How To Sign Michigan Banking Agreement

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[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi i'm michael and i'm landon and this is in their 20s the best podcast for people in their 20s we had someone very special on our show today we spoke with the most powerful woman in banking kathy passant who currently serves as the chief operations and technology officer at bank of america a company where she oversees 95 000 employees between 35 different countries and has a budget of 14 billion dollars she's very influential and she embodies starting from the bottom she began her career on the credit training floor and worked her way up to the top working in so many different positions including serving as the chief marketing officer at one point we love this interview so much because it's not just for students and young professionals in the financial services industry this interview is so broad it's for everybody any student trying to do amazing things or any young professionals trying to stand out in the workplace we loved how authentic and fun our conversation with kathy was and she is a big tampa bay buccaneers fan so it was no surprise to see her rocker tampa bay buccaneers hat throughout the interview before we dive into this interview make sure you subscribe to us on youtube as a reminder we are on spotify and apple podcast so go ahead and follow us there as well awesome let's jump in with kathy so we feel the best place to begin with our interview is the beginning you did attend the ross school of business in michigan where you did take many many classes that helped develop you to the amazing banking professional you are today we'd love to hear about your favorite class during this time and also favorite professor and what makes them your favorite professor well you know i did take a lot of classes at michigan not all of them in the raw school when i started out at michigan i my plan was to be an english major and to go to law school and my father informed me that he wasn't paying for law school so i decided i needed to do something before i went to law school to help help earn money so applied to ross in those days you got into ross after your sophomore year so applied to russ and spent two years in the ross school of business i tell everybody all the time that my favorite classes and the classes that i use most every single day are statistics and operations management you know all you calculus nuts i don't really i i don't want to diss you in any way but i've never once had to calculate anything that related to sine cosine tangent cotangent um never had to calculate black scholes model results on my own but statistics and understanding them i have to deal with every single day and it helps me to have those classes every single day so it won't surprise you um that my three favorite teachers russell frazier who taught shakespeare and wrote the book that we used in class professor cliff ball who was my statistics teacher at michigan and and then also a professor named harbir singh and um professor singh who's now at the wharton school taught operations management and i found the whole analysis honestly i found the whole analysis of process work end-to-end around quality in output being determined every step of the way i found it fascinating and i use it every single day i love that i know a lot of times um you know people young in their careers they're curious you know the stuff that i learned in the classroom will i use this uh later on my career so to hear you say that yes you do use these skills that you gain in the classroom to this day and they've helped make you into the you know best banking professional you can be it's really really amazing to hear and on the subject of ross uh we do understand that some time ago you and a group of alumni had an opportunity to climb mount kilimanjaro uh we'd love to hear about you know how that came to be um and you know your experiences on that amazing amazing journey well i did with two other alumni and the dean and the director of um executive education so the five of us adults um guides and um and a team of support people and 30 ross students 30 undergraduate raw students um went to my kilimanjaro in august of 2018 so over two years now which is hard to believe it's funny today i was doing my cycling workout 15.27 miles today um average speed of 10.4 miles per hour impressed but the the the tape that i was listening to the the um the playlist was my playlist from kilimanjaro and so i think about that experience all the time and and i will tell you what it took it took um being fierce it took not giving up it took an immense amount of of preparation just an immense amount of of prep and it took building relationships with the 35 37 of us that were the climbers and with the support team because we might not have all been climbing together every single moment of every day but the support structure and the shared energy was a huge reason for all of our our successes um it was a it's probably one of the peak experiences of my life but let me just say this i am one and done i am not a mountain climber i don't like edges anyone who tells you kilimanjaro is a trek and not a climb is misleading you greatly so um i loved it thrilled to do it with with my family um my extended family at ross and and happy to have done it great to see that you've conquered your fears though of doing that um you know that does take a lot of preparation but great to see that it was an amazing journey people ask me all the time how were the views and i say this my primary view was the boots of the person in front of me because you can't if you if you see the edge and you have a fear of edges you can't get over it if you just and a lot of things and like i like in life i like this if you just put one foot in front of the other keep moving keep making progress um it comes together wow yeah no kathy that is truly amazing there was just so many people around you and the fact that you went through that experience was it was truly amazing um and now you know you go through this experience with bank of america for over 30 years that's right right there that's right it's amazing too what made you want to stay with a bank like bank of america over the course of your career well i never