Thriving in Finance: Career Insights with Jason Darby, CFO of Amalgamated Financial Corp

Jason Darby serves as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Amalgamated Financial Corp., a publicly traded $8 billion bank (NASDAQ: AMAL) headquartered in New York City. This episode discusses Jason's approach to change and uncertainty, leveraging his NCAA hockey experience and network. In this episode, we also discuss: 

• Navigating change and uncertainty
• Leveraging storytelling for your career narrative
• Developing transferable skills for leadership
• Overcoming internal obstacles for success
• Creating opportunities through internship program

Show Guest:
Jason Darby is the Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Amalgamated Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: AMAL), headquartered in New York City. He joined Amalgamated in 2015 after 12 years at Capital One Financial and North Fork Bank, focusing on finance and middle-market commercial business development. Earlier in his career, Jason worked as a banking auditor, technology implementation consultant, and strategy developer at American Express and KPMG. A licensed CPA in New York, he played NCAA ice hockey and holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. Jason is married and has three children, who are in college and high school.

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Careers
• 15:32 Developing Transferable Skills for Leadership
• 30:42 Overcoming Internal Obstacles for Success
• 40:35 Creating Opportunities Through Internship Program

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, I'm Jill Griffin. I'm the host of the Career Refresh podcast and this week I am introducing you to my friend of over 35 years, jason Darby. Jason serves as the Senior Executive Vice President, chief Financial Officer for the Amalgamated Financial Corp. Amalgamated is publicly traded on NASDAQ. It is an $8 billion bank headquartered in New York City and by asset size, it ranks in the top 4% of US banks. Before joining the bank in 2015, jason spent about 12 years combined between Capital One Financial a disclosure at one point I did work on the Capital One advertising business and he also worked at the North Fork Bank in roles ranging from finance to mid-market commercial business development. Earlier in his career, jason worked at American Express. He also worked at KPMG and he is a licensed CPA in New York City.

Speaker 1: 0:56

Jason played NCAA hockey in college and holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. You will hear how that training as a hockey player comes in both his mindset, his grit, his resilience, and how he learned to trust his gut and then apply that to his career. He is married and has three children. In this episode, we talk about how Jason approached change and uncertainty throughout his career, how he leveraged his network and, again, that hockey training to trust his gut and not overthink decisions. We also talk about the value of storytelling in our careers and how to leverage transferable skills. Building that network is another key point of what we discussed today. We discussed the importance of internships, and Jason has been a huge champion of young talent and making sure that they are getting the appropriate training they need as they start out in the job market.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Jason shares the impactful program that he and his colleagues at Amalgamated created with Northeastern University and I'm going to tell you, friends, leaders everywhere are going to want to copy and scale this program. So grab that notes app, listen in. There's a lot of great pearls in this and, as always, friends embrace possibility. Stay curious and be kind. Jason, welcome, I'm glad that you are here.

Speaker 2: 2:15

Thanks, jill, it's so good to see you and thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 2:19

What I didn't say to everyone in the intro is that Jason and I went to university together. We also went to high school together, so we've known each other for a very, very long time many years of the bond of friendship, living and going through school together for so long. So I always ask everyone who comes on the show, jason, to take us back and tell us what you think you wanted to be when you grew up.

Speaker 2: 2:45

What a difficult question. The only way I can answer that is I really never knew what I wanted to be growing up, but like every other kid, I was influenced by TV shows, and one of my favorite shows when I was a younger kid was Family Ties, and I naturally had an affinity for Alex P Keaton.

Speaker 1: 3:07

Oh my God, you're so Alex too.

Speaker 2: 3:11

Revealed, revealed. But Alex P Keaton was very interested in the world of money and banking and that was really maybe the main influence for myself in terms of where I thought I might end up if I wasn't a professional hockey player. And as I got further and further along in my hockey career I started to realize that wasn't going to happen. And then I started becoming a little bit more focused on, well, how would I track into that business world? And that's when I started thinking about what I would major in college and that was really the track that I took.

Speaker 1: 3:46

I love that. You've said to me before that studying accounting was the language of business. I mean, that's such an intuitive statement, so I want to know who influenced you.

Speaker 2: 4:00

I have to give all the credit to my father for that one. My dad was an accountant originally. He worked for his first nine years after he got out of the military, worked for his first nine years at KPMG, which at the time was one of the big six accounting firms. They're now down to the big four.

Speaker 2: 4:18

And he would say to me Jace, look, accounting is the language of business. You need to understand how to read financial statements. You need to be able to understand what those financial statements are saying about the health or lack of health of a business. And if you can figure that out, you'll never be bamboozled by anybody in business, regardless of what you're talking about. You could be talking about technology, you could be talking about capital raises, you could be talking about operations If you understand the financial statements, you'll always be able to talk the talk. And so that was really the reason for me thinking about going into the accounting major when I was at St Bonaventure University and focusing on that right away. Where that was going to take me, jill, I never really knew. I had a basic outline in my mind, but I never really knew exactly what I wanted to do or where it would take me. I just knew that it was a good foundational purpose, and then I probably would always find a way to have a job with an accounting background.

