Podcast S813 | Leading Global Teams & Managing with Impact: Christine Lowthian

TRANSCRIPT

Kimberley Cole 0:01
This is Risky Women Radio, a show that connects, celebrates and champions women in risk regulation and compliance. We’re here to share the insights on the biggest issues in our industry and hear inspiring journeys from our global members. Sign up to our newsletter at riskywomen.org. I’m Kimberley Cole, your Chief Risky Woman.

Bernadine Reese 0:22
Hello, my name is Bernadine Reese, Managing Director at Protiviti in London, and I’m delighted to welcome Christine Lowthian to Risky Women podcast. Christine is the Head of Regulatory Compliance Corporate and Institutional Banking at HSBC, with senior management compliance responsibility for HSBC Bank PLC. Christine has been with HSBC for over 31 years previously, she served as Chief Compliance Officer for the US and held a number of other senior leadership roles, including the Global Compliance Officer for Commercial Banking, Chief Operating Officer for Global Banking and Markets Compliance in Europe, and also Global Compliance Officer for Markets. Christine is an attendee of the HSBC Bank PLC board risk committee, and is a member of the CIB and HSBC Bank PLC operating committees too. In her spare time, Christine is also the executive sponsor for the HSBC Women in Risk and Compliance Network. She spent the early stages of her career at the Financial Services Authority, and has a real wealth of experience liaising with various regulatory agencies across the globe. Throughout her career, Christine has been an active sponsor, mentor and coach to top female talent. Her senior leadership means she manages relationships across the globe and with regulators, boards and across many countries. There are so many topics we could explore today, but I wanted to focus on two: leading global teams and managing with impact. It’s wonderful that you can join us today, Christine. Before we start, tell us a bit about how you started your career and how you got to where you have.

Christine Lowthian 2:12
Well, Bernadine, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. So a little bit about my career. I mean, I think when I was thinking about this question, because you often get asked this question, you know, how to get to where you are, and how did your career develop? For me, a lot of it was luck, being in the right place at the right time, being offered things, having the support network and the sponsorship to kind of talk things through with people saying, Would this be a good step for me? Am I going in the right direction? And then just having that character to say, Okay, well, let’s give it a go and see where the opportunity lies. So if you look at my career, I mean, I started in the stock exchange when the Financial Services Authority was just being formed in the early 90s, and my first job was a temping job, and I just was sitting next to somebody doing the copy reading for the financial regulations for the FCA. So he was doing all the modeling and the thinking and the maths. He wrote in longhand. We sent it to a typing pool that came back, and I had to proofread it back from his notes, so after three months, he said to me, what you’re gonna do now, Christine, I still, you know, traveling more work. He said, Well, what you could do is go into the stock exchange. We’re just putting the Financial Services Authority together, and you have a deep knowledge of how this rule book works, and we’re about to teach it, because you’ve been proofreading it. So opportunity, good opportunity, had his sponsorship, spoke to various people in the market that were older than me, whose view was, yes, regulation is coming. There’ll be more regulation, not less, good area to get into. So took the opportunity, went into the FCA, did seven years with the regulators, and then there was the whole kind of debacle of the life market and the futures market and the regulation around that, and did they want to bring it into the main regulator? So were they happy for the market to regulate themselves? Caught right in the middle of that, and HSBC hired me at the time because they were trying to move their futures company into their banking business and understand the regulation there. So took that opportunity. Same thing. Then once I was in HSBC Barings happened. The whole of the life market collapsed overnight. And we had in HSBC a very similar structure to Barings. We had a similar operating model. So, of course, HSBC was very concerned about, could this happen here? So again, you’ve got your stripes looking through that. And then my career in HSBC went in five years, stints. You know, every five years, something new happened. I moved on to do different things. Stayed in the investment bank most of my career. Haven’t done much in wealth and private banking, but had exposure to it when I’ve done some of the big regional jobs or some of the big compliance jobs. So definitely right place, right time, right people around you, encouraging you to do it. And then, just somebody who likes to take the opportunity, likes to do different things.

Bernadine Reese 5:04
I love that there’s those transferable skills, right? And the relationships and the networking that you’ve been so successful at.

