Katie Curry
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
So I am a big fan of Get Abstract. It's a subscription service and it's a service that basically takes a lot of the new books in business, technology, even creative fields as well. And because I don't ever have time to read as much as I want, these are book summaries that you can listen to or you can read. So I have been using Get Abstract for a long time. Many years.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
And I love getting just the cliff notes of the new books that come out. And from there, I pick the books that I actually want to read. Three that I wanted to share with your audience. One is called The Mental Toughness Handbook. And it's by Damon Zaharades. Maybe you can put it in the show notes, Vince. It is just an exercise to really help people.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
tattoo and prepare your so that you can handle your emotions well when when you're triggered the other one which is my my copy is so worn out because i've read it and read it many times is the one thing and it's by gary keller he is the the founder of keller williams real estate and this book is about the power of focus and I believe that focus and simplicity have been so underrated.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
They're not glamorous, like, you know, some of the new shiny things that we see that come up, but there's a lot of value in there. So that's the next book. And then... The last one is Jim Collins. I am a big fan of his as well. Many of his books are great, but I like Good to Great.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
And this is about companies and how companies, some companies that make the leap to great, other companies deteriorate. So very interesting case studies. And of course, I am always listening to podcasts, a variety of different podcasts and
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
i like to ask for recommendations from others and so between my get abstract my books and my podcast i think those are the three pillars to my learning but the most important pillar of my learning is actually reflection time sitting down every week and thinking okay, what do I need to do to get a little better next week? What do I need to learn that I don't know?
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
What do I need to talk to that I'm not talking to? And just having just a short amount of time for reflection and improvement.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
You have to know yourself and know your risk tolerance. And your risk tolerance evolves over time, right? You may have a high risk tolerance early in your career. Maybe your risk tolerance is a bit lower when you're raising your family. And then you may be ready for another, you know, exciting move or jump later on.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
So look, Vince, I am a big believer in needing personal time to just be with yourself. And there's so many pressures in the world at work, with travel, with, you know, friends and families and our charitable work and all the other things we need. I need time in nature and I need time by myself. So those are, for me, key practices that keep me sane.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
Invite me on another podcast.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
I would love to cover both of these in the next one. It would be my honor to join you again, Vince.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
So knowing yourself and, you know, for me, knowing myself and my risk tolerance was very important. The second part is I had spent a lot of years being very focused on outcomes, being very intense and intent about what I'm doing.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
And I have now moved into a phase of exploration and looking at the various opportunities and being less focused on a precise planned path, but embracing these opportunities, embracing kind of the fun, the exploration, the curiosity, and even the magic. And that was a major shift for me.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
I think it happened with experience, with age, where I was able to kind of embrace, like you said, both the hard and logical decision, but also these intuitive, exploratory, pursuing fun and pursuing, exploring outside of my comfort zone.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
That's a good question, Vince. We do know that there's at least four actually generations now in the workforce and of course more coming. But I think as a leader, first and foremost, I look at people as humans and I try to see what they, try to understand what their needs are. How can they be successful in their role? What do they need? Is it learning and upskilling?
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
Is it just support and praise and recognition? Is it tough love that they need? But my kind of recipe for this is kind of four things that I always think about. What's my focus? Am I clear about what success looks like for this project, for this role, for this particular problem I'm solving? The next one is simplicity.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
What's the simplest way that we can actually do this and we can solve this problem? And then the last one is having humility. As a leader, I cannot tell people what to do because a lot of times I don't have the answer. And sometimes I see leaders are afraid to admit that they don't have the answer.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
The job of a leader is to help emerge the answer from the group, whether it's, you know, emerging the answer from the team, from other teams, from the market, from best practices in, you know, our function or in our industry. But the role of the leader is to emerge the best solution. How do you like working with Gen Z? In terms of working with different generations, I love working with Gen Z.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
There's a lot that has been said about Gen Z being entitled and being impatient. And, you know, there's, of course, certainly some of that. But I think as leaders, we need to pivot and evolve and be much more clear, much more transparent. And we need to pick up the pace. Pick up the pace in execution. Pick up the pace in rewarding Gen Z. Pick up the pace in promoting Gen Z. And...
