Francesca : Hi everyone and welcome to another exciting episode of Centsational Chats. I'm Francesca your host and today we have a very special guest with us Kate Aitken. Kate is making big waves in the Tech world especially at Google where she is the AI strategy lead for the CIO. So she's here today to share her incredible story about climbing the career ladder in banking and in Tech and how she balances her highflying career with personal life. So we are super super excited to have her on the show today. Welcome Kate and we are so glad you could join us today!
Kate : I'm delighted to be here and delighted to catch up with you Fra. It's been years since we worked together in banking and I'm excited to dig back up some of the stories and lessons from when we worked together and first met.
Francesca : Great! So let's start from banking then. Let's start from the beginning. Could you please tell us about your early days in banking? What it was like for you as a young woman in that world, what were some of the challenges you faced or how did you overcome them?
Kate : Yeah, I'll start by saying - My parents both worked in finance. I think they were both surprised, I wanted to go into Finance. I honestly went into Finance because math and finance and that just the world of business kind of terrified me and I know that a lot of people get the advice you know follow your passions, do what you love, do what you're good at and I figured I might as well with nothing to lose, graduate, get the best job I can, in the toughest field I can and learn as much as I can and so I'm not sure I ever fully bought into the idea that I was going to be in banking forever but I really thought of Wall Street and specifically the two years as an analyst which is a very standard program. I thought of it as like Financial boot camp and I thought I'm going to learn to be comfortable with Excel and modelling and financial statements and being interrogated at the drop of a hat, as to whether or not a number is right and justifying my work at the the drop of a hat and honestly that is exactly what happened, I got a really great, boot camp in skills that I wasn't confident in before and I know we'll talk about this more but that's something that I often advise people now, especially in your 20s - it's a time to explore and so many people only do things that they are really comfortable with because they're so scared to fail. Your 20s are for failing - like if you're not failing at half the things you're trying, you're not learning what you like and don't like and what you're good at and you're not good at and you know real life comes later, right. You get married, you have kids, you have a mortgage, it's a little scarier to fail at a certain point in life and I was very lucky I graduated without a debt from college. I was living in an expensive city in New York where I'm from, but I was able to get a good paying job and I thought worst case, I totally flame out and then maybe I move home for a couple months and find a new job. I was very lucky but I think a lot of people put pressure on themselves early in their careers that they have to be a rock star from day one. I was never the best person in my Investment Banking class. It didn't matter, I was learning a ton and I still use all those skill sets today. Moving into Tech, I'm not necessarily like the techie-est person. I am definitely not a person in technical role, I am not a software engineer, but I lean on a lot of the business judgement and business analytics that I learned in banking and it’s really useful in different contexts. So I think also jumping around and using your skill sets in different areas and rounding up your skill sets is really important too.
Francesca : That's great! I really believe this, I mean you've made some impressive choices in your career, could you talk a little bit about a mindset that have helped you own your career path, you already mentioned part of it now but is there any advice that you would give to someone in their early 20s?
Kate : I think you just said it, ‘own your career’ right and often times we don't really understand what that means. To me it means asking for what you want. So for example you know my father is British, I have dual citizenship with the US and UK and I was very excited about the prospect. We were working for a British bank. I was excited about going to London and covering British clients on the ground at London and I was in the financial institutions group my first two years at Barclay's and putting your hands up and saying this is something I want, that was how I got to cover the British client. You know there was a time when we were doing a fairness opinion for a major Stock Exchange client, putting my hand up and saying send me over I'll go, I'll meet the clients, I'll pull the all-nighters you kind of need to raise your hand for the things that you want because nobody's going to kind of be sitting there thinking gosh would Kate like to do this or if they are, that's just when the stars align and the stars don't always align. Sometimes you have to align the stars for yourself.
