outsourced treasury at ABN Amro, and three at Bank of Scotland (BoS) running a treasury management information (MI) and reporting facility, she gained valuable insight into how financial services players view their treasury clients.

While treasury services have long since ceased to be an offering for most banks, at the time, the role with ABN clearly afforded her a useful “go-between” view of both banking and corporate life. “It gave me a flavour of treasury as a problem-solving role, trying to support real-world transactions for clients, facilitating intercompany netting flows, for example. I loved that aspect of it but then I also learnt, for example, how to appease the Chief Risk Officer who might have been impatient waiting on some of the larger currency flows to settle.” Success, she discovered, was often about forming relationships and sharing the right information.

Banking treasury services was a career path Cullen had ventured into straight out of college. By her own admission she “didn’t really understand the nature of what it would be”. However, the world of banking had tried its best to steer her in the direction of corporate treasury. Not only had it offered her the opportunity to see how the other side operated, but it also created the perfect occasion to make the leap into treasury proper, the J&J role following hot on the heels of her second redundancy from banking.

To explain: when ABN Amro exited the outsourced treasury market (as did most other tier-one players at the time), Cullen had already completed her Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) exams. A brief spell with a reinsurance company in 2007 in the soon-to-be calamitous world of securitisation and asset-backed mortgages only served to highlight her interest in treasury.

A role appeared at BoS for a middle-office treasury manager that she felt would give her a deeper perspective on banking treasury, working in the wholesale funding team. As the 2008 financial crisis accelerated, Lloyds took over BoS, eventually exiting the Irish market altogether.

Redundancy number two found Cullen speaking to recruiters, with a contract role with J&J being offered. It involved the design of an automated system of calculating returns on its portfolios. “I thought, ‘this is a tech job and outside of my skillset’, so with no hope in my own mind of getting the job I met the small investment team in Ireland anyway.” She was offered the position.

There is a valuable lesson in her fearless approach. “I talk now about being agile and willing to roll up your sleeves and get on with the job, but that went far beyond the scope of this job spec,” Cullen recalls. Indeed, she found herself supporting the team, making investments, looking at other projects and very much being part of the J&J treasury. At the end of the year, an opportunity came up in J&J to take a permanent role. “I jumped at the chance to get involved in the day-to-day happenings and bring in my own experiences to a varied multinational.”

Wider outlook

J&J has a commitment to support and develop its employees within an international base. With Cullen now pushing to accelerate her own treasury career, the first senior role that coincided with her plan was that of Treasury Manager at the company’s Regional Treasury Centre for LatAm, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

J&J offered Cullen full support, even with her “non-existent” Portuguese language skills. She knew that with the firm’s 120-strong treasury team, “if it wasn’t working out there would be another role to go into”. But it did work out, and it was a “fantastic experience”.

Indeed, it was one that led to Cullen taking promotion to the US-based corporate treasury team. “For a triple-A rated company, you’re not going to say ‘no’, even though it had never been in my career plan to work in the US.”

A supportive company is important when it comes to facilitating career progression, but there really is no substitute for “seizing opportunities when they arise”, says Cullen. “As the adage goes: feel the fear and do it anyway!” In fact, she adds, “a job may not work out, but the opportunities to travel, meet people, and have new experiences, means you will learn so much, regardless of the outcome. To me, the rewards always far outweigh the risks.”

It’s an attitude that shone through in her mentoring activities in J&J. As part of her engagement with the internal programme, Cullen was involved in an array of employee resources groups (ERGs), advising, encouraging, and sharing experiences with people from a broad spectrum of society as they sought to move up through the ranks of treasury and finance. “I’d always say, ‘just go for it’ because time goes so quickly. The nine years I spent on the road with J&J went in the blink of an eye.”

The wealth of experience that can be accumulated in an overseas posting will always be a considerable benefit for any professional, declares Cullen. In particular, she believes that the internationalisation of the treasurer, as a support role, brings a greater understanding of what’s required to assist those on the ground.

“We can sit in a corporate office in London or Dublin and build assumptions on how things should work, and there are policy and procedure documents to help this view. But until you are on the ground trying to implement and make that position work, in a country very different from your own – for me that included Argentina, Colombia and Brazil – you will never have real-life context. Unless you live it with them, you will never know what people on the ground are facing.”

However, while treasury has an “obligation to adapt and support these operations”, she accepts that this can only be carried out “within reason”. Rarely if ever will treasury flexibility override corporate governance policy. But then finding a balance is all part of the job for Cullen.

Team building

Although on-the-ground experience is important for the treasurer, so too is building a strong extended team. An inclusive approach to teamwork helps forge connections across the business, which in turn helps treasury in supporting other functions to carry out their tasks successfully. “This is particularly important when it comes to financially safeguarding the business against risk, presenting timely information and advice,” says Cullen.