Christine Lowthian 5:13
Thank you, Bernadine. Of which you’re part, I mean, Protiviti has played a big role. You know, if we look at the roles that I’ve had in the last sort of 10 to 15 years, I’ve often used third party consultants just to help me get over the line. And again, as you say, you build those relationships, you build those professional relationships, and then stakeholders, and then sponsors that you can go back to at any time in your career to say, what do you think? Is this a good decision? Would it widen my scope? Is it a step back? Is it a parallel move? All of these things you can talk through with people who’ve got different experience to you.

Bernadine Reese 5:46
And part of that experience has included leading global teams, and I know number of the Risky Women listeners will be very interested in this. You’ve actually led a wide variety of regional and global teams, each of which, I guess, may have different needs and present different challenges. And looking back on your experience, what were the biggest challenges you faced leading global, multicultural teams, and how did you overcome those?

Christine Lowthian 6:13
Yeah, so the two teams that I would say that I’ve led that kind of had a material effect on me was one was global commercial banking. So commercial banking and HSBC had been a very regional business. It’s something we did alongside our retail business. And the management of HSBC wanted to globalize it much more like their global markets business, which they’d already globalized. And so that was taking something from scratch. We have nothing there, and we were building a global compliance team with very little resource, with very little understanding of the vision that they wanted to build in the business and therefore in the compliance function. So that team was interesting, because you were just building it from scratch. And then another team that I led in the US, similar kind of skills, but very different team there, where the US was suffering from the fact we’d been through a big deferred prosecution in HSBC, which is well known in the press, we had, like many institutions, when you’re in remediation at that kind of level, thrown an enormous amount of people at the problem and put in huge programs that were very people dependent. And then over time, as you came out of the deferred prosecution or went to BAU there was a huge view of we must cut costs. We must get rid of teams. We must get, so we almost broke our own program. So I went into that team to re establish this kind of basics, re establish the team, get the confidence of the board and the regulators, and put people in the right place. So both those cases, they’re both complicated in different ways. One, you’re building a team from scratch. One, you’re taking a team that’s been effective but now is broken. And you have to be very, very clear in you know, what is the problem I’m trying to solve? Very clear on that. Then you need to make sure with the stakeholders around you, is that what you want me to do? Have I got that right? Or have I got that wrong? Do you want me to adjust it before you kind of start to build a team? Then you’ve got to plan it, you’ve got to resource it, you’ve got to execute it, you’ve got to track it, and eventually you’ve got to embed it, because there’s no point doing it if you can’t embed it and operationalize it. Otherwise, it’s just a vision with no teeth. And then I think the one thing I learned in the US is you have to put in something that means it’s sustainable in the future. So I had to put in the succession plan. I had to be able to walk away from the US and say that’s now fit for purpose, and the next generation, the legacy will continue. So yeah, I think very different teams, similar kind of approach, which is, what is it you want me to do? Have I got it right? then a sort of program to do it, embed it, and then leave it sustainable really.

Bernadine Reese 8:50
No, that makes sense. And in terms of those global teams or regional teams, where you’re bringing together people from different countries, different backgrounds, what are your tips for managing those differences within the teams? Was there a common approach, or did it vary by discipline or by country or language?

Christine Lowthian 9:13
It’ll definitely vary depending on what region you’re working in, what culture you’re working in, what work ethic you’re working in, the types of teams you’ve got, it just will vary. The key, I think, is really when you go into those environments, is to give yourself a moment to really understand what you’re looking at. Because again, different management styles, if you want to call that, or cultural styles, will present things in a very different way. So if you work in Asia, you’ll get a much more analytical view of the problem. If you work in somewhere like the US, there’s a lot of talking around the problem. It’s just a different approach. So you need to do all that listening at the beginning really carefully to see what is the problem we’re trying to solve, and then work through those cultural differences, because everybody works in different ways. So. I mean, I have to say, when I went to the US, that was a physical move when I went to the US. So I went to live in the US. I wasn’t in the UK traveling, a huge upheaval for my family. But probably, when you look back on it, they would say to you, so have three children, they would say to the best five years of their life. You know, they can’t get over it. And you had to learn in the US, there was a hustle and a pace to the city, and then the management style, and then the culture of the bank and the culture of the customers that you hadn’t seen before. You understood it, but you just hadn’t seen before. So you have to work within that and understand that. And then after a while, you’ve begun to adapt to it, and you become a New Yorker. You know which way to turn and you know how to cross the road, and you know how to do the hustle and move forward, but you’ve got to read the culture. And I am very lucky. I know in these global roles, I’ve worked in LAM, in Mexico, I’ve worked in Asia, and these are very, very different cultures. But what if you listen to the team and you listen to the problem statement, you can get there just the style of working, you may have to adapt how you manage, how you track performance, how you put teams together might be different.

