Finance Guys In Tech
Finance Guys In Tech
Ep005 Two Decades of Finance Wisdom w.Mona Leung - Being Mindful & Relaxed On The Journey
“You walk in with your idea, people are going to engage with you. They’re going to get into your data, they’re going to get into your thought process and they’re going to challenge you, and they’ll also build on it. So you’re going to walk out with a different product…a better product.”
Today our guest is finance gal Mona Leung, a Director here in AWS Finance. Mona draws on her 2 decades of finance experience before joining Amazon in 2014. She tells us what was different about Amazon, what advice she would give herself if starting out again, and oh yes we can't forget, Mona’s motto aka the 'Mona Leadership Principles'. We hope you enjoy!
2:15 Pizza Hut Finance
3:38 What Mona was like as a kid…an athlete
6:20 What was different when joining Amazon? - Taking risks & big ideas.
7:06 Mona’s Amazon origin story
10:01 Leadership style – be bold, be vocal, take risks, embrace mistakes
11:11 Advice to new hires – unlearning, don’t just default to old habits
11:51 What Mona unlearned – wanting people to like your idea vs. wanting them to help with your idea
14:57 What qualities do you look for in a new hire? The spark & The genuineness.
17:51 Something about Amazon – it’s fun.
20:31 MONA’s MOTTO aka the Mona Leadership Principles
23:21 What advice Mona would give herself starting out
26:19 The worst advice Mona ever received – you should aim to be in the CFO pipeline by ‘this’ age
27:56 on Diversity – how Amazon is like the U.N., in culture & work experience
30:41 The 3 people Mona would most want to have dinner with
31:11 Active listening
32:11 What Mona learns from her children (and how they help her with work)
36:41 Parting words for those just starting out – be mindful but relax, it’s a journey
Mona on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monasleung/
--
Sid on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhodi/
Charlie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleskunken
To find us online: charleskunken.com/podcast or email the show with any questions, comments, requests for guests, etc: charlie@charleskunken.com
Art & Work blog | charleskunken.com/blogsummary (Ideas on creativity & mindset)
Subscribe | charleskunken.com/subscribe (To the ‘Art & Work’ weekly email newsletter)
Insta | instagram.com/cbkunk/ (Daily 1 min. Instagram TV show: #ThePlazaOfTruth)
fb | facebook.com/cbkunk
—
Music by Good Baby. ‘Rose Colored’ (instrumental version), goodbaby.band/musicvideos
There is a skill sets that people forget. It's called active listening. I listened to what I listen to people very carefully and I listened to what they say and I listened to what they've done.
Speaker 2:What up keeps in talking to a finance guy podcast, the show for all genders and species about bringing some humanity and a bit of fun to the world of finance and tech and leaving you with a little something that can help you on your way. My name is Charlie[inaudible] and today sip Dodie my cohost and I interview mono[inaudible] and director here at AWS finance and she brings a good end. So without further ado, please enjoy the show. And today we have a very special gal of finance
Speaker 3:gal, mono lung Mona. Say hello. Hello everybody. How are you guys doing? So we're going to read a quick bio just to give people a little background that we put together and then we're going to jump into it. So, um, just some background on Mona. Mona got her undergrad BS in biology at UC Irvine and she began her career in finance as a financial analyst at pizza hut. Yeah, that would've been my dream job. I would've stopped there, but I'm going to just go through the rest. Um, while she was at pizza hut, she got her MBA at California state university long beach and then moved on to a nice long stretch at Pepsi co where she spent, uh, 10 years of her career working our way up to director and their finance org. After leaving PepsiCo in 2004, she's worked as a finance exec at several big names, including Sears, RR Donnelley, Alliant credit union McGraw Hill. And that was before you joined Amazon in 2014. Yep. Right. And she joined Amazon in the, on the retail side, the director of finance for pan EU categories. Uh, and then in 2017, 2017 she made the move over to Kendall Kendall content, spent two years at Kindle content and then made the ultimate move of her career to AWS finance. And that is where she currently dominates as a director. I'm Mona. Mona, welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah. Um, can I just ask you about pizza hut before we get into some of the other stuff that I honestly would have been my dream job. Like what, what were you analyzing at pizza? Was there anything that like sticks out? Yeah,
Speaker 1:back then. Um, we back then, pizza hut wasn't dying in restaurant.
