5 career lessons for high-growth tech from Senior Risk & Controls Manager, Stephanie John

you've not always worked for larger investment banks.

So how have you found those transitions into some of the more SME-sized businesses and payments, crypto, fintech, where we are at

the moment? Yeah, it's been a very interesting transition.

As you can imagine, when you start your career, an investment bank is already quite a large, established organization.

I remember when I started at UBS, they were celebrating their 150th year.

So very established, especially in the risk management space.

So moving from such an established organization into a newer organization, organization and industries such as the crypto space was definitely a transition for me.

I saw it as a very exciting opportunity to take what I've learned and experienced in a more established firm and apply that to a new industry, somewhere that was still growing, still trying to understand the regulatory landscape, still trying to build those frameworks up from scratch, and also really promoting that risk culture in that space that's historically known as the wild, wild west.

You kind of jump.

As soon as you get an idea, you jump.

You want to enter that new market.

You want to go for that licensing request.

But from my perspective, it's been a lot more about we've got all these great ideas we've got all these things that we want to do and that's fantastic how can we ensure that we're assisting the business to achieve this in a safe way you know and in a sustainable way so it's been a challenge of almost being a salesperson In a sense, yeah, I've really learned how to really hone those sales skills to sell what we're trying to do to bring people on board.

You know, it's not just about waving the stick to say you need to do things in this way.

Otherwise, you know, we won't get a license.

We'll get a regulatory finding or we'll have an audit finding.

It's not just about that.

It's really about bringing people with great ideas on the journey with you in order to accomplish those strategic objectives.

So that's been more so what I found this journey to be like, and it's been really enjoyable.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, actually, because we often, certainly specialising in risk and compliance, we often support clients where sometimes it is seen as that barrier and the hurdle to entry of new markets, new propositions, new products.