So I just found that it was much more attainable to get what I wanted and go where I wanted if I was very clear with the people around me about what that looked like and where I wanted to go and what help I needed from them. So when I got my third year analyst offer I said I will accept if you send me to London. They were very amenable to that but I think a lot of people don't necessarily open their mouth, put up their hand and don't want to rock the boat especially if it's something competitive. I mean, I don't know that there were too many people who were volunteering to go to London but sometimes it's putting your hand up and saying I want a promotion, I think I'm ready. Maybe nobody's actually thought of you as ready for the promotion, maybe it's actually a pretty narrow window for getting people promoted but if people don't think of you and know you want to toss that your hat in the ring it's not going to happen and I think that's only become more clear, moving through not only banking but Consulting and Tech. The more senior you get the more you realise that it does take a village, you need a whole network of sponsors and mentors and people who should be thinking about your career. It's almost their job to think about their about your career because part of an executive's job or a Senior Leader's job is to think about the talent that they're building and somebody actually when I was in Consulting at McKinsey told me that they said don't feel awkward about asking people, senior people or sponsors for favours and for help with your career that's literally part of their job is to develop Talent and I think that's true across companies, certainly all the big International companies that we're talking about and have experience with at a certain point that is your job is to nurture talent and so in some ways you're making an executive job easier by saying, “Hi this is where I want to go in my career. I want to stay here. I want to build you know my professional life. Here are the skill sets I bring, here are the skills I think you could use, here's the kind of work I want to do”. It just makes it easier, it takes the guesswork out of it for them.
Francesca : And I can fully testimony this because we have been colleagues I can say that you were super direct and that was also I mean apart from your smartness and you're very good at what you're doing but I think the fact that you're very clear with your line manager or which are your goals which are your aspirations and the fact that you're eager to learn I think it's super important and you're living testimony of this and I can say yes, I remember you were doing this, so well done!
Kate : Can I tell a story from when we were together in London? That kind of gets to this, so I'm going to embarrass you a little bit. But do you remember the junior advisory committee that we were part of? You were a founding member with me and basically there was this women's initiatives network and, a lot of senior women, the sort of unofficial anecdote was senior women, when they made director and needed to do a community contribution were told like go join the win network steering committee and do that for a couple years and it helps you get a leg up for MD. So there were all these women who were kind of in their like mid-30s who kind of forgot what it was like to be a junior banker and weren't necessarily thinking about the things we were thinking about and I remember we were just kind of sitting around a lot of the junior women saying like these emails just don't speak to us like they don't reflect what our priorities are, they don't reflect what we want out of our career at this point and we basically started this junior advisory committee in EMEA. There was also separately a group of women who did the same thing in the America in New York. But in EMEA what we did was we wanted to focus on mentorship and we said work life balance is great but like at this point we're all kind of single maybe even living with roommates like we just want to dive into our careers and make the most of it in the first couple of years and to do that we need mentorship and sponsorship and so we proposed a program and we were basically told we don't have enough senior people who are interested in this program so we can't match you with a sponsor or mentor and we kind of went away and said okay let's take that no and turn it into a yes and we said okay we don't want a mentorship matching program we want a mentorship training program we're going to train Junior women and men on how to make senior Bankers care about their career and invest in them and it was literally what we were just talking about how to advocate for yourself, how to identify somebody who can help you get where you want to go, who has a skill set they could, share with you or train you on, who can advocate for you when you want to transition to a new role or change teams or try a different office and having that support network is huge but I remember like your boss David was a huge advocate for it and he said it was the first time that he'd gotten involved with the women's Network, so it was a great way I think of bringing men into the conversation too and taking that first no and turning it into a yes. It was pretty successful. We got a lot of people involved in that and it was one of the things that I was most proud of especially early in my career was building that Community together.
Francesca : Yeah I think it's also a way of like you really take care and you really care about the people who work with you even if they're juniors or even if they're interns it's not just like assigning the value of a person based on our role or title, but really caring about her future or his future and then his or her life and there are not so many people who are like this so yeah that was amazing. But did you see any difference between the banking world and the tech world? because you transition in the end to the tech industry from banking so I know there are a lot of people who would like to do sort of transitioning but did you see any difference also in terms of like company culture and the way people behave and treat you or more or less is always the same?