Speaker 4:No. If a family goes there, they sit down, they have dinner. They didn't have any delivery carry outs. No kidding. No. So when I, when I joined them, they were expanding and Polifka it in the channel. So I did all the, um, a lot of the analytics in terms of how many delivering care out units we need to lunch open. And also once they're open, you gotta monitor the cashflow. Yeah. How are they doing? And if they don't do well, do you close them? Do you relocate them? All of that?
Speaker 3:Did you guys get free pizza all the time? Oh my word. Yeah, all the time. There was a commercial, like a, that was aired before the teenage mutant Ninja turtles movie. The kid, the baseball player, the kid. And right field. Oh, I was going to ask if you do anything about it. I was a big fan of pizza hut, so I had to just, I still am, you know, actually, yeah, we had, we had to throw that in. But um, that's super cool. And um, I guess what we wanted to kind of ask you is getting the real background on Mona. What were you like as a kid? Nothing like this. I was a tomboy, uh, sports or
Speaker 4:play, everything. Basketball base, all tennis, badminton. I did track. Um, you wouldn't, people couldn't tell I was a girl
Speaker 3:for a long time. What was your main, did you have like kind of one that you gravitated towards or, Oh, okay.
Speaker 4:A lot of basketball. Uh, believe it or not, I was the, I was very tall over there.[inaudible]
Speaker 3:where'd you grow up in Hong Kong.[inaudible] population. I was very tall, right on. Well, I remember all the girls in my class were tall until like they were the tall ones until like middle school. And then the guy started catching up and some people who were senators on the basketball team in middle school. I'm taller than now and I'm five, eight. So I think, yeah, if you kind of get that early growth spurt, you kind of basketball can be your thing. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Over there. Um, eight, I don't know. In Hong Kong I am considered very large and tall and big. Right. I went to a girls school so there are no boys to outgrow me. That's all. I was center of the basketball team and I was the team captain. Very cool for many years.
Speaker 3:Cool. And then what was kind of that you, you went into biology for undergrad before your career in finance started. Was that just something you do like dissecting frogs or something or,
Speaker 4:okay, so this is terrible. But um, growing up in Hong Kong[inaudible] Asian families, we call it the Trinity of majors. You can have as a going into college, you can be a doctor, you can be an engineer or you can be a computer programmer. So I picked dr
Speaker 3:Oh, just like India, you know, it's like an India have to do math. Engineering. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:The only those three and nothing. Anything else? It's not acceptable. So pick doctor, then I learned, I really liked the match. I really liked the physics, the logic. I really like chemistry. It's just very logical. I really liked the statistics. I know weird. I did not like the biology. So I actually gravitated towards, uh, at the later on of my four years I spent a lot more time in those that I did in my biology subject.
Speaker 3:So by the end it was kind of a natural going to finance
Speaker 4:finish. I'm gonna find a field that has a lot of, T has a lot to do with data and logic.
Speaker 3:Right on. Yeah. Cool. And so you've seen, you know, a lot of fortune 500 companies and um, you've been an Amazon now for five years. What was different when you joined Amazon than what you had seen at other places in your career?
Speaker 4:Um, it is super easy to do what you want to do here. Super easy. And it's super easy to take risk and have really big ideas and you just have to believe in it. And if you believe in it, it will come through. You have to put in your work, you have to, you have to sell it, you have to make sure it's the right thing to do. But if you believe in it, you can be the one owning it. That's really nice.