Bernadine Reese 11:03
Yeah, great advice. Thank you.

Kimberley Cole 11:06
This episode is brought to you by Protiviti. Protiviti is a global consulting firm with deep expertise in transformation, risk management and compliance. Partner with Protiviti and face the future with confidence.

Bernadine Reese 11:22
Looking forward, what do you see the role of technology and innovation playing at the moment and going forward, within compliance, particularly within those global teams you were talking about?

Christine Lowthian 11:34
Yeah, so technology, at the moment, the big conversation is about AI and the use of AI and the use of AI in compliance, I am probably the most technically challenged individual. My children still shout at me. You know, it’s not a touch screen. Stop touching it, mom. It won’t work. So I’m not technically savvy. It’s something that I’ve had to learn, and it’s probably one of my weakest skills. But you can see the power of AI in compliance, particularly because compliance is about information. You know, whether it’s regulation, whether it’s legislation, whether it’s data coming from the business, and what AI allows us to do is scan that information very, very quickly. So if we look back at when I started, we were technically reading a rule book. We all had the Financial Services Act of the UK, like it was our handbook, and we all had our little post it notes, and we knew exactly where we were. Now, AI can flash across that in less than three seconds and give you exactly what you need, so you can see the power of the technology. So I think in terms of the use of it in compliance is huge, because it allows you to analyze a lot of data very quickly, and when you work in a global bank like HSBC, you need to analyze data across multiple jurisdictions, so it allows you to do that. The issue for me with AI is that people believe it’s just going to replace their job, and I don’t think it will. I think it will allow you to do your job better. It’s a toolkit that gives you operational effectiveness and efficiency, so you can stop doing all of that work that’s very manual, and you can move on to the more strategic thinking work, because the AI will do all the manual piece with you. But you still need, at this stage where we are today, you still need a human being to kind of think through, what are the implications of what the AI is telling me, what does that do to consumers or customers or regulation at the end, it hasn’t quite got enough knowledge to be able to give you that answer. So we’re building that and then maybe in 20, 30, 40 years, it will give you those answers. There’s still a place for a compliance officer there. The other thing that I think about AI, and I do think about this a lot, is AI is only as good as the data you put in. And one of the big struggling points for banks at the moment is the data, the amount of data we have. Does the data come from a golden source, or has it been manipulated through the bank on its way? Same thing when you read the media or any analytics, is there people’s opinions as to how regulation works in there? So the data needs to be pure for AI to work golden source, and that’s a big challenge for us all at the moment, working through that data source and those platforms and making sure that once you plug the AI in, it’s working across a set of data that’s correct. Otherwise, the answer comes out odd. So yeah, I think it gives us operational effectiveness. I think it’s a huge consumer of data, as long as the data is golden source. And I think it helps us in our jobs, because it allows us to look at things much more quickly than we can do manually. But is it going to replace us? Probably not in the short term, but it does give us that ability for more strategic thinking, rather than just plowing through spreadsheets and adding up numbers. The other thing I would say compliance struggles with is, what metrics do you use to measure is the business complying? Is it effective within the regulatory boundaries that it’s working and the AI can help you analyze that data and get you better metrics? Because at the moment, we all measure metrics, or we certainly do, which is, what have we got and what. That tell us, whereas AI allows you to say, well, what is the question we’re trying to answer, and then let the AI go across the data to find you the metrics that give you that answer, so you kind of change the conversation so it’s more balanced and more effective. So I think AI has a big role to play in compliance, but I think there are some certain foundational pieces that we need to kind of get right?

Bernadine Reese 15:22
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I’ve heard it say that actually, as criminal activity increases, whether it’s market abuse or fraud or financial crime, and the use of AI adoption within those areas increase, actually it’s an imperative for compliance to be able to respond with with an AI solution.

Christine Lowthian 15:44
Oh, without doubt. I mean, the AI will increase the cyber risk, the fraud risk, all of those risks definitely in terms of the ability for bad actors to get into the system and increase that risk. I mean, we use AI today in things like money laundering. We use it there for looking for models. We use it in surveillance models, so it’s already embedded in there, but for it to become part of everybody’s desktop, then I think that’s the next step. But yeah, I think it’s definitely got a role to play. But again, so dependent on the data that goes into the system.