Speaker 1: 5:26

Okay, so take us through that. So you went to St Bonaventure, where I joined you for one year before transferring back to St John's University, and then you graduated St Bonaventure. What happened next?

Speaker 2: 5:40

So I got a job at KPMG, Ironically it was a new firm that my father worked at Right out of college.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Pretty impressive.

Speaker 2: 5:48

I got my offer from their Buffalo office and then I asked for a transfer to the Long Island office, which they granted, and I was really happy with that. But I put a lot of time and actually focused really heavily into my academics at St Bonaventure. I really dove into the richness of the major and I had a natural affinity for accounting. I just sort of understood it and so when I went to KPMG I felt like I was in a really good place. I felt I was with the top accountants coming out of all the other colleges in the country and it started to build some confidence inside me that I can play with the players that went to the bigger schools. Right, St Bonaventure is a little bit of a smaller school. I chose it mainly for hockey, but now you're going up against Ivy League kids or top 25 schools and I felt really good about that and that helped me become, I think, successful pretty quickly in terms of being a really good staff accountant.

Speaker 2: 6:51

And the first job I ever got put on when I went to KPMG was a little bank that was out in Mattituck on Long Island North Fork of Long Island and it was called North Fork Bank, and North Fork Bank at the time was only a $900 million bank Jill. When it got sold in 2006, North Fork had become $60 billion. So I started my career in 1993 upon graduation and I had a little bit of a circuitous route in terms of my start and finish with the North Fork organization. But you can get a sense for how luck sort of plays into your career trajectory because I just was staffed on the job. I didn't ask for it, I didn't ask to go into banking, I just was put out there and things started to click and I started to do pretty well and the rest kind of is history.

Speaker 1: 7:45

So I'm going to push on you because, yes, it's luck, but don't they say that luck meets preparation. So you had to have been doing things that you say they put you in a job, but you had to be showing up with both what I would say essential skills and also the hard leadership skills and the essential skills that you needed. So what do you think some of those things were?

Speaker 2: 8:08

I'm glad you pushed on that, because I think there are two things that made the staffers decide that I was an appropriate resource for that North Fork engagement. I think the first is I came out with a stellar GPA and I also passed my CPA exam right away, right, so they?

Speaker 1: 8:29

said, if you're listening to this, this is kind of unheard of. You don't normally pass on your first try right out of university, so again very fortunate I put in the time and I had guidance.

Speaker 2: 8:55

People told me don't waste your summer, sit down study, do the work right, get the exam out of the way you, the firm was able to recognize he might be successful in a banking environment that's heavily numbers driven, because the business of banking is money and numbers effectively. So that was one. The other was my metal, or my leadership, or my purported toughness.

Speaker 2: 9:23

Just of mind my purported toughness, just of mind and I think a lot of that came from my time playing hockey I played four years at St Bonaventure an NCAA program and being able to take that type of characteristic or behavioral trait and demonstrate that to the recruiters, they knew that the banking industry back then certainly was a tough business. It was mostly male-dominated at the time. Things have changed more recently, but back in the 90s certainly that was where it was and I think that was able to resonate with the staffers to say he might be successful being staffed on this job and going to be working with some very tough individuals.

Speaker 1: 10:13

So it's the, it's the training from being a college level NCAA hockey player that also added to the grit and the resilience and the mindset, in addition to sharpening your skills. Right Iron sharpens iron. So you were doing skills and I love again the way that you were instructed to not waste the summer and just go right in and sit for the exam so that everything was sharper. It would be much harder for many to have taken the pause and then get back into sitting for the exam a you know, a couple of months later.

Speaker 2: 10:45

I think you're exactly right, and that was, if you go back, I'm 21 years old at that point in time. That was hard to do to sacrifice your summer between graduating and then getting your job started in September. But things started to click for me in my own mind about what the future was going to look like, or what I needed to do to be able to create as many options for myself as possible. And the first one really was go and get that CPA exam. Put aside some personal wants and go after the things that I need, and then in time I'll probably be able to recover those wants 10x. So that mindset started to develop in me fairly early. A little bit of it was luck, but also a little bit was very much something that was inside of me that just needed to be brought out and start to become more adult.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Yeah, really really helpful, so take us forward.

Speaker 2: 11:50

So you went from North Fork Bank, is that when you then went to Capital One Financial? So yeah, if I fast forwarded, I ran through North Fork Bank as either an auditor or as a employee for the next 13 or so years, up to the point where Capital One came in and purchased North Fork. At that point in time it was my first moment dealing with uncertainty of where my career was going next. I'd been with North Fork for a long time. Next thing, you know, you get acquired by a much bigger organization. Typically, when those things happen, there's job eliminations and many, many people don't survive in the new company. And I was very fortunate to have been positioned where I was, just underneath that senior executive layer. I was an up and comer, but I hadn't really got to that other layer. An up and comer, but I hadn't really got to that other layer, so I was looked at as a valuable resource to be added to the Capital One team somebody that would be eliminated to try to save salary money or something along those lines.