Speaker 3:What do you mean? It's easy to do what you want? Like how do you, yeah, maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit. Oh, do you mean picking where you work? What kind of products?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so, uh, I'll give you the pan EU example. So I joined Europe right in the beginning when I joined Amazon through Europe. I'm using about, if you know about Europe, Europe, we launched country by country. We did UK and then Germany and then France, and then Italy in Spain. After Spain, we took a step back as an organization that says, what can I do? Pan EU for all five of these countries. So there are categories in the past where I launched by country. So I would have PC in Germany, I'll have PC in UK. So if I launched the next new categories, can I say personal
Speaker 3:personal computing for, for the fans? I yeah. Hi mom. Um, yeah,
Speaker 4:well if I want to, if Amazon wants to launch a new categories in Europe, let's say, so instead of launching it by country, can I launch focus the category but launch it across all the countries? So, um, one of the things that we looked at is the inventory management across the five countries. I'm selling this cup in Germany. I'm selling the same cup in France and Italy and Spain. Why do I have to have one com per country? Can I have two cups? There was supply or five countries based on demand. So, um, we launched the business launch, the inventory management sharing across EU. I picked up the finance work stream. I believe. I wants to make sure that I want to N able that I didn't have to do that and then do it with me. I can say, well, you know, find a program manager, somebody leads it, go for it. But I decided I want to make, I want to be the one that says, I enabled Hani, you inventory management. So I started, it was just me. Um, I wrote papers, I sold it across Tim holiday, which is our VP of fit ops. I sold across, crossed all people that I needed to influence. Uh, and then we, we launched over 18 months period.
Speaker 3:And so you were just able to see an opportunity and run is basically[inaudible] you believe to a impact. And there was at the same with Kindle, you just kind of said, okay, I'm interested in exploring a different facet.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I thought, okay, after a couple of years in retail, I've never done digital and I have no idea what it's like to manage just digital content. There's no physical goods. So that was my, my Kindle play. It was very fascinating.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And for this, you came back from Europe to Seattle. Okay. And so when you were, was this kind of all known to you when you were picking Amazon as the next step in your career? No. What was, what was the origin story? What brought you in like under the umbrella? Actually
Speaker 4:you like this, my friend was interviewing for a role in Europe for AWS or excuse me, for Amazon retail finance. She used me as a reference.
Speaker 3:Ah. So I provided her reference and they took her job.[inaudible] that's cool. That's very Amazonian. Just ask anyone if they need a job. We're always hiring. Um, so then you just kind of said, yeah, you know, it sounds interesting and you're already, is that she convinced you on the phone there
Speaker 4:it was. Um, I didn't think about Amazon at the time. I was really into my McGraw Hill publishing space and, but I haven't done global. I haven't done international. I haven't left the country in order to leave the country. They really saw me, this Eaton, Luxembourg. It's a really cool country. High quality of living. Ooh, I'm gonna check that up. That was it.
Speaker 3:And then there was to Seattle after that. What's your take on Seattle versus Luxembourg? How was that transition or the weather's about the same. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And it's really different though from the living lots. Burke is a, I call it a city, country to country than it's a city at the same time, it's very small, but here this is a big city, so it's very, it's not like New York, but it's a new city. So let's read the fresh. We like it. Yeah. It's very casual. So, you know, I don't have to, um, I don't have to be pretentious. I could just wear tennis shoes and jeans every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Perfect. If you need to dress up, you can wear a Seahawks hoodie and you'll be the most, you know. Yeah, yeah. You could go to a fancy restaurant. If you want to wear a suit and tie, you're absolutely, yeah. Feel free. But someone next to you is gonna be wearing a Seahawks hoodie, so, and it's all good. Yeah. So, um, let's talk a little bit maybe about AWS finance, specifically you, you moved in and, um, your director of, what exactly is your scope, would you say?
Speaker 4:We, he, we call it Mona's org because it's a popery and there's not a central theme to brand. Yeah. So I cover when I called up what we call procurement supply chain. And then I also cover Howard engineering, uh, and Aparna, which is a subsidiary in Israel, and also our financing and asset management channel, which is the leasing of already equipment. And then the asset management of all that equipment.
Speaker 3:Which is your least favorite? No, I'm just kidding. No. Let me ask you something about like how they're all my favorite. No, let me, let me ask you like having such a diverse kind of product spread, if you will. Like what, what's kind of your tenets of leadership like from a cultural standpoint? Like how do you kind of keep everybody marching, motivated, enthusiastic. What's your, your style?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So there's, let me think about this way. You can never fail here. You, if you make a mistake and you fail, you can feel pretty safe. So, which is really nice. You should take advantage of that and take risks. So I encourage my team to, um, don't be shy and take things to the highest standards that you can take it and be people old if you don't agree, you don't like be vocal. Say it. If you're wrong, you know right away it's okay, but it doesn't damage you. That makes sense.