Bernadine Reese 16:18
Yeah, absolutely, those fundamentals of data and models.

Christine Lowthian 16:22
Yeah.

Bernadine Reese 16:23
I mean, as they say, if you put rubbish in the system, you will get rubbish out.

Christine Lowthian 16:26
Yeah.

Bernadine Reese 16:27
So with that in mind, what are your thoughts on, what does the compliance officer of the future need in their skills tool set?

Christine Lowthian 16:35
Yeah, so I think the skills are still similar, which is, you know, you need an ability to understand the business that you are helping to comply with. You need to understand whether it’s investment banking business or wealth business. And again, technology will help you learn much more quickly than you have before. But you’ve got a good understanding of the business, you need a good understanding of the regulatory regime and what the regulatory regime is driving at, why regulation’s in place, what the necessity for that is, and then you can translate the technical into the how. So those skills are the same. They’ve always been there. I do think you need to be curious about products, new products coming out. Again. If you look at the history of products, they’re developing. Every 10 years there’s new products coming out. So you still need that curiosity. And then you need to have an acquisitive nurse that allows you to use these new tools to speed up your analysis. I mean, banking is becoming much more agile, much quicker, and a compliance officer needs to react to that. But the fundamental skills, I don’t think, change, which is really understanding regulation, understanding business, and then understanding how to apply that risk within a business environment. I think one of the big things I’ve learned through my career is you have to understand why a business does something. You have to understand why a customer does something, and you have to understand why the regulation’s in place, and then you put those three things together and you will get the right answer.

Bernadine Reese 17:58
Absolutely. Thank you for that. So maybe let’s shift gear and talk about managing with impact. Whenever we work together, I’ve always been so impressed by how you engage with committees and boards and regulators. Are you happy to share some of the secrets of your success there?

Christine Lowthian 18:15
Yes, I am, as in, I’m amazed that you think I manage with impact. It’s not something I naturally recognize in myself, but I think if we start with boards, because that’s one of the areas that I think most people get to at the later stages in their career, and people ask lots of questions about how to interact with boards. So when I started work in the US, the power of the board there, because of the US regulatory system, is very, very strong. They have an independent board, and we are in front of that board every month, so you definitely had to build a relationship with them. Again, I had very good sponsors. So I would encourage people that work with boards to have sponsors within the board, somebody you can speak to on a one to one basis outside of the boardroom, to really understand what is the board concerned about? What am I not presenting properly? What is it that you’re not understanding? So you have that conversation, and then your papers and your presentation become much more real, much more tangible, because you’ve had that conversation before. So I definitely did that in both boards that I’ve worked on recently is really partner with either the head of the risk committee or the head of the audit committee, or somebody that I felt had an interest in compliance or risk to be able to have that conversation. So that’s one thing. The second thing is to understand is the board is there to help you. They are there to kind of oversee management and help management execute against the strategy. The management have set. They’re not there to second guess you. They’re not there to catch you out. They really are there to assist you. They can only assist you if you provide them with the right information, if you hold things back and you don’t present a full end to end picture, it’s very difficult for them to pick up what it is that you need help with. So again, really understanding why the board is there and what they’re there to do. And then when you get to the more. Complicated subjects. What we’ve discovered is you can take them out of the boardroom and do them with working groups with a board member there. So we’ve took, for example, conduct out of the boardroom and said, We really need a conduct working program to work through what does good conduct look like? How do we want to evidence it? So on and so forth. So again, working with the board in smaller groups, and then presenting back to the board, which is a formal governance so there is a formality to it. And then really practicing your papers, be succinct. Remember, there’s no point just reading a paper to the board. They’ve been there for hours on end. If you sit in a boardroom, they normally sit for about three to four hours at a time. So you need your presentation to be punchy, to be quick, to get to the point and let them ask the questions and not just run through the purpose of the paper is this, and the conclusion is that. So really, make that relationship real, really between yourself and the board, and take feedback all the time. You know, how did that go? Did you understand? Did I make the right point? Would you like more information? Have I got that right? And that I’ve learned all the way through, the more feedback you get, the more you adjust. And people that don’t do well in front of boards, normally, they haven’t gone in there to do badly. It’s they’re not getting the right feedback of that’s not what we wanted, or your presentation style is not landing with this particular board. The other thing about boards is, remember, the same question that you asked me before, is different boards, different cultures, different companies, different jurisdictions. You’ve got to work at that personality of the board and really work out what they want. So, yeah, very much a partnership. Something, I think when we first start, all of us are very nervous about presenting into a board, but you have to remember that they are there to help you execute against your strategy. They’re not there to catch you out. So have the confidence, but do the pre work is what I would say. Really make sure that paper is well socialized, especially if it’s difficult paper, that you’ve got people on side and they can speak for you in the board where you get tongue tied, or you can’t quite make your point, somebody else on the board can own that. So that’s the way I’ve done it. But again, I would say when I went to the US, the US board was a big part of my interview process…I passed the management interview, I passed the regulatory interview, I passed the personality assessment that said I was the same person, I could read and write and do maths, but then there was a big board interview that I had to pass. So I mean, that was the first time I realized the power of the board in executive positions, also the same in the UK, but much more formality in the US board.