Speaker 2: 12:55

So the timing of it worked out really nicely for me and it was a great opportunity to join a Fortune 250 style company, deal with a much bigger brand, more of a national, even almost an international company at that point in time, and still have something really valuable to add. Because Capital One at the time was a monoline card issuer, credit card issuer, and they were buying banks to sort of secure their funding source. So me coming in from the banking side, I had a reason to exist there and I had something to offer to all these people that otherwise really hadn't needed to talk to anybody from a banking perspective. So I got a chance to join that company and have a seat at the table and in my own mind I was saying this is a moment for me to shine. Don't shy away from this moment. You're put on this team, so to speak, for a reason Deliver and don't be afraid, even though I was terrified, right, because it's the big leagues.

Speaker 1: 13:59

You're going from North Fork Bank to Cap One. That's a huge, you know. I would imagine the amount of employees also between the two quadruple, if not more.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Huge difference. Yeah, probably quintuple at the time.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Okay, so is that what then brought you down to DC, where Cap One is located?

Speaker 2: 14:16

Yes, so Capital One their headquarters is in McLean. Now I spent the first three years when I was with Capital One up in the New York area and really helping out in the New York bank side. But this becomes a really interesting thing, Jill, which is the opportunity to relocate down to Washington DC was also an opportunity to change the overall job that I was doing. So they didn't just say, hey, Jason, come, do the same thing you're doing here in New York and bring it to Washington. They said we've got an opportunity to revitalize the DC market for middle market banking on the production side. Do you want to do it?

Speaker 2: 15:05

You've done a good job organizing and delivering results in the financial job roles you've had with us. How about moving over to the production side and being a salesperson, if you will, and coming down to DC and helping us in that market? So talk about scary Jill, because now it's like, hey, change the job that you've been doing for the last 13 or 14 years, maybe 15 years, and, by the way, move out of market and try to do that.

Speaker 1: 15:32

So what transferable skills between being on you know I'm going to say it the money side, the math side, into going into product and sales side. What transferable skills could you articulate for our listeners so that they can also hear how skills can be transferred?

Speaker 2: 15:52

It really was the problem-solving skill and the communication skill. So, if I break it down, the problem solving, in the end you're still dealing with money. The customer now is trying to secure a loan. The customer wants to do something with their available liquidity. How are you going to run an analysis against that to make sure that the customer is getting the best product or the best options that are available to them? So taking that financial acumen and bringing it over to the customer was extremely valuable. The other thing, though, jill, was communication skills. In the end, I started to realize whether I was trying to be persuasive internally, with an operations meeting, or with a finance meeting, or externally, when talking to a customer. You're still using that communication tool the same way, it's just positioned or pointed differently.

Speaker 1: 16:53

It's storytelling.

Speaker 2: 16:54

It's storytelling, it's exactly right, and it's also an ability to get people to like you and want to work with you. And those things are teachable. They're trainable. I think you have a natural affinity for being personal, and some people are better at that than others. But I've seen lots of great introverts that find their outer lion. They might be super uncomfortable inside doing it, but they look so comfortable and smooth when they're actually at work doing their thing.

Speaker 2: 17:29

And so for me, I was like I really want to know what it's like to keep the lights on. I really want to know what it's like to be on the front line and deal with customers. I really want to know what it's like to have to compete to get this business, instead of looking at the numbers on the backend and say, wow, this is production, this looks great. We should do more of this. Now you're out on the frontline, you're seeing how that actually happened.

Speaker 2: 17:55

And, jill, if I was to round out the thought here, this is when I really started thinking about if I wanted to be a real leader of a bank. I need to be able to understand what the salespeople think. I need to understand how the product people think. I need to understand that space in the business and that's why I took the gamble of leaving what would be a very safe and secure path and I probably could have been pretty successful if I just continued doing that and moving over to something that was very unsafe but yet created a tremendous building block for my overall career path and life's. A series of choices and that was one where I felt going out of market, going into a totally different style of the business and trying to be successful there. That would really prove to a lot of people that I was very multidimensional, not a one-track pony.

Speaker 1: 18:56

So I want to summarize a few really core things that you said which I think are fascinating. So for our listeners and watchers, I would tell you this is the time you want to get that notes app and make some notes here. But what Jason said in summarizing is that one the transferable skills. One was problem solving or strategic problem solving. He then said communication. We also talked about how it was persuasiveness, which is a mixture of that storytelling and your own passion. He talked about liking people, which is the ability to win them over and trying to find common ways in which you can relate to others, to create that level of influence.

Speaker 1: 19:34

We mentioned the storytelling.

Speaker 1: 19:36

He also he didn't say the word curiosity, but he is really talking about being curious, about understanding what all different sides of the table are doing within I'll call it the supply chain.