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
Understanding that we're moving towards a meritocracy. Gen Z appreciates a true meritocracy rather than a, you know, a hierarchical culture. And companies that, especially those long established companies with hundreds of years of history, if they're not able to pivot and move into this more...
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
authentic, more real, more clear and kind of a faster moving way of leading, they're going to lose a part of their competitive advantage. So I'm watching this. It's an area of interest for me. Like I said, I enjoy working with Gen Z. They give me energy. They teach me a lot of things.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
I grew up in Bulgaria. I grew up in communism and I grew up in a small town. My first big part of my kind of reinvention or transformation was coming to the United States and getting educated. I was traveling on a tour bus in New York City. I was going in downtown in the financial district and I said, you know, I would really love to work here one day.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
I have reverse mentors and I've had reverse mentors who are Gen Z and they teach me things that I have not known and I haven't experienced. And of course, I look to make it a relationship of reciprocity where I help them and guide them. And hopefully I have a bit of life experience, which has given me some wisdom and I can help them that way.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
I certainly see how difficult it is for Gen Z and for the generation coming after them as well. There's so much pressure for early achievement and knowing what you would do in your career and what major you would have in college. So I certainly appreciate how anxious they are and how challenging it is for them. And of course, as the workplace becomes more competitive as well.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
But the pieces of advice I would have for them, one is to gain skills and, you know, think about and be very intentional about gaining skills, understanding what are you good at? What is your superpower? Now, when you're starting out in your career, you may say, well, I haven't got any superpowers.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
And it's fine because it's a process of actually developing, finding what you're good at and nurturing and growing it and building skills related to that. So that's maybe one piece of advice I would say. Two is surround yourself with a good community.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
People from different, with different experiences, different age groups, different generations, different views you would like to have if you're in business. You'd like to have friends that are artistic and they see the world differently from you. And surround yourself with people that will... expand the options and opportunities before you.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
I have learned, and it's more recent for me, that I've learned the power of your community and the people that you surround yourself with. It took me a while to really understand, but one, it makes your life a lot more fun and richer and deeper, but it also challenges you to really think way outside of your natural box that you have for yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
So the second advice would be be intentional about your community and have a very diverse community. And then the third one is learn how to pivot. Gen Z will have, and I think about my kids, that they would have a long and varied career and they would try different things. A key part of that is the ability to pivot, the ability to handle change and not to be a
Chief Change Officer
#284 Katie Curry: Mentoring Gen Z Without Losing Your Gen X Soul
Of course, there's a natural kind of nervousness and anxiety about switching roles or change and switching industries. But building that mental toughness so you can look at change more from the lens of excitement than from the lens of fear. Let me summarize.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And there are many paths to success. And we've seen it in our accelerated society. But you can be successful through growing your community and being an influencer. You can be successful in a more traditional path. You can be successful in being an entrepreneur and a founder. There are many paths.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
So I think it's time for us to maybe put away the definitions of success that are preconceived and be a little more open to the journey and have fun with it.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
So as a leader, I'd like to be powerful enough to curb and charismatic enough to be followed. Because I think that this is the two sides of leadership. My focus is to, one, is get things done. Two is... Deliver value with simplicity and incremental progress.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And three, be recognized for having the humility and the wisdom to recognize others and recognize opportunities and ideas that are presented to me. And then at home and with my friends, I'd like, you know, for people to see that I am present, that I care and that I'm a hard worker. It was very important for me during COVID.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I was working with the operations team at that time and we were extremely busy. Our volume of work just skyrocketed. And day in and day out, I was at home, of course. My kids saw me. They saw me here working, making calls, solving problems, driving incremental improvement. And I knew that... This is, you know, I'm being a role model. I am teaching them. What does it mean to be a productive human?
