Career History

Because of my performance in my core responsibilities (managing monthly processing limit increases) and my help in cross training the new hires, I was promoted to the Team Lead position.  This role worked as a pseudo Assistant Manager to the Underwriting Manager.  I learned a ton in this role as it was an opportunity for me to shadow an incredibly talented and experienced manager as she navigated hiring, firing, team motivation, and other leadership.  I assisted in team leadership by reviewing and recommending adjustments to standard operating procedures, policies, and other operations.  I also helped in project management of more strategic initiatives that were coming to the Underwriting Team as part of a pivot the company was undertaking at the time.

My time as an underwriting team lead really helped me to develop the leadership and management exposure that would inform my future work building a new team from scratch.  I was able to see what worked, what didn't, and examine what kind of a leader and manager I wanted to be.

During this time, I also expanded my role with respect to data analytics.  Instead of just creating and updating reports to be used in my own work, I was the subject matter expert responsible for creating and updating all the reports used by the team.  This is also when I got my first exposure to Tableau.  This new visualization platform was complimentary to SQL and I quickly set to the task of learning how to use it to create reports.

My work as the Underwriting Team Lead culminated in the early days of the pandemic.  In those first few months (during the first lockdown) we didn't know what was in store.  We were concerned about the likelihood of businesses experiencing bankruptcy or otherwise being unable to deliver goods and services for which they had already taken payment.  This led to a lot of work to analyze our portfolio and identify any risks that this new operating environment.

As you can imagine, the ability to create custom reports was crucial during this period and I found myself focusing heavily on pivoting our analysis with new custom reporting.  I hasten to add that I was certainly not alone in this endeavor.  I was working under the direction of several talented and experienced managers who gave strategic direction to this effort.  Watching them navigate those uncertain moments will always be a highlight of my career and one that was incredibly informative to my approach to credit risk analysis.