Bernadine Reese 22:36
And how about regulators? Do you adapt your style presenting to senior regulators?

Christine Lowthian 22:42
Yeah definitely. I mean, different regulators have, again, different personalities. I learned from my CEO in the US, you should treat a regulator like you treat one of your best clients. You know, you really have to understand what the regulator needs and then provide that content and that presentation. US regulators, we had many, you know, we would have the Fed, the OCC the SEC, FINRA, many, many regulators asking different questions from different lenses. And you need to understand the direction they were coming from the facts you were presenting. So you would change your style and your facts depending on what question they were asking. You come back to the PRA and the FCA, they are now and now, you know, in Europe, the ECB, all very different regulators coming from different angles again, so you have to adapt your presentation to that. My philosophy with regulators is to have that open relationship, is to discuss with them how you’re complying definitely, there’s a whole requirement from that. Things you’re doing to improve the environment, very important to take the regulator on that journey with you. So if you’re remediating or you’re improving things, you need to start at the beginning and say to them, this is the program of improvement remediation. These are the points that we would like to check in with you and show progress. And then if you need to course correct during your remediation, because most of the issues that we’re all dealing with now are multi year issues, we’re not fixing them in six months. So to go back to the regulator and say we need to course correct, or we’re going to find things as we go along, tactical fixes versus strategic. So to take them on that journey, keep communicating with them, whether you’re in an inspection or not, or a section 166 don’t wait for that issue to drop. Keep the conversation going. To show them how you’re managing that risk on a constant basis, and they’ll tell you it’s too much, it’s too little, and how they want to present. So open relationship with regulators. And again, I think we learned that from the States, the US regulators want a constant dialog. The UK regulators were much more reticent about that constant dialog. But with the sort of new SMF regimes that have come in and the regulator’s new approach, they are doing more and more what we call cam meetings, and more and more sort of meetings with the business. So yeah, open dialog. Take them on the journey. Show them how you’re developing the remediation and controlling the risks, because, again, regulators are concerned about growth without the foundations of controls and controls that allow you to comply with regulation being there. So as long as you can show where that is, or if it’s not there and it needs enhancing, how you’re doing that and what the timeline is. That partnership with the regulator is key. And also very suspicious of people that go, Oh, I’m in a regulatory environment where the regulator isn’t that bothered what we’re doing. That’s a false sense of security. Because if you are in that regulatory environment, that’s fine. You have an advantage into a much more prescriptive regulatory environment, but they’re just as interested in what you’re doing, and you should be telling that story and taking them on the journey. Regulations really changed with the global colleges. Everybody’s working together, everybody’s looking at each other’s perceptions of risks in their market, and they’re looking at systemic risk from one market to another. So no such thing as a regulator that’s not interested in what you’re doing. Definitely, for me, a proactive, forward looking view with regulators helps that relationship. Things still go wrong, you still get fined, you still go into remediation, but that relationship is key. When things do go wrong, that you’ve got the strength to say, we’ve been open, we’ve been transparent, we’ve tried to enhance and fix things, and now we’ve reached the stage where the remediation isn’t working. So we understand the fine or we understand the timeline the regulator is going to give us to comply.

Bernadine Reese 26:29
Yeah, makes sense. And maybe a final question on this one, I know you must have dealt with some challenging situations and personalities. What advice do you have for us on that?