Speaker 1: 19:46

I know it's not technically the supply chain, but I would say within all the people that are in there understanding how it all works. And then you summed up beautifully by saying that you said in order to be a leader, you realized that you needed the understanding of all sides of the table to understand not only that, it's a different customer. Now, right, it's probably a mixture of both commercial and consumer customers, in addition to going from just the number side to taking the base level of the money and the numbers of what you're doing and applying it to a sale and applying it to providing a strategic solution to whatever your customers are looking for. So I think it's a really important takeaway that we could be doing a job very well in one area, but if we really get thoughtful, doing a job very well in one area but if we really get thoughtful, we can take those skills and transfer them to other areas and continue to create value for the business and the departments in which we're working for. Really really helpful, I think, for people to hear that. Jason.

Speaker 2: 20:44

Super recap and, as I listened to you, these are things I try to impart on our younger workers at Amalgamated also my own kids. These types of experiences, these types of skills that you develop, they can be transferred and you just need the confidence to apply and practice.

Speaker 1: 21:05

It takes time and practice.

Speaker 2: 21:06

You're not going to need that.

Speaker 1: 21:08

Yes, and it's interesting too, because I was talking to a recent college graduate who got a BS in management and you know they kept saying but I want a job in management. And I said to exactly what you just said by being a leader, by being curious, by being persuasive, by understanding storytelling, understanding all different times, sides of the table, that consultative sale, that's where we then say oh, you've chopped wood and carried water enough that you can now teach others. That's management.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Yeah, and that has to be earned too. You have to demonstrate some ability to have proficiency in the work. It's very difficult to manage somebody if you don't know how they do their job. So coming up through the technical side is important, but it's a house blend Jill right. You have to be able to apply your technical knowledge and your humanity to become a great manager, and those people that can do that, those are ultimately the folks that people want to follow.

Speaker 2: 22:21

So it's one thing to be a manager, it's a totally different thing to be a leader, to be a leader Right.

Speaker 1: 22:25

And I think for people that are listening and you're saying, okay, I have the skills, so how do I get that? I would say look around your organization. They may be in senior roles, but they got to those senior roles most of the time. They got there because of their ability to work both sides of it, their ability to be proficient in their skill but also have what we would say those are those essential, formerly called soft skills For the military. It's actually essential skills, those essential, formerly called soft skills from the military. It's actually essential skills. Those essential skills of understanding relating to others storytelling, strategy, conversations, hearing right, using it proportionally two ears, one mouth, use them proportionally and listening. And I think so often it's hard when we're starting out that we really want to show that we have the talent and you do have the talent, but there's also a lot of wisdom to be gained from looking towards other leaders within your organization.

Speaker 2: 23:15

Love. That that's couldn't. Couldn't have said it any better myself, jill.

Speaker 1: 23:19

So take us to where you are now. You're, you know, the CFO of Malcolm, a Financial Corp. How did that show up after your Capital One financial days?

Speaker 2: 23:28

Yeah Well, it's interesting because it really comes back to people. I met when I joined Capital One, a gentleman who ended up becoming the CFO of Amalgamated Bank and so, through his trails, he became the CFO back in 2015 of Amalgamated Bank. I was still at Capital One and he calls me up and he says Jason, I need a chief accounting officer. And I said I haven't done accounting in probably 10 years. I don't think I could do the job. And he said no, you can do the job. I've seen you. We've worked together for a long time. Come do it. And I looked at Amalgamated Bank. It was a $3.8 billion bank at the time. I'm coming from a $300 billion company like Capital One, but purpose started to really move to the forefront of my life at that point in time. I'm roughly 42 years old 43 years old, somewhere in that range. Jill has a very mission-oriented franchise, very values-based. We can talk more about that in a moment. But I sort of said what a great opportunity for me to join a company that's going to mirror the things that I care about most, be around people that think similarly in terms of a value proposition, but also give me this chance to have a true bird's eye view of the company and start to really insert myself into a strategic management position. So when they were offering me the chief accounting officer job and I confess I did turn it down a couple of times before I finally joined the idea there was chief accounting officer at a bank is really a top five job certainly a top five in finance and that had a lot of value to me in terms of how I would see my career continuing. But Jill and I still do this today.

Speaker 2: 25:27

I sought advice from other people. I went out, I talked to my dad, I talked to a partner that I used to work for at KPMG 12 years ago and said what do you think of this? And I talked to one of my best friends from grad school who had gone on to become a CFO very young age, super smart guy and all those data points went into me being able to make what I felt was a very informed decision and the right one. And I use my gut, jill, to really determine if I'm making the right decision. I do not spend time overthinking things and I don't spend time thinking what I could have done. Once I make my choice, I go, and when I made the call to say I'm going to join Amalgamated Bank. I felt really good about it and that really helped me step into this role and own it, as opposed to having one foot out the door.