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And now I, we look back a few years and of course I enjoyed spending time with them during COVID, but I am also very grateful that they had an opportunity to see me in action because they usually would not have an opportunity to do that if I'm traveling or in the office.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
There's a lot that has been said about Gen Z being entitled and being impatient, but I think as leaders, we need to pivot and evolve and be much more clear, much more transparent, understanding that we're moving towards a meritocracy. Gen Z appreciates a true meritocracy rather than, you know, a hierarchical culture. I enjoy working with Gen Z. They give me energy. They teach me a lot of things.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
Happy to be here with you on the podcast. I grew up in Bulgaria. I grew up in communism and I grew up in a small town. My first big part of my kind of reinvention or transformation was coming to the United States and getting educated. I was traveling on a tour bus in New York City. I was going in downtown in the financial district and I said, you know, I would really love to work here one day.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I have reverse mentors and I've had reverse mentors who are Gen Z and they teach me things that I have not known and I haven't experienced. And of course, I look to make it a relationship of reciprocity where I help them and guide them
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I was very fortunate to start my first role at Citi City is a great training place. At City, what really helped me was understanding what my skill set is and what I bring to the table. So I spent a few years there. It was a great experience. I learned a lot, but I knew that I wanted to get deeper in finance. I needed to really build my skills. So I wanted to go to business school.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I thought I was going to go to school in New York City, but was admitted to Yale. And I just wanted to go for one weekend to see what I would be missing by choosing NYU over Yale. Okay. And so I went for the first time to visit the campus and the college. And I met a number of students who took me on a tour, complete strangers. They just took me on a tour.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
They spent the day with me talking and talking. sharing kind of their goals and their career journeys and why they're there and why they picked SOM. I just felt so drawn to the place and I felt like, hey, this is where I want to be. So I had to make a pretty big pivot. I gave up my job. I went full time to the School of Management where you and I met many years ago.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
your finance career is centered around risk so what does risk mean to you in life and in career after business school i was interested in risk risk is a theme of my career and my journey it's understanding risk it's quantifying risk it's mitigating risk it's addressing risk and it's also taking risk and taking opportunities And so I took a role at S&P Global.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I did about four different jobs there throughout my long tenure. I started as a credit analyst. I work on the most difficult transactions, interest rate derivatives, credit derivatives. I wanted to delve deep and really have a good understanding of capital markets. Yeah.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
But after a few years, I had an opportunity to lead a credit analyst team and I found that I really enjoyed the human aspect, the people aspect and the leadership aspect. Learning about how to lead, what makes a good leader and how not to lead. I made a lot of mistakes at that time and I learned a lot of things. Afterwards, I had an opportunity moving to operations.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
pretty big pivot going from credit analysis to leading operations teams. There's a lot of talent and tools and companies in many cases overlook the impact of these teams and they overlook the process improvements and the value that these teams can So I enjoyed that team was one of my favorite teams to lead. Everyone was on there, typically on their first or second job out of college.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And there was an energy and excitement and there's such an opportunity to upskill. So that was my favorite part about that team is using new tools and upskilling and trying new things. And then I pivoted into a very different team, leading a creative team, leading the global editorial and translation team. And so that was journalists and ghostwriters and translators.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And this is a very different personality of a much more creative team. So how you lead a team of creatives is very different from how you lead the team of operators versus a team of credit analysts. And I love that evolution and learning as a leader what is needed. How can I be most helpful to this particular team?
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And then I pivoted and about a year ago, I moved from kind of the largest established New York company to an amazing company, Millennial Specialty Insurance and LeaseTrack, a company that's been in growth stage. It's a part of a public company, but it's a company that's
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
still maturing and it's growing fast and it's expanding and it's a very different challenge and it's a really exciting opportunity look at the themes of my career part of it is like i said it's around risk part of it is around people and leadership and a big part of it is about learning
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I don't even think about these as transformations. It's more about kind of reinvention and reinventing myself and trying to understand and figure out what can I contribute to my new situation, to my new role? What impact can I have on my team? How can I drive business, drive growth and drive improvement for my company.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I remember when you and I were at Yale, we heard Merrill Lynch's then chairman, David Komensky. He talked about when the market is calm, he actually creates challenges for his team so that they can learn and grow through these challenges. And when the market is turbulent, he just leaves them alone and lets them operate. And it gave me a lot of thinking. And at first I thought, what a jerk.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I never want to work for him. But as I matured as a leader, I came actually to understand and maybe appreciate that this reinvention and assessing and seeing the new situation and understanding how can I be most helpful? What do I have to contribute? What have I done before that I may be able to bring here and help this particular problem, this particular team, this particular company?