Christine Lowthian 26:42
Yes, I definitely have dealt with some challenging personalities, and I think I’ve dealt with that all the way through my career, and I probably will continue to do so till the day I retire. I think it’s something that we all face every single day. I think when I look back on this, I’d say to you, when I was younger in my career, those difficult personalities were difficult to deal with because I took things very personally or very emotionally, and so I felt criticized. As I’ve got older, I’ve started to ask that question, which is, if you are a new manager to me, or you’re a new person, I need to work with, and it’s difficult to start with, it’s probably communication, so we need to straighten that communication. But I do ask that question, which is, I’m here to work for you, so how can I help you? What can I do differently? How can I make you successful? Whether you’re the CEO of the bank and you need a regulatory program to be able to build your business, or you’re in compliance and I’m not giving you the right information or metrics for you to feel comfortable about the risk. So when you ask that question, it sort of resets the conversation from what might be a difficult relationship to we’re here to work together as one team. I’m obviously not landing it correctly. How can I do it better? And then you have to work through it, and you’ve got to decide, I think, with difficult personalities in my working career is, how much do you care? You know, how much you’re going to die on the hill, generally points you’re going to argue, or are you going to let certain things go so that you can get the big points across? And again, that’s a maturity thing. I think again, when I was younger, you fought everything. Everything was a crisis or a negative thing to your workforce or your team or yourself, and we are women in a predominantly male environment. You could see it that way. It’s because I’m the only woman in the room, and all of that emotion. As I’ve got older, and we both read this book, Bernardine, I’ve got better at saying, What am I going to let go? What really matters, and what can I not change and therefore I don’t need to worry about it. So the book we both read is Mel Brooks called Let Them, which we highly recommend to everyone. It’s very funny, but it just reminds you, at this stage in your career, or certainly my stage of my career, when I read it, just remind me, just let certain things go. That’s the way to deal with very strong personalities or difficult personalities and focus on the things that really matter, because you just haven’t got the energy to do it all.

Bernadine Reese 29:05
Absolutely. So there’s so much more we could discuss, but I think we’ve only got time for perhaps one more question. So what advice would you give to women just starting out their careers who aspire for leadership roles in compliance or elsewhere?

Christine Lowthian 29:20
So I think if you look at what I said at the beginning, which is, take the opportunity that’s in front of you, take that step, you can feel very daunting, which is, for example, for us, I was a single mother with three children, the bank wanted me to go to the US, most people say you can’t do that. Your children education, how it’s going to work. You’ve got a dog, it’s not going to work, you can make anything happen. And when you came out of it, everybody had a better time than they did when we first were in so taking those opportunities, learning from it. I mean, living in New York was an incredible cultural opportunity as well. You know, you learned so much about theater, about art, you’d never have had the opportunity if you were sitting in the London office. So I definitely would say to people, if you want management experience, take the opportunity that’s in front of you. Don’t be frightened about sideways moves, especially in organizations that we see today that are getting slimmer operationally more efficient. There’s less positions at the top now, because the whole corporate environment is just becoming more and more efficient further down. So don’t be just looking for the promotion. Look for the width in your career. You know, what else can I do? Does that help me grow? And then, you know, the other question you often get asked about when you’re talking about leadership and advice to leadership is, if you look back, what advice would you give yourself? And definitely, I think the main thing as we reach the last 10 years of our career, or maybe less, is you’ve got to enjoy it. You’ve got to have fun with it. And I think that helps you in leadership, it’s I’ll do this job because it’ll give me a chance to meet new people, do new things, bring all my skills to the table in a different environment, but definitely enjoy it. You’re going to meet great people. You’re going to learn from them, and you should, because lots of people have different experiences to you, so you can bring that to the table. And then I think there’s lots of bumps along the way. There’s lots of 180 degree turns. There’s lots of things that feel like they might be catastrophic during the day or during the week, but you will get through it and you’ll be a better person for it. So my view is, take these opportunities and build on them. And if you’re worried about the how build that sponsorship around you, to have that conversation that says, what is it that you’re frightened about doing, or that you’re nervous about doing, or you feel you don’t have the talent? And let me help you fill that gap. And you don’t have to fill that gap in a week or a day. You can fill that gap over three months or a year, but have a strategy to push yourself forward.

Bernadine Reese 31:46
And doing what you enjoy absolutely resonates, and it’s been a very enjoyable afternoon, a very enjoyable conversation. Thank you so much. Christine Lowthian, for your insights and advice.

Christine Lowthian 31:56
Not at all, always a pleasure to talk to you, Bernadine.

Kimberley Cole 32:01
Thank you for listening to this episode of Risky Women Radio, be part of the ongoing conversation and learn more about our events and other programs at riskywomen.org