Speaker 3:It does. It does. Yeah. And like a lot of people will be, you know, scared to fail, scared to be wrong. Do you see like, do you have any advice when they come in of how to kind of get them into more of an experiment and move fast, kind of comfort zone?
Speaker 4:I tell people too. Okay. The worst thing you can do is default to what you've done in your previous job or the job before. So unlearning that is key. Even if you cannot unlearn it, have it right here in your frontal brain that this place is not like the place you just came from or the one before, all the ones before. It's gotta be different.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Have you ever unlearned something like is, do you have an example where you, yeah. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 4:So I have had 20 years of experience before I joined Amazon. So this is a hard learn. Like this is like hard to unlearn in those previous 20 years experience. When you go into a meeting and you have a product to present, whether it's a paper or a presentation or an idea, you want everybody to like your idea, give you some feedback, but everybody generally aligns and kind of you good. So you walked in with the same idea. You walk out with the same idea here, it's not what happens. You walk in with your idea, people are going to engage with you. They're going to get into your data, you're going to get into your thought process and they're gonna challenge you. And they'll also build on it. So you're gonna walk out with eight different product altered, but most of the time it's a better road. So, but you will feel like, can I just get completely beat up? But it's not true. But if you step back and say, you know what, this is actually better. And a lot of times they'll say, can you move faster? So, uh, so that is hard to unlearn.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how do you like, well, I guess there's two, there's two roles so you could be the one coming in with the idea. Um, and you just have to get used to the, I mean, how do you get used to people kind of like being critical of what you've put on the paper? Was that something you had to
Speaker 4:I have to, um, I had spent a lot of time with my manager at that time. Um, his name is Fred Deval. He's now the country lead for France and he was really good. Uh, when I go in with a paper, he was really good to say, okay, just let it roll. If people get[inaudible] get passionate and they argue and try let it roll off your shoulder, it's really just focused on what they're asking and don't worry about the whatever's happening in the room. Honestly. He always does that to me and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah. With my idea, with my paper. Yeah, that was very helpful. Yeah. Do you think I, I feel like I've had this personally where like I've taken criticism and I've had to coach myself to say they're not criticizing me as a human. They're actually trying to improve what I'm working on. Yeah. So you don't get that? Yeah. If there's crickets, that's probably the worst sign. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then they don't understand anything you wrote on your paper or, uh, do you tell like new hires, do you kind of set them up to expect like that are coming into your team to expect this? Or do they just kinda learn by doing?
Speaker 4:It's really hard to verbalize like you can, it's really hard to, excuse me, not verbal. It's easy to verbalize it. It's very hard to convey how it would feel to see those words. It's just like, I'm teaching you how to ride a bike, but I'm gonna tell you how to ride a bike. But when you actually are on a bike, none of what you, what I said to you would make any sense. Yeah. I would say like fix your balance. It's okay of you tip over the first couple of times, but until you get on the bike, you're not going to know what that means.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And if you don't, yeah, if you're not gonna get in the game, you're not going to make the progress on that. Take some risks. Yeah. So when I'm, when you look at new hire, uh, what are the main two, three qualities you're looking at as a new hire? Because you hired a lot of people across organizations, you know, so what does a new hire at Amazon means to you
Speaker 1:from a hiring process or when they start, what qualities would you want to do for like to make it here? Sure. I look for, so leadership principles aside, right? I look for that spark, that curious. You know, they're not, I'm not interested in somebody telling me all that they know I'm interested in somebody who is super curious because they want to know, they want to learn, they ask you questions because they want to know. They're not asking me questions to show off with that. That to me it's number one. And then number two would be the genuine, there's a genuineness to you, how you interacting. So here at Amazon, you have to be genuine to yourself in order to be able to sit through a tough conversation about paper. So that means you have to be very comfortable to say, okay, we paid to look at that, or you feel strongly about something and you've got a challenge. He goes, well, I don't agree because of this also that Jen, you in this of who you are to me is very critical in the higher,