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
A key part of that is the ability to pivot, the ability to handle change and not to be, of course, there's a natural kind of nervousness and anxiety about switching roles or switching industries, but building that mental toughness so you can look at change more from the lens of excitement than from the lens of fear. even when it's forced upon you.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And sometimes change is just going to come because it's outside of your control. A key part of this mental toughness is to make a decision that you're not just going to come out resilient on the other side, you're actually going to come out stronger. It's like going to the gym, right?
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
When you lift weights, you don't just maintain muscles, you actually grow and you get stronger and then you're able to take on more problems and solve even bigger and hairier and more challenging problems. I'm dealing with failures and stress and change. I think about, okay, how can I come out stronger on the other side? And when my kids are dealing with that, how can I help them?
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
Or when my team is dealing with that, how can I help them so they come out actually stronger? It's the concept of post-traumatic growth. I think for those in the audience that want to look it up, it's an interesting concept.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I think the way I approach this and the way I think about it is one is you have to know yourself and know your risk tolerance. And your risk tolerance evolves over time, right? You may have a high risk tolerance early in your career. Maybe your risk tolerance is a bit lower when you're raising your family and then you may be ready for another, you know, exciting move or jump later on.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
So knowing yourself and, you know, for me, knowing myself and my risk tolerance was very important. The second part is I had spent a lot of years being very focused on outcomes, being very intense and intent about what I'm doing.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
And I have now moved into a phase of exploration and looking at the various opportunities and being less focused on a precise land path, but embracing these opportunities, embracing kind of the fun, the exploration, the curiosity, and even the magic. And that was a major shift for me. I think it happened with experience, with age.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
where I was able to kind of embrace, like you said, both the hard and logical decision, but also these intuitive, exploratory, pursuing, you know, fun and pursuing, exploring outside of my comfort zone.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I've had many failures in my career and my life. And I look back and I think that people who have not had failures in their life or their career, they're playing it too safe. So there is a level of expectation that you want to approach your life, your choices, your career that differently.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
Some things, you know, maybe six or seven out of your ten decisions will be correct and the other ones will, you know, you will fail. And, you know, so what? You will learn. If you have that kind of ability to shake it off and have a little resilience and know yourself and trust yourself, then you can recover from most mistakes.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
So to come back to this question of success and the way I think about it, I have my personal KPIs that I look at and I look at success much more broadly. It's not, you know, reaching a certain title, although that's important for me or a certain, you know, financial remuneration, although that's also important for me, but I'm looking at it much more broadly.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
I look at the different areas of my life, health and relationship, and am I surrounded by people from whom I can learn? Am I in a place where I can have impact? Is there value that I can actually deliver, drive, and bring to my current situation? And as I think on those kind of personal KPIs, no.
