Tricia scarlata

I would say two things. First and foremost, being at an organization where I truly believe they support me. When my son was younger, I stayed home, and I came back to work at JP Morgan 13 years ago after being home for 10 years. They knew when they hired me that I had a child with needs and that it would be challenging at times, and they actually gave me flexibility when flexibility was unheard of. This has been an amazing organization that has given me tremendous ability to be successful as a parent and a mother and a wife, at the same time be successful as an employee. Not only did they accept me coming back from being on a little bit of a sabbatical, but then they also elevated me and promoted me to running the business three years ago. Secondly would be my father. My father came from the industry - he was on Wall Street for many years - and he truly instilled in us the importance of loyalty, hard work, grit, surrounding yourselves with colleagues that you could call your friends, and the dedication to the company that you work for. That's from when I was born. I was raised with that, and the work ethic is so incredibly important. But then secondly, finding an organization that would embrace me and meet me where I was at.

I think everybody should think beyond the job. Every job has a function - my function of this job is A, B, and C - but you've got to figure out what's outside of the job that's still going to impact the success of the business. Every job can be entrepreneurial in its own way, and that's where you're going to stand apart, when you're the person that's going beyond the day-to-day function of the job and figuring out ways how you can make impact and move the needle in other ways that benefit the business. For example, at JP Morgan, I created a program called Mission Tuition 10 years ago, and that was beyond the scope of my job. We're educating clients and financial advisors every day around why they should be planning for college, but we've got 200,000 employees at JPMorgan Chase, so we should also be educating them. I created a program that does just that - it's not about buying one of our plans, it's about educating the person to the right and to the left of you about how they also should be planning for college. That's some of my favorite work, just because I have the passion for it. So find the passion and use that passion to help drive your career and obviously the business in which you're working in. When you couple your work with all those things that you're passionate about and you feel good about what you're doing, you can get through those really tough times that are challenging by falling back on that passion.

I surround myself with people that are positive, people that have similar passions and different skills but similar passions. As you know, being in the workforce, you have one person that's maybe negative or doesn't have the same drive, and it's hard - it brings the rest of the team down. So it's really so much about surrounding myself with people that are supportive, want to see my team grow, boost people up, and bring people up around you. I tell my team all the time, your success is mine, and mine is yours. I truly, truly believe that. It's not always easy, because that sometimes means not as positive feedback and getting people and pushing them to get to the next place. But if you have the same goals and the goals are very transparent, and you have a team that is passionate about those goals, then you can get through some of those challenging times. My father truly instilled in us the importance of loyalty, hard work, grit, surrounding yourselves with colleagues that you could call your friends, and the dedication to the company that you work for. The work ethic is so incredibly important. We lead with insights, we lead with education - it's just how we are. We create an environment where we don't judge. We get phone calls from employees who have a child that's a year away and they're embarrassed they haven't saved a penny, but that's not what we're about. We're about how can we get you in the best situation we could get you in.