Speaker 3:that's like a, you know, that's just like a life journey is knowing yourself. I mean, did, did, did you come to Amazon, you think kind of with these tools? Did you develop them as you went or
Speaker 1:cliff, I know coming in here, I just, uh, I figured, um, I'll put it this way. When I went through the interview process, the interview process, Amazon is very intense. Yeah. And um, I probably spoke, I spoke with a lot of folks, onsite phones, uh, phone interviews afterwards with different folks in Seattle everywhere. Um, I really enjoyed the interview, uh, because they, they were engaged in my problem that I was trying to solve. So they would ask me the typical interview questions, whatever they were doing. When I explain what I do, they listened, they processed and they actually challenge me and they were engaged. So to me it was like I was talking just to people that I already work with. That was your style. Like this is easy. I, after the interview, like my onsite loop in Europe, I was super energized. I was not tired. I was in the zone. I think this is a good place.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So you were, you were down with the culture. It was like swimming downstream set up. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like would you say for someone who's considering Amazon, like get it sounds like get to know the culture and really know yourself and know like if this is something you would thrive in, if you'll be excited to engage that way. Um, what's something that people outside of Amazon, like something that they might not know working here? You know, there's, there's a lot of people who say like the kind of the delivery results of the leadership principle. It can be very intimidating. People work long hours. There's a lot of misconceptions out there. What, what's something people don't know about?
Speaker 1:Well actually it's only fun place to work. Yeah. We, we are super relaxed and casual and we joke, we have dogs, we have be here. Uh, we have,
Speaker 4:yeah. I mean it's really fun and there was a really good thing
Speaker 1:since in my area anyway of community of a team. Yup. Ah, I look out for my peers. I look out for my teammates. I look out for people on my team. I look out for my boss[inaudible] so I, you know, it's very, um, it's very positive. It's productive. Positive meaning you will be challenged but not because they're jerks because it's a tough problem and we want to solve it.
Speaker 3:Yes. Truth-seeking is, as uncle Jeff likes to call it. It's not easy. Yeah. It's very fun. Yeah. I have a good time. Yeah. Oh, we know you have a good time on it. Um,
Speaker 1:but on that note, like, like I, when I joined Amazon as a finance person and we're dying right now, I've changed a little, you know, because of maybe effective leadership and it has that impacted your life in some way or not? Um, actually I felt more like homecoming here. So in my previous roles it was, um, I spent a lot of time building up my executive presence. How do you, um, how do you say something indirectly?
Speaker 4:Yeah, how do you, yeah, how do you disagree? But it was, sounded like you agree, but you actually disagree. Let me play through the not place, but how do you work through this car? Cause it was really hard. I tell him that's it. A lot of[inaudible]
Speaker 1:time building that. So when you have to solve a problem, it's a lot of energy, right? It sound like a certain wait. Yeah. Less on solving the problem. More getting the message through in the right way that can be received here. I felt more at home. I don't have to do that. Yeah. I just focus on the facts, the data and my judgment. And that's good. So I used to say to Charlie, like in other companies, it's like sometimes there's like sound right a lot, but here it is being right alarm.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and that's, that's a good point. Yeah. Is there anything that you believe in that's not like codafide in the leadership principles? Anything missing that you'd like to bring in of your own? Kinda your own magic. It's