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
Whether things turn out exactly the way I planned them or not, I mean, that's outside of my control, right? All I know is that I can do my best and every day I can ask myself, what can I do? How can I 10x what I'm doing? How can I drive and deliver value and growth? And that's kind of the only thing I can do. So I have to say I am less focused on
Chief Change Officer
#283 Katie Curry: Risk by Training, Reinvention by Choice
conventional definition of success i'm very focused on the different areas of my life and do i have energy am i healthy do i have the friends that you know i like to have do i have enough time to enjoy my hobbies i like hiking i like salsa dancing i like spending time with my family do i have time to do these and at the same time am i driving hard with my team am i teaching them things that they don't know am i helping them to grow and progress
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
So I am a big fan of Get Abstract. It's a subscription service and it's a service that basically takes a lot of the new books in business, technology, even creative fields as well. And because I don't ever have time to read as much as I want, these are book summaries that you can listen to or you can read. So I have been using Get Abstract for a long time. Many years.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
And I love getting just the cliff notes of the new books that come out. And from there, I pick the books that I actually want to read. Three that I wanted to share with your audience. One is called The Mental Toughness Handbook. And it's by Damon Zaharades. Maybe you can put it in the show notes, Vince. It is just an exercise to really help people.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
tattoo and prepare your so that you can handle your emotions well when when you're triggered the other one which is my my copy is so worn out because i've read it and read it many times is the one thing and it's by gary keller he is the the founder of keller williams real estate and this book is about the power of focus and I believe that focus and simplicity have been so underrated.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
They're not glamorous, like, you know, some of the new shiny things that we see that come up, but there's a lot of value in there. So that's the next book. And then... The last one is Jim Collins. I am a big fan of his as well. Many of his books are great, but I like Good to Great.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
And this is about companies and how companies, some companies that make the leap to great, other companies deteriorate. So very interesting case studies. And of course, I am always listening to podcasts, a variety of different podcasts and
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
i like to ask for recommendations from others and so between my get abstract my books and my podcast i think those are the three pillars to my learning but the most important pillar of my learning is actually reflection time sitting down every week and thinking okay, what do I need to do to get a little better next week? What do I need to learn that I don't know?
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
What do I need to talk to that I'm not talking to? And just having just a short amount of time for reflection and improvement.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
You have to know yourself and know your risk tolerance. And your risk tolerance evolves over time, right? You may have a high risk tolerance early in your career. Maybe your risk tolerance is a bit lower when you're raising your family. And then you may be ready for another, you know, exciting move or jump later on.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
So look, Vince, I am a big believer in needing personal time to just be with yourself. And there's so many pressures in the world at work, with travel, with, you know, friends and families and our charitable work and all the other things we need. I need time in nature and I need time by myself. So those are, for me, key practices that keep me sane.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
Invite me on another podcast.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
I would love to cover both of these in the next one. It would be my honor to join you again, Vince.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
So knowing yourself and, you know, for me, knowing myself and my risk tolerance was very important. The second part is I had spent a lot of years being very focused on outcomes, being very intense and intent about what I'm doing.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
And I have now moved into a phase of exploration and looking at the various opportunities and being less focused on a precise planned path, but embracing these opportunities, embracing kind of the fun, the exploration, the curiosity, and even the magic. And that was a major shift for me.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
I think it happened with experience, with age, where I was able to kind of embrace, like you said, both the hard and logical decision, but also these intuitive, exploratory, pursuing fun and pursuing, exploring outside of my comfort zone.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
That's a good question, Vince. We do know that there's at least four actually generations now in the workforce and of course more coming. But I think as a leader, first and foremost, I look at people as humans and I try to see what they, try to understand what their needs are. How can they be successful in their role? What do they need? Is it learning and upskilling?
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
Is it just support and praise and recognition? Is it tough love that they need? But my kind of recipe for this is kind of four things that I always think about. What's my focus? Am I clear about what success looks like for this project, for this role, for this particular problem I'm solving? The next one is simplicity.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
What's the simplest way that we can actually do this and we can solve this problem? And then the last one is having humility. As a leader, I cannot tell people what to do because a lot of times I don't have the answer. And sometimes I see leaders are afraid to admit that they don't have the answer.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
The job of a leader is to help emerge the answer from the group, whether it's, you know, emerging the answer from the team, from other teams, from the market, from best practices in, you know, our function or in our industry. But the role of the leader is to emerge the best solution. How do you like working with Gen Z? In terms of working with different generations, I love working with Gen Z.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
There's a lot that has been said about Gen Z being entitled and being impatient. And, you know, there's, of course, certainly some of that. But I think as leaders, we need to pivot and evolve and be much more clear, much more transparent. And we need to pick up the pace. Pick up the pace in execution. Pick up the pace in rewarding Gen Z. Pick up the pace in promoting Gen Z. And...