intended to as i said in the beginning of our discussion i intended to work for two or three years and then go back to law school so nobody was more surprised or nobody is more surprised than me to find myself here um all the way in one company all the way since 1982. um i think a couple of things were important first early on i loved immediately loved taking business problems or taking client problems and figuring out the right solution i loved that whole concept of applying both brain power and skill sets to customer needs and then and then helping them so i loved what we did the second thing is is i loved the cycle of go to work do a a project get feedback get paid get promoted for me that that motivational element that happened because the results of your efforts are so clear in many ways so much more clear than they are when you're in school just kept me going i also found a way to use my you know my litigator skills and always have over the last 30 years but the part about staying with one company is in fact amazing and not what a lot of 20 year olds or people in their 20s think about as their their career paths what happened with me is i got to have numerous careers within the same company when you work for a large company there is a chief marketing officer i was the chief marketing officer for four years there is corporate and investment banking and client service i've co-headed that organization for years um there there is technology and operations and i've done that for the last 10 years so if you really think about it i've had multiple careers within the same company and i've always i've never hesitated actually to think about doing something new even if it was lateral or in a couple of cases moving down in hierarchy you know one time i went from managing 700 people at one hierarchy reporting to the ceo to reporting one level down but managing 7 000 people and so you know i've never been one of these people that's hell bent on single ladders single way up i've done different things around the firm and made progress that way and throughout your time at bank of america you've actually been around numerous positions so you've kind of seen a little bit of everything and you've kind of led you know every major line that bank of america has what would you say this has really done for you well there isn't anything that i faced that's either an opportunity or a challenge where that broad-based experience doesn't come into play so if i'm thinking about how to operate a complicated platform that serves customers today it really helps me a lot to understand reputational risk which is the purview of the things i learned very deeply as chief marketing officer or when i'm developing or my teams are developing solutions for customers and clients it really helps that i know the business because i know what has to happen i know the standard of excellence i know customer expectations and i know how lines of business and and customer facing people work i know that feeling of the only thing mattering being getting the client job done and and and so when i set standards for how we work in technology that knowledge is invaluable when i was a lender i did time in our did time i did time in our special assets group which was the area of the company that serviced distressed or problem loans and that experience was incredibly valuable i know what can go right in a scenario and i know what can go wrong and so even today when i work with vendors a vendor will say well you don't need to put that in the contract and i said oh yes i do that contract or that loan agreement is everything and how do i know that from my time in sag love that um so kathy looking at your career as a whole um you're the definition of start from the bottom uh work your way up you know get your hands in multiple different positions and make your mark so we're really really impressed with all you've been able to build throughout your very amazing professional career um through looking at a few different publications americanbanker.com for example has given you the title of most powerful woman in banking but again that didn't just start yesterday this is all work that you've put in to build the reputation that you have today where you oversee 95 000 employees between 35 different countries and have a budget of 14 billion dollars so for someone just starting out in finance in banking someone that looks up to you as a symbol as someone who put in the hard work what advice would you give to that young student first of all i think it's really important to remember that what you see in all those articles or in all those news releases isn't really the whole story a lot of times i find that young people look at people in positions like mine and can't picture themselves in those positions that's the first thing i would say um every step you take in your career positions you for the next level and prepares you for the next level and if what you want to do is be me you can be me no question about it and i do believe that you have to believe in order to accomplish your objectives um you know i'm in my jeans right now and my ugg slippers just like everyone else out there working from home in the world and most if you read if all you do is read articles about me like some people do not you guys but like some people do you might never think i you might think i never owned slippers or i wouldn't own a pair of jeans and so people in positions of importance are really people too and i think that's important the other thing i would say is you've got to be a constant learner in order to get that broad perspective learning doesn't stop once you get out of school learning starts once you get out of school and i think having a really aggressive intellectual curiosity a desire to relate not just learn facts but understand the context and understand what's going on that's what really creates the kind of robust capabilities that allow somebody to move up through the company so i can't tell you enough how much i i believe in the power of being intellectually aggressive as a learner the other thing i think is important is authenticity i think that people who are best as they move up through companies are people who are direct who are honest and straightforward who understand that bad news should never wait bad news