Speaker 1:leadership in civilian like, okay. I have, this is kind of corny, but I'm going to say it. I have a motto and I had this motto since I was very young. I can't wait to hear this and I drill it into my kids. They hate it and drilling on my husband, he hates it. It's four lines. It's real short. It's this, it's do what you say. Say what you do. Do it 100% do it on time for, I have a poster on it actually I made, wow.[inaudible] do you do what you say? Say what you do. What does that mean? What it means is, okay, if you're going to do something, make sure you do exactly what you said you were going to do. Say what you do. That means if you're not going to do it, don't say it all the promises and then do it 100% so don't do it half baked and donut time. You know, have some sense of urgency that it will be done, right? Yeah. One I like on the sinner, like there are certain goals Fitch needs connection to our paying, you know, so Ville, this stand in this statement stand to evolving problems. This is, this is how I operate. So if I'm going to tell you, let's say you and I have a career discussion and I say to you, sit, I'm going to help you get to an LA director. Let's pick a time frame. Let's aim for five years. I'm going to do what I say. I'm going to work with you. We're going to build your sets up and we're going to build a skillsets plan and we're going to hook you up with the right people so you can get your exposure. And we're going to help you move that way, your pace, your way, uh, how you operate. So I will do that and I will do on time let meaning I'm going to be very vigilant and I'm not going to drop it. I'm going to do 100% that could we have baked with them. We will invest in a be engaged. You probably annoyed, you will feel like she's constantly falling. Mom, this other thing, I haven't done anything, so yeah. Can I go take that offer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the toughest one of the toughest thing in my career is people are very concerned about their own careers and to you to say, how are you going to help me? Help means not just a couple of meetings and talk about your career aspirations helped means that the things I just described. So like what you know now, what would you, what advice would you give yourself if you were an analyst on your team starting out or um, or Mona starting as an analyst. If you were giving yourself, you know, advice from your pizza hut or something. Again, you know, like what you back. Yeah, yeah. Ooh. Um, I would say maybe the do's and the don'ts, you know, I don't know there's any, is there anything absolute do's and don'ts or just general, like something maybe you wish you had kind of learned earlier that that's true. So, um, when I was more junior, I was writing busy chasing titles and I was always looking at the next who is, who is the next couple of levels and what am I going to get that title? Senior analysts, finance analysts, senior manager. Like I need to be a director. I was very like, titled driven. I don't think I realized that is totally irrelevant until I would say in my early forties that that that actually would drive you to make the wrong decision in your career choices. And when you're picking your next roles or you're picking on your developmental opportunity, it will actually make you pick the wrong things.
Speaker 3:How like unpack that a little, like how would you, yeah, how would it make you make the wrong decisions?
Speaker 1:Um, because you would be, you'd be looking for the, okay. The motivation for that next level is not the right, um, guide for your development. It's actually the opposite. You forget about what happens. You forget that I'm supposed to really look at if I'm going to be a CFO, let's say in 10 years, you really should look at what are all the skill sets I need to acquire, what kind of judgment I need to be able to make, right? So it may mean that you might have to learn operations, you might have to learn accounting really well, texts really well, or you have to learn, I don't know, um, something very healthy or investor relations relations. Or you really have to learn how to manage cashflow. So if you bucketed like that, then you should move your career around those things and then you will get to your CFO. But if you just focus on the title and what that person does, you're actually not addressing the real core thing. And you actually may end up shortchanging your career. You may get the promotion, but on the long term, I don't think you're making yourself a successful
Speaker 3:[inaudible] it sounds like. Um, it sounds like a matter of inputs and outputs, right? You're, your title is an output. Yeah. And you're in, yeah. It's an output of you choosing the right things that you want to focus on in your career. And the longterm game, which we always keep on talking about the law. It's just part of the race. It's basically a matter of tenure. I know you've learned a hundred Buddha sprint and I'll just, you know, target to target. But yeah,
Speaker 1:worst advice somebody said to me was this, and this is the worst advice. This was a really genuine high level recruiter from Heidrick struggle. You know, those executive recruiter[inaudible] the CFO. Cause to me, you know, you should aim to be ready to be in the pipeline for CFO role of a division or something around 40 but that was probably the worst advice that I've gotten. And I don't, I did not that until I was reaching 40 and that that is actually the wrong thing to focus on.
Speaker 3:Was that misguiding you do you think a little bit, ah, yeah. You can step back and say what kind of skill sets are really neat. So CFO, what, what are your inputs now? Do you think, um, you have a plan in place? Like what is your, I dunno, what excites you about work here? What do you enjoy digging in on?