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
Understanding that we're moving towards a meritocracy. Gen Z appreciates a true meritocracy rather than a, you know, a hierarchical culture. And companies that, especially those long established companies with hundreds of years of history, if they're not able to pivot and move into this more...
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
authentic, more real, more clear and kind of a faster moving way of leading, they're going to lose a part of their competitive advantage. So I'm watching this. It's an area of interest for me. Like I said, I enjoy working with Gen Z. They give me energy. They teach me a lot of things.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
I grew up in Bulgaria. I grew up in communism and I grew up in a small town. My first big part of my kind of reinvention or transformation was coming to the United States and getting educated. I was traveling on a tour bus in New York City. I was going in downtown in the financial district and I said, you know, I would really love to work here one day.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
I have reverse mentors and I've had reverse mentors who are Gen Z and they teach me things that I have not known and I haven't experienced. And of course, I look to make it a relationship of reciprocity where I help them and guide them. And hopefully I have a bit of life experience, which has given me some wisdom and I can help them that way.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
I certainly see how difficult it is for Gen Z and for the generation coming after them as well. There's so much pressure for early achievement and knowing what you would do in your career and what major you would have in college. So I certainly appreciate how anxious they are and how challenging it is for them. And of course, as the workplace becomes more competitive as well.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
But the pieces of advice I would have for them, one is to gain skills and, you know, think about and be very intentional about gaining skills, understanding what are you good at? What is your superpower? Now, when you're starting out in your career, you may say, well, I haven't got any superpowers.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
And it's fine because it's a process of actually developing, finding what you're good at and nurturing and growing it and building skills related to that. So that's maybe one piece of advice I would say. Two is surround yourself with a good community.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
People from different, with different experiences, different age groups, different generations, different views you would like to have if you're in business. You'd like to have friends that are artistic and they see the world differently from you. And surround yourself with people that will... expand the options and opportunities before you.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
I have learned, and it's more recent for me, that I've learned the power of your community and the people that you surround yourself with. It took me a while to really understand, but one, it makes your life a lot more fun and richer and deeper, but it also challenges you to really think way outside of your natural box that you have for yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
So the second advice would be be intentional about your community and have a very diverse community. And then the third one is learn how to pivot. Gen Z will have, and I think about my kids, that they would have a long and varied career and they would try different things. A key part of that is the ability to pivot, the ability to handle change and not to be a
Chief Change Officer
#199 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part Two
Of course, there's a natural kind of nervousness and anxiety about switching roles or change and switching industries. But building that mental toughness so you can look at change more from the lens of excitement than from the lens of fear. Let me summarize.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And there are many paths to success. And we've seen it in our accelerated society. But you can be successful through growing your community and being an influencer. You can be successful in a more traditional path. You can be successful in being an entrepreneur and a founder. There are many paths.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
So I think it's time for us to maybe put away the definitions of success that are preconceived and be a little more open to the journey and have fun with it.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
So as a leader, I'd like to be powerful enough to curb and charismatic enough to be followed. Because I think that this is the two sides of leadership. My focus is to, one, is get things done. Two is... Deliver value with simplicity and incremental progress.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And three, be recognized for having the humility and the wisdom to recognize others and recognize opportunities and ideas that are presented to me. And then at home and with my friends, I'd like, you know, for people to see that I am present, that I care and that I'm a hard worker. It was very important for me during COVID.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I was working with the operations team at that time and we were extremely busy. Our volume of work just skyrocketed. And day in and day out, I was at home, of course. My kids saw me. They saw me here working, making calls, solving problems, driving incremental improvement. And I knew that... This is, you know, I'm being a role model. I am teaching them. What does it mean to be a productive human?