does not get better with time and that um that that whole notion of being authentic not necessarily always being um you know out there not necessarily always wearing a baseball cap um but being who you are and letting that come through is will make you better at what you do more comfortable in the various roles you will take on and it is the the most fundamental ingredient to building trust and i will say this people only promote people they trust every one of my eight direct reports i literally trust with my professional life every single day and choosing and developing and relying on those people is the most important work that any executive does and so really being able to build trust uh is incredibly important to to a career journey and starts with authenticity i love that that's a very very important skill uh to have that trust you know my dad's been saying that for my entire life the truth will set you free sometimes you know the truth can be difficult but um you know you need to be transparent with people i mean that's how you build real relationships and that's going to follow you throughout your entire career so thank you so much for touching on that it's so true and for people in business sometimes they don't make the leap to understand what the truth will set you free a phrase i use to myself all the time and the way i say it in my own head is facts will set you free we are accountable as people and as business people or in any field we're accountable for making judgments from facts you know the facts don't tell you what to do but facts will set you free kind of going back a little bit kathy we just wanted to know how your career has developed over time at bank of america my career progression is like a lot of others you start out as a pure doer right i started out on the credit training floor with people who wanted to be corporate and investment bankers a hundred of us the year that i started all sitting on one floor um so anybody that tells me that open seating in the office place is a new concept i know to be not really telling the truth and what we and we did the work we didn't manage any other work we didn't manage other people we were a hundred percent doers and as a career develops there you that that mix between doing and managing or doing and leading changes today there are a few things that i actually do myself but in many ways anything i do myself is something that is not being used to develop the people around me or is time where what i should be doing is doing strategic work solving problems looking forward you know monitoring and and holding people accountable for what they're supposed to do so that balance does change over time and that's very uncomfortable for some people in fact at some point in that journey our head of human resources sat me down and i will never forget this he said kathy you are going to have to figure out that at some point you are not recognized and rewarded for what you do you're recognized and rewarded for leading and managing the work that gets done now it doesn't mean that bosses managers leaders can be bubble heads about the the work at hand i have a deep knowledge of what goes on in my organization i have always prided myself in every role that i've been in on having a really deep knowledge of the external environment the internal environment the outcomes all of those kinds of things because you can't really manage or lead with credibility without deep knowledge but i but i really have to stop and think every time i'm doing something on my own because leveraging me as a person or as an executive is much more important to the firm and that only happens when i can cause people to do things motivate people to do things lead peopl to do things so kathy looking at students um and young professionals looking to get into the industry of banking maybe graduating during a pandemic very stressed out about okay like what more skills do i need do i need to take any more classes um typically you know for you and your team what do you guys look for when hiring new students and what are some maybe soft skills or hard skills that students should take advantage of and pick up on when trying to get in uh get into the industry of banking you know sometimes i think financial services has it all wrong i know my son is a junior at chapel hill my daughter's graduated from william and mary so i know the 20s i'm living the 20s um and for most of this year um the 20s lived with me so which i loved by the way so i think about it um this so i think financial services sometimes gets it wrong because if you aren't figuring out where you want to intern by freshman year or sophomore year you're going to be behind that cycle and and most times financial services entities consulting firms a lot of the places where students want to work make their decisions actually the summer between junior and senior year not post graduation and so making sure that and i don't actually think that's right i don't like it that we force people to make decisions and and to go almost um singularly focused into a series of multiple year internships in order to secure the job that that people want i know um one college sophomore who is going to be in or is going to be interning this summer with one of the big five big four depending on who you talk to consulting firms and he said he had multiple choices and he said you know kathy it uh this is really important because the firm i choose this year is probably going to end up being my permanent choice so i hate that part of it nonetheless being focused and playing that part of it through is what it takes right now to succeed i think that people should also lighten up a little bit on the challenges of students particularly should lighten up a little bit on the challenges of the pandemic no one expects your internship pattern to be clear no one expects that um you know many my son's internship this summer was shortened to two weeks and it was you know a series of executive interviews basically for two weeks so i anybody who's hiring knows that that's not building skills and therefore in many ways 2020 is a little bit of a a little bit of a freebie in terms of what students should want to do so i and i hope that that disruption of the standard cycle is something that we learn from and and used to