Speaker 1:Uh, I, um, I like to make my imprint, so I like it messy that you don't really know what to do yet. So that gives me the opportunity to kind of see opportunity to come in, to learn it, figure it out, solve the puzzle and get it going. That to me is very funny. You can do that here and move on to the next problem. Yeah. And that makes a big one. And the next big one.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. There's one thing I did want to ask you specifically. We talk a lot. We do look some stuff about marketing. We talk a lot about getting the brand out and we talk about, um, diversity. Um, what's kind of your view? Like, what's the diversity message that I feel like AWS has a strong, uh, a strong diversity DNA that we're trying to put out there. What, what do you think is, what do we want to tell people about diversity and inclusion?
Speaker 1:Um, people forget that Amazon's a global company.[inaudible] we work with people from all over the globe. My team, even most of them resides in Seattle. They're from everywhere. They're from Hong Kong. Um, India, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico, United States, Canada. So it's diverse already from a minimum from where they came from.[inaudible] and then the background, it's super diverse. We have people from banking that joined us in AWS, finance in retail and hotel space, all kinds of engineers. There were periods engineers that are now finance people. So I would say it's super diverse. Uh, and you have to be ready if you come in, you have to be ready that it's, it is truly global. If I compare my work experience here to my previous work experience, PepsiCo fears, I would say this is the most, um, easily diverse place. Meaning people would just easily come in and out, which is really great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, um, it's like the UN and any given the organization you could, you know, have a celebration for any holiday that's on the calendar.
Speaker 1:When I was in Luxembourg sitting, we sat outside, there's no office, there are very few offices because we were growing very fast and I sat in the big room where there were like 60 finance professions, so a, Oh think of 10 rows of five tables then that's how we worked. Uh, anytime around me there there's probably at least two, there are probably at least three different languages being spoken.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I remember they had world cup on few years ago and they put on the big screen at Doppler and you could just go there and like, depending on what time of day it was, there'd be some crowd rooting their home team on. Yeah. So yeah. But, um,[inaudible] just look at the trucks that I've propped up in Lake union. I don't like, you know, it's like you'll find Indian drugs or Vietnamese drug, Malaysian tress people like, it's like a part Puri of a culture. Yeah. Yeah. Well, on that note, let's ask that we have some kind of questions, some fun questions that we'd like to ask on the podcast. Nothing, nothing too crazy. But speaking of a food trucks, what three people would you most want to have dinner with? Ha. Okay. Living or not living? I'm not going to give you a pretentious answer like
Speaker 1:I am stone or Washington. Uh, it's going to be a genuine answer. Great. It's my husband and daughter and my son. I want to have dinner with them, dinner with anyone else.
Speaker 3:I love that. I love that. Um, what, how do you consume new content? Do you like to read? You do documentaries? What's your kind of,
Speaker 1:so there is a skillset that people forget. It's called active listening. I listened to what I listen to people very carefully, um, and I listened to what they say and I listen to what they don't say. Uh, and then I listen very carefully, especially at work. Um, what are we, we're going through difficult papers or going through the model. I always take away something and I build on that.
Speaker 3:But, but away from work, like is it, are you a[inaudible]?