This is how it is at CarTrawler. “We all have our constituent duties, but we all see the bigger picture,” she explains. “We sometimes have competing objectives, and that’s when we really need good teamwork so we are able to have open and honest conversations.”

For Cullen then, the soft skills of communication and empathy should be a treasury staple. On her journey so far, she has managed to incorporate these personal assets within her acute sense of how to solve problems. Talk to a “treasury lifer”, she notes, “and they will frequently say that other professionals often voice their frustrations about treasury requests for the context of a particular issue we are trying to solve for them”. Of course, the ‘it depends’ response is rarely what non-treasurers want to hear, but, she explains: “Our aim is not to frustrate the process, but to come up with the best solution, based on the full facts.”

Making the right decision in treasury is vital because mistakes can be extremely expensive. This is why strong teamwork also means empowering every stakeholder to speak up, particularly in an international setting. “If someone is intimidated by senior management, feels culturally bound not to question authority, or believes that that their language skills are not sufficient to get their point across, they might suppress their views,” she explains. This may prove damaging to the organisation, or even cause an opportunity to be missed.

“It’s about giving everybody a voice and inviting their views. That way, you get their perspective and their insight. They may ask the obvious questions that those too close to the issue often do not think to ask. It’s why everybody should know they are part of the team, and that their opinion matters.”

Community support

The idea that people from different backgrounds can add value to a work-based team is one to which Cullen fully subscribes. She is active in her support for D&I in her community too. Now back in Ireland after her global travels, she is involved in adult literacy schemes.

“I’ve seen people take themselves out of a process because, for various reasons, they can’t read and write as well as they feel they should. Because of this, they cannot seize the opportunities that others may take for granted. Making sure that we give everyone equal opportunity is important because in personal finance for example, not having literacy skills can expose individuals to exploitation.”

Cullen’s belief that “one individual has as much right to be a part of this world as any another”, extends to giving many more people the chance to realistically aspire to a role such as treasurer, regardless of their background or personal circumstances. Businesses that don’t make it a goal to try to understand the great variety of people out there, are potentially missing many new opportunities, she warns.

“I see huge amounts of money being spent by companies encouraging innovative thinking, but then they don’t look at what’s right in front of them,” she says. One seemingly naïve question from an ‘outsider’ could be the genesis of the next disrupter. “Businesses will never be fully innovative if they don’t start listening to different perspectives.”

Supporting body

When circumstances call for a rapid response from treasury, innovative or otherwise, the support of the professional community is always on hand. As a member of the IACT committee, Cullen is part of a body that is determined to maintain itself as a relevant and available resource, especially during the worst of times.

During the first waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, the IACT stepped up its regular webinar series, covering the most pressing topics. But members have also been able to ask technical questions and seek guidance through its peer-to-peer networking facility. Naturally there have been commercially sensitive issues to tackle, but most members have acknowledged these, parked them, and had those vital conversations with their peers, notes Cullen.

“In the pandemic, only another treasurer is living what you’re living. When you can’t manage the cash as effectively as you might like because you don’t know what the cash flow is going to be, or you’ve no idea what other shocks are about to hit you, just being able to contact someone in a similar industry and discuss the situation with them has been a lifeline for many.”

To celebrate the great work accomplished by members during this time, the IACT ran its inaugural awards event in 2021. It has also taken action for its less experienced members. Awareness of the IACT’s mentoring programme was raised during the pandemic. As Cullen explains: “Because many senior treasurers have been focused on keeping the wheels turning, we’ve been making sure that resources and support are still available for our junior members too.”

It’s also been a period where the IACT has learnt more about what its members want from their association. As a result, it is now expanding its committee to include junior treasury representatives. This is aimed at boosting diversity and inclusion, where taking on board the views – and skill sets – of a younger generation will help inform IACT’s policy.

Right path

For those who are making their way up through the ranks, knowing that professionals such as Cullen are happy to share their own experiences is reassuring. She may believe that she “got lucky” at an early stage of her own career, with her first position in treasury outsourcing offering exposure to a broad spectrum of the role, but from there on, her progress has been an object lesson in resourcefulness and courage.

For those only just embarking on their financial career, and for whom the path is not yet obvious, Cullen is eager to dispel the myth that corporate treasury is “just an aggressive, male-dominated dealer room”. That, she explains “is not what it is. Rather, it is a multifaceted role where if you keep asking for the next experience, and make time for building relationships, you can have a very long and extremely varied career”. Indeed, she hopes the real-world blend of challenge and variety will be a powerful draw for future generations.