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And now I, we look back a few years and of course I enjoyed spending time with them during COVID, but I am also very grateful that they had an opportunity to see me in action because they usually would not have an opportunity to do that if I'm traveling or in the office.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
There's a lot that has been said about Gen Z being entitled and being impatient, but I think as leaders, we need to pivot and evolve and be much more clear, much more transparent, understanding that we're moving towards a meritocracy. Gen Z appreciates a true meritocracy rather than, you know, a hierarchical culture. I enjoy working with Gen Z. They give me energy. They teach me a lot of things.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
Happy to be here with you on the podcast. I grew up in Bulgaria. I grew up in communism and I grew up in a small town. My first big part of my kind of reinvention or transformation was coming to the United States and getting educated. I was traveling on a tour bus in New York City. I was going in downtown in the financial district and I said, you know, I would really love to work here one day.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I have reverse mentors and I've had reverse mentors who are Gen Z and they teach me things that I have not known and I haven't experienced. And of course, I look to make it a relationship of reciprocity where I help them and guide them
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I was very fortunate to start my first role at Citi City is a great training place. At City, what really helped me was understanding what my skill set is and what I bring to the table. So I spent a few years there. It was a great experience. I learned a lot, but I knew that I wanted to get deeper in finance. I needed to really build my skills. So I wanted to go to business school.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I thought I was going to go to school in New York City, but was admitted to Yale. And I just wanted to go for one weekend to see what I would be missing by choosing NYU over Yale. Okay. And so I went for the first time to visit the campus and the college. And I met a number of students who took me on a tour, complete strangers. They just took me on a tour.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
They spent the day with me talking and talking. sharing kind of their goals and their career journeys and why they're there and why they picked SOM. I just felt so drawn to the place and I felt like, hey, this is where I want to be. So I had to make a pretty big pivot. I gave up my job. I went full time to the School of Management where you and I met many years ago.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
your finance career is centered around risk so what does risk mean to you in life and in career after business school i was interested in risk risk is a theme of my career and my journey it's understanding risk it's quantifying risk it's mitigating risk it's addressing risk and it's also taking risk and taking opportunities And so I took a role at S&P Global.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I did about four different jobs there throughout my long tenure. I started as a credit analyst. I work on the most difficult transactions, interest rate derivatives, credit derivatives. I wanted to delve deep and really have a good understanding of capital markets. Yeah.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
But after a few years, I had an opportunity to lead a credit analyst team and I found that I really enjoyed the human aspect, the people aspect and the leadership aspect. Learning about how to lead, what makes a good leader and how not to lead. I made a lot of mistakes at that time and I learned a lot of things. Afterwards, I had an opportunity moving to operations.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
pretty big pivot going from credit analysis to leading operations teams. There's a lot of talent and tools and companies in many cases overlook the impact of these teams and they overlook the process improvements and the value that these teams can So I enjoyed that team was one of my favorite teams to lead. Everyone was on there, typically on their first or second job out of college.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And there was an energy and excitement and there's such an opportunity to upskill. So that was my favorite part about that team is using new tools and upskilling and trying new things. And then I pivoted into a very different team, leading a creative team, leading the global editorial and translation team. And so that was journalists and ghostwriters and translators.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And this is a very different personality of a much more creative team. So how you lead a team of creatives is very different from how you lead the team of operators versus a team of credit analysts. And I love that evolution and learning as a leader what is needed. How can I be most helpful to this particular team?
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And then I pivoted and about a year ago, I moved from kind of the largest established New York company to an amazing company, Millennial Specialty Insurance and LeaseTrack, a company that's been in growth stage. It's a part of a public company, but it's a company that's
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
still maturing and it's growing fast and it's expanding and it's a very different challenge and it's a really exciting opportunity look at the themes of my career part of it is like i said it's around risk part of it is around people and leadership and a big part of it is about learning
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I don't even think about these as transformations. It's more about kind of reinvention and reinventing myself and trying to understand and figure out what can I contribute to my new situation, to my new role? What impact can I have on my team? How can I drive business, drive growth and drive improvement for my company.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I remember when you and I were at Yale, we heard Merrill Lynch's then chairman, David Komensky. He talked about when the market is calm, he actually creates challenges for his team so that they can learn and grow through these challenges. And when the market is turbulent, he just leaves them alone and lets them operate. And it gave me a lot of thinking. And at first I thought, what a jerk.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I never want to work for him. But as I matured as a leader, I came actually to understand and maybe appreciate that this reinvention and assessing and seeing the new situation and understanding how can I be most helpful? What do I have to contribute? What have I done before that I may be able to bring here and help this particular problem, this particular team, this particular company?