Speaker 1:Same. So when I'm like, when I work with my husband, so my husband's super smart, smarter than me. Uh, he, he just content by reading. Um, I can find a partner and he just, I to listen to when he speaks, I pick up all his facts. Always nuggets, right? Uh, when I, um, when I'm, I learned a ton of content from my two adult children. How old are they? 27 and 29. So they're the ones that tell me all about what it's, what it's like as a millennial by listening to them talking about their work environment, how they respond to feedback and how they respond to a good manager and a bad man. I actually work with them a lot in terms of, okay, I've got you enlist coming in. Um, she just graduated. What are some tips? It's to know when I need to give feedback. And they're very good about helping me understand what that means. Are they in like the corporate kind of kind of world too or are they so my daughter works with Disney animation studios, so she's got a really cool job and my son works for, I forget the name of the company. This is really terrible, but he managed his content for medical content. Cool. Oh, okay. Um, sir, is that something you've always had the listening thing, is that always just been your, because they're really good. So they were very young or even when I was, um, maybe an executive in my thirties and uh, they have a perspective that you would never think about. So I used to ask him work problems and they would try to solve it for me as kids
Speaker 3:pick. Should I call or what was that? Encyclopedia Brown like those old books. I don't know what that is. Oh, it was like, it was like this story. It's like this, this carpet. He'd come home and his son, I forget his name, but maybe encyclopedia was his nickname and he, he, the father would come home and he couldn't solve the mystery. So he'd tell his son and then his son would solve it for him. It would
Speaker 1:be like my kids do them. I would tell him, I w I would ask him, okay, I have a problem here. Uh, I, I'll give an example. This was a really tough, so at Sears we had to, we had to let go a bunch of people. So we had training classes of how to have that conversation and it was very tough. Um, you, you would, you would have come in that day and you would have received a ticket. One ticket, you take the bus, then you go to a hotel, and then the ticket, you go over here and you do this, right. And before you go over there, I have to have a conversation with you. Wait, the employee gets a ticket, they get it. They get the random ticket. No, it's, it's predesigned. Nothing. What's happening to you and you're either in the good light of a bad line. I have a good, I have, uh, I have a speech for you that is a very difficult speech. And I have, uh, another script that you know, all positive so I can't talk to anyone cause he was super confidential. Um, so the only people I can talk to as my children, cause they're little kids. So I asked him, what can I have to do this, this is going to be horrible. What do I do? I be from do I cry with them? Like what, what do I do? And they give me very interesting perspective. They say, mom, they don't care what you do. I was like, Oh, but they're not gonna hear anything you say at the moment. You say you don't have a job or you have a job, they're not going to hear anything else. That was my little kid's child time. Super small. Yeah. And I thought, you know what? You're absolutely right. So I didn't worry about it. I just focused on making sure that the information is gonna be heard, making sure that they are okay. So it's all about them now because of they're okay. Making sure they know where they need to go next. So that was the best advice I've ever done. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so simple
Speaker 3:to, yeah. It's a little all about me. Yeah. They say like, I've learned everything I need to know when I was in kindergarten. That's kinda like the tee shirt. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what do you guys do for fun? Like as a family outside of work? Uh, we like to travel. Oh yeah. I'm planning a trip with my daughter that Asia is coming November. Oh, cool. Cool. What's like, do you guys have any like traditional family holidays or is it always like exploring something new or, Oh, no, we do the, we do the, the Christmas. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So my husband is very anchored around having good holidays. So Christmas, Thanksgiving, those are the two[inaudible]
Speaker 3:yeah. We have a big feast. Making those memories all day. Yeah. How blessing. Wow. That's cool. That's fun. That's fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We hosted a things giving dinner last year here in Seattle for some of the folks that I used to work with in Luxembourg. So they were Europeans coming to the United States. They're here, they don't know what a American Thanksgiving is. So we hosted them Turkey stuffing. We had cranberry sauce.
Speaker 3:Very cool. Um, what about like, as we kind of kind of wrap up, here's anything that, like any parting words that you would maybe tell people who are thinking about their careers in finance or just kind of as people are getting out of college and seeing the wide world? You mean like newbies coming in or I'd say like a, like a life philosophy. You're trying to figure out what you want to do. You graduated or you're, you know, at that, at that early stage.
Speaker 1:Okay. Um, so don't listen to the advice that you have to be this by this age. That's false. It's just false. Um, relax. It's a journey and you will take different turns. So go F, go with the flow of bit, um, you know, be mindful of where you're going, but go with the float bed. And, uh, don't, don't anchor yourself around. I have to be a vice president by this age and I have to be a fearful by this age or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Love it. Love it. Is there anything that, anything that we didn't cover that might want to get out to the world, we could always do a followup round to, and maybe that maybe that more too. Once again, you know, I love that. Yeah. Let's give the model. Let's end on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. Easy. Do what you say. Say what you do. Do it 100%. Do it on time.
Speaker 2:Awesome. There you go. Thanks for coming on the show. Yo, what's up everybody? Thanks for tuning into the podcast. Don't forget to subscribe. Feel free to leave a rating, review what have you, but most of all go have a fantastical day. Okay. We'll see you soon. Goodbye.[inaudible].