Her Story
About Courtney
My journey in financial services began in 2011, right out of college, initially servicing 401K participants. I then moved to Morgan Stanley where I monitored PLA products - a fascinating role that kept me on my toes every single day. PLA functions like a margin account, but unlike margin where loan proceeds can be used to invest back into the market, PLA operates like any personal loan for purchasing cars, homes, and it evolved to include art as collateralized assets. I worked with financial advisors and brokers, providing financial calculations when their client's loans were underwater, advising on which assets to liquidate whether equities, bonds, or money markets. Currently, as a structured finance relationship manager in capital markets, I monitor securitized loans and work with corporate and institutional clients. My company acts as the trustee or collateral administrator, and I work on both sides. My typical day involves handling escalations, fixing calculation errors on compliance reports, addressing systemic operational issues, ensuring system rollouts are user-friendly for clients, scheduling demo sessions, and working with our sales team to identify potential for bringing in more business. Process improvement has been a constant thread throughout my career - I once had an entire role dedicated to organizing my department's process improvement initiatives at Morgan Stanley, where I successfully reduced manual processing by at least 10%. Now I'm focused on leveraging AI, leading my team through Microsoft Copilot training to identify ways to cut processing time in half and eliminate pain points for our analysts.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Courtney
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to determination. I'm relentless - I don't see anything as failure, it's always a lesson learned. Once you learn that lesson, what are you going to do next? There's no excuses. No one's coming to save you. You have to continue. You fall once, get up once. That mindset has carried me through everything in my career.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received is to stop apologizing. If you make a mistake, stand in your mistake and own it. Be accountable for everything - your wrongs and your rights. That accountability goes a long way in building trust and credibility in your career.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Seek mentorship. It's always a good thing to have a mentor in your personal life and in your career, and this is something that I wish I would have learned early on in my career. Being a Black woman in the corporate spaces, it was really hard to find someone like me to seek mentorship from. But what I am learning nowadays is mentorship can come from anyone that you share that workspace with. I probably shouldn't have been so selective, and I believe that's something that everyone could benefit from.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now, everything's around AI. You're starting to see a lot of articles out there about what roles are going to be eliminated because of AI. However, I think embracing change and learning it is what's going to make you marketable. It's what's going to get you ahead. This is what's going to keep you going and continuously build on where you are, and find new opportunities. I refuse to allow AI to eliminate what I have for my future. I'm finding ways to use it to my benefit - whether it's reviewing 500-page legal loan documents in Copilot to quickly find payment dates, determination dates, calculations, or default scenarios, or using it for personal money management and market analysis. I'm forcing myself to find ways to have whatever tool it is, or whatever change it is, to benefit me. If I stay ready, then I don't have to get ready.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Staying true to myself and having integrity are the most important values to me. Again, being a Black woman in corporate spaces, I felt like I had to diminish myself or really conceal my true self in those spaces, just because I didn't find a lot of people that looked like me. But once I put my guard down and really became myself, and had that level of communication with my superiors, my peers, everyone, I realized that the trajectory started to go up for me. Always stay true to yourself.
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