Speaker 2: 26:26

Maybe I didn't make this right choice or be thinking with negativity. It was really about positive intent and then deciding okay, I haven't been an accountant for 10 years, I've never been a chief accounting officer of a bank. Let's go do this. And I won't say that there wasn't stress involved. There certainly was, but to me that's a motivator. That's something I internalized as a way to really put my head into something and feel really good about what I was trying to do.

Speaker 1: 26:55

So again, I'm going to you know me, I'm going to summarize that. So what I'm hearing again, between what you said and what you didn't say, is one you build a relationship with someone that when they moved to another company, you had kept some level of reciprocity in that relationship. So they called you up and said, hey, jason, come over here. I think you've got the talent and you can do this job right. So that, I think, is really important. You then told me you sought advisors, which is doubling down on. Yes, you spoke to your dad, but you said you spoke to a former partner, you spoke to a friend who was a CFO, which is not only creating those trusted relationships but it's maintaining them. And I think what COVID did for a lot of us in the junior level is that it broke those bonds because we were suddenly working from home or working remotely and we weren't building up those networks.

Speaker 1: 27:43

I talk to people all the time you know around that or have more experience, and one of the things that has, you know, carried me through my career is the strength of my networking and networking, and maybe you don't need it in your 20s I would say you do, but you're definitely going to need it throughout your career. So you also said that. And then I loved how you said you made an informed decision, that you did not overthink, that you made the choice and go. You trusted your gut. So what it also tells me is that you had your own back. You looked at your data, which was a mixture of qualitative and quantitative facts. You then made a decision and, whether you realize it or not, you said I'm not going to keep rethinking this decision because that's just going to exhaust me and get me into decision fatigue. I'm going to own this and I'm going to step forward into it. Where do you think you got the mindset, the grit, the resilience to have your own back?

Speaker 2: 28:37

Yeah, failure. Jill is the best teacher right, and over the course of my earlier career, and much more so when I was playing hockey at a very, very competitive level, getting knocked down and getting back up and realizing that the day continues, you're okay it built up a fortification in my belief in myself, and the other thing is there's just some sort of natural and need that I have to prove myself, and so these types of things allow me to feel pretty comfortable with tough decisions and not really having to worry about whether I'm making a mistake. Mistakes happen and I've learned that mistakes happen and you can recover from them. You don't want to make too many of them.

Speaker 1: 29:33

You don't want to be doing things recklessly, of course, but I think just failure is not the end, it's just one less way something's going to work. You're like, all right, that doesn't work that way and look, it might hurt more than all right, it might be a failure, but you absolutely can bounce back from that it stings.

Speaker 2: 29:49

It stings, but I wish more kids today would actually be allowed to experience failure and go through the emotional ride of what that really does for you, because your ability to process that, your ability to learn to look into yourself, the ability for you to find your own sense of resilience which is hard to do it's an intangible, it's not like oh, I found that, let me put it over here and put it on my shelf. It's just, you know it's there but you can't really get that. It's almost like confidence being earned. You just can't get it until you earn it. And sometimes, if you're denied the feeling of failure, the feeling of rejection, later on in life, when it does happen to you and there's more at stake your ability to process it might not be what it needs to be. So I think the just that overall accumulation of experience in my earlier life and my earlier work career helped me with all that.

Speaker 2: 30:52

But going back real quick, you know I was in competitive sports from a very, very early age, so I was in these team-based settings.

Speaker 2: 31:01

I was in these competitive settings my whole youthful life, and so being around high-level people or high-level players, high-level kids at that time made me think of well, what do I need to do to play at that level? So I started to build up that type of mindset, but also not being included in certain things that they were, because they were just better and deserved it more than I did. That gave me that perseverance, like no, I'm going to put the work in. And the next time I'm going to get it and Jill, I did so I put the work in. And the next time I showed up for a it and Jill, I did so I put the work in. And the next time I showed up for a tryout or for a competition, I either made that team or I won the competition and those things. I was able to just talk away and say, okay, it's a building block in life, right, you have an experience you can tap back into as proof.

Speaker 1: 31:51

You did it before. You could probably figure it out again.

Speaker 2: 31:54

I think it's important.

Speaker 1: 31:55

We talk a lot about, you know the lack of adversity and how so often at the education level again, I'm talking through a U S standard, right, but the education level unless you're on a sports team we've removed so much adversity, right, it's the idea that you prepare the path for the child versus the child for the path, and that adversity is so important. And at the school level, failure is bad, failure is treated as if it's really bad, versus when you leave the education or the academic system and then you go out onto your own, into your career, or if you're even starting your own thing, it's those failures to your point that you actually start to learn from. Or if you're in a sports team, you're going to learn that it's those failures that you actually learn from. So we can't be teaching people to be afraid of failure. I'm not saying it doesn't suck, I'm not saying it's comfortable, but it's something that you can absolutely get through.