Kate: So to be honest it should be careful because I have experience at one Investment Bank, one consulting firm and one tech company. But I will say I think what most of the difference seems to be less about industry and more just the evolution over the last, 15 years since I started my career I think there's more trend of people, respecting and talking about diversity equity and inclusion, understanding that sponsorship is critical, understanding that people bringing their whole selves to work is a huge part of what creates psychological safety and lets people not only bring their full selves to work but bring their best ideas and be comfortable with conflict and descent and the things that are critical to producing creativity and great ideas and innovation. But I think as I understand it from, folks who are still in banking and still in Consulting these are things that I think have transcended industries and there's a lot of research on this and a lot of kind of social emphasis that's been put on this at large in society so it's hard to say if I'd stayed in banking over the last 15 years I think I'd probably have seen a lot of similar changes. The biggest change honestly is I can wear jeans to work now!
Francesca: And what about gender dynamics? Do you think we're still far away because you mentioned over the past 15 years something changed and you recognize it and by the way I have to say yes you pass from one Investment Banking to one consulting firm to One tech company but it's like all three are to one so you pass from Barclay to McKinsey to Google so I really want to put the dots were in the right place. But what do you think in terms of gender equality? Also you know most of these environments are male dominated as well.
Kate: Yeah I mean I think we were talking about this a little earlier. It's hard to think of too many industries that aren't pretty if not dominated by men in terms of their representation. There are industries where men set the rules when they were first established. I mean sometimes I have to think and again this isn't industry specific or sector specific this is a societal thing. Like in America women couldn't have their own credit cards till the 70s. Like the fact that I have graduate degrees from like Ivy League schools and paid my way through grad school and don't have to worry about a lot of these things and I can be independent and I don't have to like immediately go get married in order to open a bank account, and even can take control of like my choice of when and how to have a family like all of these things are I think dictating or opening up new possibilities for women in the workforce no matter what your industry is. And on one hand I think we're very fortunate on the other hand I know that this generation is navigating a lot of that for the first time and kind of creating the rules and I will say I was at McKinsey when we, you know, worked with our then managing partner who's the CEO equivalent at the consulting firm to say it's crazy that, tech companies are giving people these fertility benefits, to postpone having children and give them more optionality about balancing work and career and we don't do that yet and to his credit he made that possible. So I actually took advantage of that when I was at Mackenzie…
Francesca : Great!
Kate : which is wonderful benefit and Google offers that too and it was so funny to me because when we made that a benefit most of the people who were interested in talking to me about it were married women. They weren't women who, you know, I think there's this cliche of, women postponing having kids because they haven't met the right guy and like that's certainly some people do it for that reason but I talked to so many married women and married men who wanted their, partners to get this benefit and being able to have a little bit of flexibility around how and when you have kids. Even for people who got married pretty young I mean we're kind of just giving ourselves these tools and figuring out when and how to use them and I think across the board the employers that are going to be employers of top talent and retainers of top talent are the ones who are going to find the most creative ways to give people the tools they need to balance their lives and their careers and kind of figure that out as they go there's no right answer and we're just we're learning as we go.
Francesca : Yeah I mean infertility is a big problem and the flexibility to decide where to have a baby it's also something that traditional companies do not offer among their benefits. Corporate benefits usually even if they cover very good or they provide very good health insurance coverage but most of the times traditional companies except for Tech companies, they don't provide it. I know because my husband works for a US tech company so they provide that but all the rest of traditional companies they don't at all and yes and I'm not surprised at a lot of like married women who were the first interested in finding out more but…
Kate: It's another example to me of if you're unhappy and you want to have a kid because you feel pressure time-wise and you're looking for another job because you're in a high pressure, finance job or whatever, talk to your employer and say listen I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place and if this was a benefit that was offered or if there was some sort of support for this, like I think until men and women advocate for themselves in this way a lot of employers will just lose talent and they won't know why and that's kind of on us to advocate and articulate what it is we need and give people a chance to show up for us and or say no actually that's not a priority for us at this time and then you walk away and you go to the next employer and you have no regrets because you asked for it and you were told no. The worst thing I think is walking away and not having said what it would have been that would have kept you, what would have made you stay and give them a chance to kind of show up and be an employer of choice who wants to support you.
Francesca: And I hear there are a lot of women who would like to have a baby. They would try naturally but they're not unfortunately not have any success so they start to be so stressed about that and then at the same time they would like to change job but they say what if I'm going to have a baby then how can I like change job then get my new colleagues and my new line manager get to know me but at the same time then as soon as after I join the new company then I get pregnant it's not ideal, so they're kind of a stuck and they start like stressing themselves so much just because, you know, they don't know what to do. It's like they're stuck where they are. Yeah so absolutely. But in this respect more broadly what advice would you give to your younger self starting out in general in the professional world if I may ask?