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
A key part of that is the ability to pivot, the ability to handle change and not to be, of course, there's a natural kind of nervousness and anxiety about switching roles or switching industries, but building that mental toughness so you can look at change more from the lens of excitement than from the lens of fear. even when it's forced upon you.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And sometimes change is just going to come because it's outside of your control. A key part of this mental toughness is to make a decision that you're not just going to come out resilient on the other side, you're actually going to come out stronger. It's like going to the gym, right?
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
When you lift weights, you don't just maintain muscles, you actually grow and you get stronger and then you're able to take on more problems and solve even bigger and hairier and more challenging problems. I'm dealing with failures and stress and change. I think about, okay, how can I come out stronger on the other side? And when my kids are dealing with that, how can I help them?
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
Or when my team is dealing with that, how can I help them so they come out actually stronger? It's the concept of post-traumatic growth. I think for those in the audience that want to look it up, it's an interesting concept.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I think the way I approach this and the way I think about it is one is you have to know yourself and know your risk tolerance. And your risk tolerance evolves over time, right? You may have a high risk tolerance early in your career. Maybe your risk tolerance is a bit lower when you're raising your family and then you may be ready for another, you know, exciting move or jump later on.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
So knowing yourself and, you know, for me, knowing myself and my risk tolerance was very important. The second part is I had spent a lot of years being very focused on outcomes, being very intense and intent about what I'm doing.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
And I have now moved into a phase of exploration and looking at the various opportunities and being less focused on a precise land path, but embracing these opportunities, embracing kind of the fun, the exploration, the curiosity, and even the magic. And that was a major shift for me. I think it happened with experience, with age.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
where I was able to kind of embrace, like you said, both the hard and logical decision, but also these intuitive, exploratory, pursuing, you know, fun and pursuing, exploring outside of my comfort zone.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I've had many failures in my career and my life. And I look back and I think that people who have not had failures in their life or their career, they're playing it too safe. So there is a level of expectation that you want to approach your life, your choices, your career that differently.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
Some things, you know, maybe six or seven out of your ten decisions will be correct and the other ones will, you know, you will fail. And, you know, so what? You will learn. If you have that kind of ability to shake it off and have a little resilience and know yourself and trust yourself, then you can recover from most mistakes.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
So to come back to this question of success and the way I think about it, I have my personal KPIs that I look at and I look at success much more broadly. It's not, you know, reaching a certain title, although that's important for me or a certain, you know, financial remuneration, although that's also important for me, but I'm looking at it much more broadly.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
I look at the different areas of my life, health and relationship, and am I surrounded by people from whom I can learn? Am I in a place where I can have impact? Is there value that I can actually deliver, drive, and bring to my current situation? And as I think on those kind of personal KPIs, no.
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
Whether things turn out exactly the way I planned them or not, I mean, that's outside of my control, right? All I know is that I can do my best and every day I can ask myself, what can I do? How can I 10x what I'm doing? How can I drive and deliver value and growth? And that's kind of the only thing I can do. So I have to say I am less focused on
Chief Change Officer
#198 From Wall Street to Wonder: Katie Curry’s Playbook for Risk, Resilience & Reinvention — Part One
conventional definition of success i'm very focused on the different areas of my life and do i have energy am i healthy do i have the friends that you know i like to have do i have enough time to enjoy my hobbies i like hiking i like salsa dancing i like spending time with my family do i have time to do these and at the same time am i driving hard with my team am i teaching them things that they don't know am i helping them to grow and progress