Speaker 2: 32:54

Totally agree, and failure has been with us since the dawn of time, so it's not something that we ought to be thinking as a taboo thing, and I really, really, really hope more and more kids wake up to trying new things, not being afraid to fail, but using failure as a stepping stone or a springboard to achieving something great or doing something better, not taking that as the final outcome. Right.

Speaker 1: 33:24

I want to come back to the work you are doing now at Among the Mated, but before I do that, I want to know from you what do you think was harder than you thought? We're talking a lot about, you know you being able to strategically leverage both your own education and understanding of proficiency of accounting, and then also your relationships. But talk about some of the challenges that you faced along the way, or a challenge that you faced along the way.

Speaker 2: 33:55

There are so many Jill that it's hard to say there's any one particular thing. But I think the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome, or that I continuously encountered, was my own lack of patience. I hadn't really mastered control of my own mind and my own wants, and I really think it's what ultimately got me over the hump from chief accounting officer to now chief financial officer, in the number two position in a public company. I needed to take a step back and realize that the harder I pushed for something, or the more I wanted something, the further it would get away from me or the more elusive it would become to my grasp. And then I started to realize be comfortable where you're at, be happy with what you're doing and let things come to you. And as I started to do that and I didn't go to any training session or any coach, but in my own mind I just started going. What I'm doing isn't going to take me to the next level. I've almost maxed out in where I'm going to go I could feel it. And as I became a little more receptive to just what was happening, then things started to come to me. And what I also found Jill was I was much more calm, in which case I was able to articulate my thoughts much more rationally.

Speaker 2: 35:32

If something didn't go my way in a meeting or I didn't win my persuasive argument like I thought I should have, I realized there was going to be another chance, and I didn't dwell on that. I didn't let that become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So overcoming my own ambitions and my own sense of impatience was probably the hardest thing I had to do, and it was the most difficult thing I dealt with throughout my entire career. If something didn't go my way, I wasn't loving that for a little while, or I couldn't figure out well, why not me? And then it was a little bit of anti how I was always thinking about trying to not allow failure to stop me, but at the same time I wanted to get there so fast that it was stopping me from getting where I actually wanted to go. So that's a little abstract, but I think it's really important to communicate that in a way that says there wasn't a obstacle I had to overcome other than what was inside of me.

Speaker 1: 36:31

It's our own mindset. Yeah, I mean and I think you know you are talking to an executive coach I mean, that's what we deal with regularly. There are absolutely circumstances that need to be overcome and challenges that need to be overcome, but I would say, for my own life and you know the thousands of people at this point that I've worked with between one-on-one and workshop it's 99% of the time our own limitations, our own thoughts on our limitations, and I like to think it's like you're a ship in a bottle in the ocean, like you think you can see everything, but you actually can't because you're in the bottle. It just looks that way. We have to bust through that bottle, that glass bottle, so that the ship can release and actually be out there and see what's possible.

Speaker 2: 37:13

But we are limited.

Speaker 1: 37:14

What'd you?

Speaker 2: 37:14

say I'm going to start using that. That's a great analogy.

Speaker 1: 37:17

Take my ship in the bottle and use it. Yeah, but it is. It's exactly what we're doing and we don't see it and it comes back to look, not everyone's going to work with a coach. I would encourage you, whether it's an athletic coach, whether it's a mindset coach, whether executive coach, in somewhere in your career. The investments that I've done in that is paid off tenfold. But investments that I've done in that is paid off tenfold.

Speaker 1: 37:37

But the idea that you are listening and then at least reading some of the grades that are talking about how to manage your mind and that mindset, and really what you're talking about, you know and you're saying that in patients is that dopamine response, our brain. Dopamine is the drug of more, right? Okay, it's a hormone, blah blah, blah, fine, but it's the drug of more and it keeps wanting and wanting and wanting, right? Okay, it's a hormone, blah blah, blah, fine, but it's the drug of more and it keeps wanting and wanting and wanting. And if you don't remind yourself that you got it, or you got something, that you've achieved something, that's the thing that starts to settle that down. If you don't, you're constantly on the hook for wanting the next thing, never realizing or celebrating, right, it's like acclimation. You don't go from sea level to the top of Everest, right, you climb, you acclimate, you climb, you acclimate. It's that acclimation of realizing that you have achieved certain things and reflecting on the failures as needed and then making the plan for going forward.

Speaker 2: 38:31

Brilliantly said, and I wish I had sought advice from someone like you earlier in my career. I probably would have gotten to some places a little bit quicker. But, as I'm hearing you, these are things I've become much more open to in conversations with people like yourselves and others, and it's been incredibly helpful just to hear that perspective and now I feel, with that type of thought in mind, I can help my up and coming managers, younger generation workers and even my own kids again navigate some of the things that I failed at just because I didn't know what, I didn't talk to enough people.

Speaker 1: 39:10

Right, I love it. Take us to so. Okay, so now you're promoted to CFO and we were talking recently about some of the internship programs that you're working on and taking a stake in, because all of this whether it's mindset or actually getting the proficiency of skills how important internships are both to the individual and to the organization that are accepting the intern. So take us through a little bit about what you're doing there.