Kate : I think really it goes back to treat your first decade of your career, your first decade after University really, as a young adult, as an opportunity to really test what you like and don't like. There were a lot of things I thought I would like that I really didn't like when I tried them. Everything from like dating a certain type of person, living in a certain place, going back to school, to different roles in different Industries. I actually liked banking a whole lot more than I thought I was going to. I stayed there for 4 years because I was enjoying it and I was getting responsibility. When I finally decided to leave banking it was really less motivated by not enjoying Banking and more thinking I have one data point. I like banking but I don't know compared to what I have nothing else to compare it to I'm pretty good at banking but maybe there's something I'm even better at and will be absolutely over the moon passionate about to a degree I can't even fathom because it's the only job I've had. So I know that there's some people who especially in our parents generation right, my parents both worked in finance for their whole careers and they had slight changes in between different roles maybe they went from like the commercial lending side to the private investing side but I think it's exciting that we have this opportunity to jump around different sectors, try a different country. I’ve friends I haven't done this personally but I have friends who had the ability to stop working for a big fortune 500 company and work for a startup or start their own thing and when you have a little bit more writing on your financial success and security especially in your 30s you want to be more optimizing around things that you already know you like and you are good at and you will excel at. In your 20s I think your job is just to figure out what those things are. So I remember my first job, my first study I did at Mckinsey with clients was in operations and it was a financial institution and going in I thought I've already covered financial institutions and my least favorite class in business school was operations and that was the study they gave me. It was the best study I did the whole time I was at McKinsey, so you might have very strong convictions but until you test them until you really put them to the test you don't know what you like and don't like. You just have very strong opinions but I think it's important to really test those out and that takes some risk and that takes some bravery and courage to know that it might not work out at all. I mean conversely some of my studies that I fought to get on, tooth and nail at McKinsey especially like public sector studies because I am very Mission oriented. They had like the worst people or the worst managers or the worst lifestyle or they were just not inspiring once you got there and they talked a good game and then you realised okay maybe I don't trust this person or maybe I need to sense check things first and do my diligence before I say yes but you have to have a way of testing these ideas you have in your head because that's what the real world is. It's a chance to test what you have, these beliefs that you have about yourself and about what you can offer and about what will make you happy.
Francesca : And you need an open mind as you rightly point it out. Yeah, I mean your example of your first case in McKinsey it's super interesting because in the end you thought, “oh my God I really didn't like this” but then in the end it turned out to be your best case ever at McKinsey, so yes you need to have open mind and most of the times I see women especially, but in general people who are very discouraged, but nobody told us that the life was going to be easier and easy in general. Life is not easy. So it's just good that you're going to face challenges because you already know you're going to face challenges and then challenges will be bumped into your face continually, over the course of your years. It's just that you become more prepared but you have this open mind also to test different things, new things and you become stronger and then at the same time you become even more resilient so I'm fully with you.
Kate : I think you said the magic word ‘Resilience’
Francesca : Yes
Kate : and it only comes by having failed and realized that it doesn't end your life it doesn't end your career. I moved back in with my parents during covid I was between apartments, between cities. In the back of my mind I was already thinking about getting a new job and I just ended up living at home for 18 months in my mid-30s. If you told me at 22 I would move back in with my parents while I was between apartments in between jobs in my mid-30s, I would have thought like the world was ending and it was a way of getting support it was what I needed at the time and I bounced back and was able to buy my own apartment again and get an even better job and just create an even better life for myself in a new city. So I think accepting support taking risks even if it doesn't look like what you thought your life would look like, the more you do that the more you realise I am resilient, I will bounce back, I'll bounce back better and it's not going to be the end and that also encourages you in turn to take more risks going forward. So it's a virtuous cycle but you have to kind of trust yourself that you're going to bounce back in the first instance.
Francesca : Yeah I think it's a sort of my life at the same time, so I'm like reflecting on myself as well. So, definitely I love the work, the severance.
