Her Story
About Beth
My career in financial crimes compliance began somewhat by chance over 20 years ago. I had been working in training and development, including teaching at a business school and working for a major conglomerate in the States. When that company divested and moved to Florida, I didn't go with them. I then had an opportunity to work for a software company in the financial crime field, specifically AML. To prepare for the interview, I had to do a presentation and research, and they brought me in to create their training and development for customers. In order to teach effectively, I needed to understand what I was teaching about, why customers needed the software, and how to use it, so I immersed myself in the field and it developed from there. I've been doing consulting for a long time, and during the pandemic, I consulted for a bank and was eventually hired by them full-time. I just left there in March after 5 years and returned to consulting. I really like consulting because it allows me more freedom to advise and utilize my knowledge and expertise to help other institutions better prepare their programs. My day-to-day varies from preparing documentation for clients to being on-site at a client. One of my goals with my consulting company has always been to get work for other people and to be able to employ and mentor them, teaching them the ropes so they can get ahead.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Beth
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think probably the willingness, more than an ability, to research and listen and understand and interpret. You have to pay attention to changes, what's happening, new regulations - we've had a lot of back and forth these past two years with the current administration. I've always liked the analysis of things, so being able to analyze and identify what something means and putting it into place, being able to interpret it for how programs need to be changed, what needs to be implemented, how things need to be done. You have to be on top of things at all times. You have to be aware of what's changing and evaluate the impacts pretty quickly so you can make updates. When regulations are changed, they usually give you a certain amount of time to implement things, so you have to make sure, but you can't just implement something - it has to be tested.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
They need to be strong. They need to be firm. While there are a lot of women in the field, they don't always tend to be listened to. I guess that's always been our problem, right? We're always felt to be to not know as much as we actually do know, and we also know more than people think we do. So they need to immerse themselves, and they need to be sure of themselves and of what they're talking about. But do the research, do the reading, and don't be afraid to talk to other people and get opinions and interpretations and learn from other people as well. I always tell my two boys, and they're grown, but I always have, that you're never too old to learn. You never stop learning. The minute you stop learning, that's when you kind of fade away. So you have to always be willing to learn and absorb things as much as you can.
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