Speaker 2: 39:36

Certainly this is something I am so proud of here at Amalgamated Bank, and I'm duly proud because it was my own daughter who helped me see this opportunity. So I'm a firm believer in the youth worker. We need them. They are it's cliche to say, but they really are the drivers of the future, not the least of which is with the way technology is moving today. You need the younger generation in your organization because they are so tech affluent across a number of dimensions. So having a pipeline of young, really smart people is super important to me.

Speaker 2: 40:26

My daughter is now 20, turning 21. Last summer she's following a little bit of my footsteps. As a finance major at Northeastern University, I said why don't you come work at the bank for the summer? I don't want you to come work at the bank for seven weeks. I want you here for four months. The minute you are done with your freshman year, you're going to take three days off. You're going to come work at the bank in the middle of May all the way through to the end of August. We're going to put you through a real internship and we're going to let you start to see if you want to be in banking and how do you do with numbers and do you really like this? It's not the textbooks anymore, and so we put her over in the commercial real estate group, not working for me. Obviously, I didn't want to have any influence over my kid and let her find her own way. But our other executive managers feel very similarly to I regarding the value of these programs, and so he really created a great job role and she drove a truck through it, just nailed it and started getting a lot of great feedback from the managers over in the real estate division, saying this intern is my daughter, but this intern is actually working like a full-time employee and is doing her own credit reviews. At this point. It was really cool, jill.

Speaker 2: 41:50

And she then said to me well, dad, this is sort of my version of a co-op for Northeastern. I said, well, what are you talking about? What's a co-op? And of course she's in college. I should know this because I'm helping her go to college. I should have done this myself, so she's like informing me.

Speaker 2: 42:06

But she said no, northeastern, they send students out into the workforce for a full semester. They don't go to class at all, they go to work, and they work five days a week, seven, eight hours a day, whatever it is, and it's four to six months, and I went like holy smoke, why are we not in this program? So I went to my chief of staff Marissa Simonello is brilliant and I just said, hey, can you dig into this? Maria Simonello is brilliant and I just said, hey, can you dig into this? And her and my daughter took the initiative, got with what Northeastern's value and mission is as well. So there was an instant connection between our company and Northeastern, which created this great marketing vibe and marketing pipeline. So from that summer job that wasn't part of Northeastern's co-op program last summer, this summer we have nine Northeastern co-ops rolling through and they come in every four to six months.

Speaker 1: 43:27

So we've actually created full-time jobs that are manned or occupied by it's like job sharing it's one job that gets rotated in and out across multiple students. I love it. You know you're going to have other universities be calling you now.

Speaker 2: 43:45

It's amazing we actually have to open up some intern roles for other universities because the Northeastern kids they hit us with hundreds of resumes and really qualified kids. But we want to make sure we have some other opportunities from other universities. But what was really great is just that program has taken off and now it's across the entire organization. So whether it's finance, real estate operations, risk, hr, all of them have some form of a co-op internship of them have some form of a co-op internship and I'm super proud of that.

Speaker 2: 44:20

So much so that we have them come and do a full blown presentation near the end of their internship as to what they work on. And now our CEO, priscilla, myself, several of the other executive slate. We all sit in on these and actively engage and the kids love it because they feel valued, they've got a job where they actually matter and the things that they're talking about it's real work They've really made it?

Speaker 1: 44:46

Yeah, it's not. It's not, you know, getting coffee, or that's right. That's the thing. Waiting for somebody to give you work, you actually have a job.

Speaker 2: 44:55

If you have an intern for seven weeks, hard to really dig in with them. You got to spend three, four weeks getting up and running and then they're out. And we do these four to six month internships. These kids come in and they got jobs and we love it. We think it's a great thing and then it creates still a pipeline for us to be able to come back and say you did a really good job. When you graduate, you want to work for us and we've had one so far that we think is going to come join us full time.

Speaker 1: 45:22

It's incredible, and even if employment doesn't come out of it, they have four to six months of legitimate experience now on their resume in a field that they may want to go into.

Speaker 2: 45:36

And talking about the opportunity to be a leader as opposed to a manager, we actively say send me your resume. We want to help you write the marketing points on your resume as to what you did and I can only tell you from experience with my own daughter. I helped her write some of hers and it has parlayed into a job at Ray J as an investment banking analyst for Netflix.

Speaker 1: 46:03

That's Raymond James for everybody listening.

Speaker 2: 46:07

A little inside baseball.