Kate : So many of our lives. So many…
Francesca : Yes so many so many. But Kate, last one at Cent of a Woman we're all about, empowering women through knowledge and confidence especially in financial literacy and entrepreneurship, but from your experience how important do you think is financial literacy in career progression particularly for women in this case and Tech and finance and what role do you think platforms like ‘Cent of a Woman’ can play in supporting women's career and personal growth in general?
Kate : It's absolutely critical not just for women in finance and Tech and consulting but every woman who wants to control her own destiny right and I remember my father when I was young used to, he'd give us money to like go out with friends or go to the movies or whatever, but he'd make us ask for it and he'd make us justify why we were asking for a certain amount of money and he'd say “Okay you're going to the movies, do you need money?” and I'd think “oh yeah I do”. He'd say “How much money do you need?” and I'd say “I don't know $20” and he'd say “Okay well talk me through it, what will $20 cover?” and I'd say “I think like a movie ticket and some snacks” and he'd say “Nope like movie ticket actually cost $10 and snacks are going to cost 10 more dollars and you're going with your friend, why don't you make sure that you get something you can share so actually maybe you need $25” and just kind of that dynamic of discussing in a very dispassionate way how much things cost and then having to ask for money and justify it kind of takes a lot of the emotion out of it. I know women who get to their 20s or even 30s and they're having conversations with their bosses advocating for why they should make more money doing the same role as a peer or having conversations with a partner or spouse about different spending habits and saving habits and I think the earlier that you can get used to doing this and this is why now that I have friends who have kids it's my one tip for them, when I have kids I will definitely do the same thing with my kids, just get your kids talking about money in a very like not guilt way not not guilt-ridden way a very not…
Francesca : Natural
Kate : intense stressful way, yeah. it's like “What did you have for breakfast?" and like “How much money do you need for lunch?” it shouldn't be a big scary thing and the other thing I would say, if you didn't grow up with parents who kind of coached you on this and made you feel like it was natural one of the best things I can recommend to people to do. Definitely in the US where this is kind of part of our political culture, but even in Europe doing it for charity or for an organization you care about is raise funds, ask people for donations. A lot of the research shows that women are much more comfortable advocating when it's not just for them. So when they can think about “I'm advocating for this Museum” that's doing this tremendous fundraising campaign to build a new wing or buy a new set of artwork that they can make available to the public and there's some sort of cultural or social significance or if you're at work and you're advocating for your team to get more resourcing, a lot of women find it easier to do that and they're better at it when they know who they're fighting for. So, I think it's a good way to get if you're not comfortable advocating for yourself get comfortable advocating for other people around you and again asking for money on behalf of a good cause whether it's your team at work or a organization, social organization, charitable organization you care about is a great way to just get comfortable because at the end of the day if you can't talk about money everything else kind of doesn't matter. All the skills about how, what percentage you save and where you put it like you just need to be comfortable and confident around money and the rest you can all learn especially through examples.
Francesca : Absolutely and then like for example before we conclude what I'm trying to do with my kids is like with the oldest giving her every Sunday three euros made up of one coin each one year each and then she's got three piggy banks and one she marks saving the other one is fun and the third one is like donating and so she get used to this so that she puts one year each into these three piggy banks and then at least she knows, okay I want to have fun because I want to buy a unicorn in this case she really loves unicorns I don't know why but of course she has to ask permission to Mommy and Daddy and then she can take the money from the fun piggy bank. But then for the rest it's like saving and then of course we invest those money. But at least she knows the money has worth something that are not evil and then it's super natural to speak about it and then learn she's almost 6 years old how to manage them so it's a super natural process. So I'm fully with you. So Kate I don't want to take too much of your time but this brings us to the end of our chat. Super thank you for being here with us and because I think your story is not just inspiring but it's a real gap for many of us, especially for women and who wants to make their mark in the corporate world at the same time. So, thank you so much for sharing your journey and insights.
Kate : Well thank you for having me! I am thrilled to be here and always thrilled to catch up with you because as I said you were such a big part of how I started my career and you are one of my earliest supporters and confidants and thank you!
Francesca : Thank you so much and then to everyone listening thank you tuning in to the Centsational Chats and remember every step forward no matter how small is a step towards your own success story. So don't forget to subscribe for more inspiring stories and useful advice and then see you next time and keep chasing your dreams. Thank you so much!