change the way that we hire people over time now your question really related to skills and hard skills um technical skills and soft skills uh what i look for in a candidate are some of the things i've already talked about i look for a high energy learner i look for someone who prides themselves on being the go-to person the per and the person who knows how to um see obstacles but get around them or over them with creativity great analytics and great drive i look for for someone who has a track record of success even in adversity and i'm a big believer that we're not um we're not successful as people or business people in spite of our setbacks where we're successful because of our setbacks so i spent a lot of time always talking to people about tell me some setbacks tell me what you've learned from your your setbacks how will what you do uh be different in the future as a result of that so i look for that i call that resilience i look for resilience aggressive learning um high energy go to get the job done and never met an obstacle all of those are soft skills hard people call them soft they're the most important skills frankly um uh you can teach somebody how to code you can teach somebody how to do a spreadsheet you can teach someone how to do a financial analysis you can even teach someone how to value closely held companies right but you can't teach the other skills they have to be learned developed practiced and and and they have to um be part of a very well-rounded experience so i think most um young people would be surprised at how important uh the how of what they what they have accomplished is much more so than the you know can you code in c plus thank you for touching on those skills kathy and also thank you for touching on the turbulence of 2020 and 2021 um you know since michael and i just graduated from college we've seen it firsthand you know a lot of our peers and classmates you know their internships were canceled um you know grad jobs and it panned out as they should have everybody's really really stressed out i think as a whole everybody needs to recognize we're all in this together we're all experiencing um you know the pandemic together this is all very very new uh something that we've all had to adjust with um and grow from but it is good to know that you know professionals that you know different companies and a lot of the people we've spoken with including yourself um are very understanding of the current circumstances if i could if i could do anything i would tone down the stress factor of the surreal elements of 2020. assuming you've stayed well or if you've been sick you have gotten well and hoping for that recognizing the terrible nature of this health crisis if you've done that and if you have done something useful and productive and and advancing self-advancing with your time employers understand that i'm more i actually i'm more interested in what did you do with your summer not um did your internship pan out or did your job pan out the way that that you thought people who take the setback of covid and can be resilient through it and can be creative that to me is a very very um important indicator of what kind of employee some would someone should be but look i know the stress out factor i would just if i could wave a magic wand i would say lighten up everybody on your stress factor because the world gets it the world really does get it exactly and i think a few young people are starting to realize that and uh you know hopefully things get back to normal or at least a sense of normalcy hopefully hopefully we see some normalcy this year i hope so yes well kathy thank you so much for speaking with us today i know um you know for a lot of the interview we focused on financial services but as someone personally who isn't in financial services i can confidently say this interview is for everybody just hearing about your professional journey hearing about the skills that you believe people should have in the workplace when it comes to transparency honesty focusing on building relationships taking risks doing something out of your comfort zone these are all really really important things that we people in their 20s to know about it really makes us feel special because it really shows that what we're doing uh is really meaning something special so thank you so much well two other quick pieces of advice one is um being authentic means having a little fun yes today today the day we're taping is world cancer day hence the pink and as i as you know i'm cheering for the tampa bay buccaneers hence uh the bucks on on my hat i am well known in the company for wearing jerseys on the friday before game day whatever team i'm cheering for i just think it's important to be human and have a little fun with what you do and the second thing is i wanted to pick up on something i know beto o'rourke told all of you when he was with you which is the whole idea that risk is easier when you're younger and so to take risks when you're in your 20s i would frame that up a little bit differently i would say adventure is younger urban is easier when you're younger so be adventurous be adventurous in your learning be adventurous in the things you try be intellectually adventurous in your in your learning i'm not a big risk taker myself so i can never you know get get i can never get my head around take more risk i wouldn't know how to do that but i have learned how to cycle never done it before that is adventure and and so i i think the 20s are the perfect time to be physically intellectually and emotionally adventurous and i just hope you all go for it matthew that's beautiful thank you so much really really appreciate it michael did you have any additional questions for kathy no kathy i'm just so glad you were here today and thank you so much for coming on uh we really enjoyed having you and hope that the rest of your day is great um i loved being here as soon as i heard the concept i said i've got to do it and i don't know very many people in their 20s who could do what what you what you guys are doing and to do it so professionally i just uh you're you're definitely rocking at what you're doing here and i'm so excited to be a part of it thank you kathy from the bottom of our thank you so much that means a lot take care it was a pleasure [Music] you