Speaker 1: 46:08

sorry, yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2: 46:10

And that's like a top job in finance, right? So being able to do that, she was able to get the experience out of Amalgamate that she needed Excuse me, Jill, and we're doing the same thing now with the others, right? Don't waste the opportunity to market yourselves appropriately. You're being exposed to C-suite executives on a daily basis. You're doing the work of a full-time staff person full. You're doing the work of a full-time staff person. Full-time employee. You've got presentations to committees. Market that, and we tell the interns all the time. Don't treat your resume as just a fact block and overwhelm people with a lot of data points. Market yourself. It's a great opportunity for you to share a story about what you did and give them just enough so they can ask you questions about it that you can answer articulately and really fill out the story, and we're seeing more and more of these interns that have worked with us really be successful as they move on and take some of the tips that they've learned here.

Speaker 1: 47:12

Yeah, listeners of this show know that I always talk about that your resume is a marketing document in which you were the product, and that your LinkedIn profile is sort of the sales campaign. It's both. You have to work both sides of that. So, as we start to come to a close, you've mentioned a couple of times the values and the mission of Mocklemated and the work that you're doing, and it's also a certified B Corp, which is, I mean, from my point of view, not very common for a financial corporation. So talk a little bit more about that and where you see your work there going.

Speaker 2: 47:45

Yeah, it really is. The raison d'etre for Amalgamated Banking is a very commoditized business, jill. As you probably know. You can go to any bank, get a loan, get a checking account. It's now moving much more towards purpose. What is my money doing at this institution when I'm not using it? The banks are taking it. They're doing something with it. What's it doing? We're finding that a mission-based, values-aligned organization or bank has a real calling card, and when you mentioned B Corp, I think that's super. We're thinking about ourselves and the B Corp really puts an exclamation point on accountability to stakeholders that are not just shareholders.

Speaker 1: 48:36

Explain to people what a B Corp is.

Speaker 2: 48:38

So a B Corp effectively is a badge, if you will, or a marker that says you are now placing a ranked accountability on yourselves for transparency along environmental, social governing or climate-related disclosure. So you're going to open book and say- that's the ESG, that he's talking about people. Correct. But ESG doesn't have to be this scary thing where you suddenly are not profitable. We are one of if not well, I can't say if not we are one of the most profitable banks in the country using a full-fledged ESG model.

Speaker 1: 49:20

Wait so you can be profitable and do good.

Speaker 2: 49:27

Sorry for the New.

Speaker 1: 49:27

York. Sarcasm there, no, but I think people think it's an either or and it's not an either, or you have to be strategic about how you go for it.

Speaker 2: 49:36

but it absolutely can be achieved.

Speaker 2: 49:38

There's no question about it, there is enough ability to have a highly profitable organization and do good in the world.

Speaker 2: 49:47

And so, between our businesses and philanthropy and climate risk, in social advocacy and the things that we care about, there are hundreds of organizations that need to be properly banked to continue to do the change-making work that they do in their communities or in the areas or constituencies that they serve. And so Amalgamated Bank we are a bank, first and foremost, but we are there for that particular group and we're unabashed about doing that. But at the same time, we know that if we run our bank smartly and we do things wisely with our capital, it can be a great return for our shareholders and other stakeholders. And what we've been very conscious about saying is ESG doesn't need to be a check the box. You don't have to just fill that out because you had some mandate. You can invest in amalgamated bank and get better than market rate returns, and it's proven to be a great experiment coming out in successful reality, and I think our share price reflects all of that today.

Speaker 1: 50:58

It's amazing. It's amazing. What are you excited for? We're at midpoint in the year. What are you excited between now and the year close?

Speaker 2: 51:07

Well, I'm excited to see the banking sector come back to some level of calm and normalcy. I think the higher for longer interest rate environment has been a difficult ride for a lot of people and it's creating a lot of stress in the banking market. We're not that far away from some of the big failures that happened last year. So time is a very funny thing and sort of heals wounds, if you will, and so the further we kind of get out into this year I'm really looking forward to some stability in the market. But for Amalgamated specifically, there are two really interesting things. Number one is the presidential election. We're looking forward to seeing how that works out.

Speaker 2: 51:46

We are very much on the Democratic side of the political spectrum. That doesn't mean we don't welcome all people, but we do a lot of work with the Democratic Party and we think that's an important part of the future for the country, and so we'll see how that whole election landscape changes or shakes out during this year, because there's a lot at stake. And the other Jill is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was an earmarking of about $27 billion out of the Inflation Reduction Act. Those monies were awarded on April 4th and we should start seeing a plan from the EPA to distribute those funds by September-ish of this year, and what that really means is you're going to see a green CapEx economy start to unfold and we're really looking forward to having that move into projects that don't quite pencil out just yet for finances but, with the government support, bringing things like electrification to rural schools and other areas across the United States. Seeing that all come to life is something we're really excited about.

Speaker 1: 52:53

Jason, you have shared so much throughout this conversation that I know our listeners are going to really benefit from. So I appreciate you being here and listen everyone. If you have questions for Jason, you can email me at hello at Jill Griffin coachingcom. We will get them to Jason. He will come back. He will be more than happy. As he's smiling at me, he's like, yes, I'll come back to answer any of those questions. We appreciate you being here. Thanks so much, jason. Thanks Jill.