Jaleah White

First, I would say my family. My parents were both in the military, they were both in the Army, and my dad is a retired colonel, so definitely being disciplined and loving a good to-do list and a good checklist keeps me organized. I would shout out to my family and my parents for that. But another thing that really keeps me going is just knowing that what I'm doing is helping. I know a lot of people think auditors are scary, or people that come in and do control testing are scary and we're trying to get them, but I think, at least in the roles I've been in, we've really made an effort to build that rapport with the people we are testing and the groups we're testing to be like, we're actually here to help you. We want to catch these things so it's better for the company and it's better for the customer, so that everybody is happy. Though it doesn't seem like it at first, it's really doing the background work to make sure a good output is coming out.

I would say to follow the path, or make your decisions based on what's going to make you happy. I know there's kind of a vibe right now that's like, you know, you have to hustle, and you have to work super hard, and you have to get to where you want to go as fast as possible. But there's also the beauty in making sure you take time to have those happy moments and enjoy the space that you're in. Sometimes if you're running too fast to reach the endpoint, you're gonna miss all the fun stuff that's happening around you. So, yes, you didn't get the promotion in 2 years like you wanted, but there's nothing wrong with getting the promotion in 5 years.

I feel like the biggest challenge and opportunity is utilizing AI in the work that we do. I feel like there's a lot of positives that can come out of it, especially when trying to understand business processes. Because in my role, a lot of times we're going into these areas and we're doing testing, but we really don't know what they're doing, and there's only so much that can be explained. So it's really helpful to use AI tools to better understand how processes work, to review procedure and policy documents, to provide a summarization that's easy for us to understand, especially to get work product out efficiently. But it's also a challenge, because sometimes AI doesn't produce the best output, or sometimes it doesn't necessarily make the most sense, so you still need to make time to review that work that AI is putting out to make sure it makes sense and it does meet the needs that you have.

I think balance is most important. I think you need to have good balance of your friends, your family, your work, your hobbies, and in my case, spending quality time with my dog. All of those things are super important. I would say communication is also important, not only to the clients that you're serving, whether it's internal or external, but also with your manager, with your colleagues, and with your family as well. If something is happening with work that's really important, you need to let them know, and vice versa. If something's happening with family, you need to be comfortable to let your team know. So balance and communication, I think those are my top two.