Changing technologies
OPPORTUNITIES IN FINANCIAL IT

IT is the foundation of the financial field

“There isn’t a transaction that doesn’t somehow involve IT.” – Adam Stanley, LaSalle Bank/ABN AMRO

The heightened need for info security provides a new avenue of specialization for the IT pro

By Claire Swedberg
Contributing Editor

In the Liberty Mutual IS organization, Jeff Gray directs network services.

At Raymond James, Vidya Narayan is at the highest engineering level in IT.

Diversity is everywhere in the field of financial IT. “Encouraging diversity is smart,” declares Chet Helck, president and COO of Raymond James Financial (St. Petersburg, FL). “It’s a good business decision because economies around the world are more interrelated, populations are shifting, and society has become increasingly complex.

“That means our clients are going to be different in the future and we should be sure our associate base reflects those cultural changes.” Janet Manzullo is head of recruiting at Wachovia (Charlotte, NC). “Our IT organization is diverse, innovative and growing exponentially along with our business,” she says.

Jeff Gray is a director at Liberty Mutual
Jeff Gray is director of network services in the IS organization at Liberty Mutual Group (Portsmouth, NH). He oversees engineers working on networking functions, and strategy architects designing a roadmap for the company’s network infrastructure of the future: voice, data, video and security.

Gray grew up in Portsmouth where his father worked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and his mother was a beautician and a minister. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1995 with a double major in CS and math, and completed an MBA at Franklin Pierce College (Portsmouth, NH) in 1998.

While studying, Gray was also working. In 1991 he worked for EPS Consultants in Portsmouth as a strategic ops analyst. In 1994 he moved to a similar job at Cabletron Systems (Rochester, NH).

In 1995 he joined Wellfleet Communications (formerly Bay Networks and now Nortel Networks, Billerica, MA) as a tech support engineer. He moved up to customer service ops manager in the tech support division, in charge of eight support engineers. He went on to manage global ops and support services: 150 support engineers in five support centers around the world.

In 2000 Gray joined the startup management team for Cayman Systems (Stoneham, MA), which offered broadband, wireless and home networking services. He was chief customer service officer, responsible for 24/7 customer support.

In 2002 Cayman was sold, and Gray moved to Liberty Mutual. The technology, support and management experience he’d gained in his previous jobs was the ideal preparation for that new job, he says.

He began as front-line manager in the telecommunications department, supporting Liberty’s domestic network infrastructure.

Then he became network engineering manager, which gave him the opportunity to design and implement the company’s core network, using the latest technology. In 2005 he moved into his current job as director for network strategy and support services.

Gray notes that his career focus has been on people, process, and technology, with an emphasis on managing change. “I’d like to be a CIO one day,” he adds.

Vidya Narayan: software engineer IV at Raymond James
In 2004 Vidya Narayan’s husband was transferred to Florida, and she found a job there with Raymond James (St. Petersburg, FL) as a software engineer III in the development consulting group. Her day-to-day responsibilities ranged from working out systems for a mutual fund product line to designing and implementing software.

She advanced to software engineer IV last year. This is highest engineering level in IT, entailing leadership responsibilities like planning, coordination, design and project development. Her most recent project was with the back office systems team, where she helped with the planning, design and development of a $1.25 million project for the mutual funds business group.

“Working with people is a big part of my job,” says Narayan. “I have to get project requirements from business analysts, and my group works with several different teams on each project.”

Narayan was born in southern India. Her father was a banker. She graduated from Bharathiyar University in 1996 with a BSEE.

Her first job was as an offshore consultant for Covansys (Farmington Hills, MI). In 1998 the company offered her a job as senior consultant in its Lansing, MI office, and she moved to the U.S. to take up the offer. Her husband came to the U.S. at about the same time, and they were married in 2000.

Her work included designing and implementing software projects for various companies. “As a consultant you learn how to deal with change and work effectively with people,” she says. “Each client has a different setup and different processes.”

At Raymond James, Narayan found an IT department with a very active informal mentoring program. Her current boss is her most influential mentor, she says, sharing her own work experience and helping Narayan set long-term goals.

Raymond James’ women’s interactive network also helps with mentoring and provides other resources to support women’s professional development. The network recently launched “career contacts,” a new networking and relationship-building program. “We have a lot of people from different countries working here,” Narayan notes. “We are all given opportunities based on our job performance.”

M. K. Chaayanath directs apps development at ADP

M. K. Chaayanath.

M. K. Chaayanath became senior director of applications development at ADP (Alpharetta, GA) last year. His responsibilities include managing multiple HR-related projects and building universal service apps for HR practitioners, employees, managers and customers. He’s also responsible for managing seventy IT people worldwide.

Chaayanath grew up in Bangalore, India. His father was an official in the state government.

Young Chaayanath completed a BSCS at Bangalore University in 1993 and worked as a software engineer for GE Medical Systems in Bangalore. In 1995 he moved to a job as senior software engineer at software consultant PCL Mindware in Bangalore, and was transferred to the firm’s San Jose, CA office.

In 1996 he joined Harbinger Corp (Atlanta, GA) as a software engineer. The company had plenty of work for him to do, as it aimed to become a major player in the automation industry.

He began by designing and writing software to manage an electronic parts ordering network. In 2000 he was promoted to product architect, responsible for overall architecture, design and software development for Harbinger’s next-generation value-added network (VAN). “The VAN enabled secure exchange of business documents with the company’s trading partners,” he explains.

“The job helped me improve my technical expertise and I developed enterprise-scale and mission-critical apps. I gained a lot of technical experience, along with the ability to lead a team,” he says.

But after eight years at Harbinger Chaayanath was ready for a change. When friends recommended ADP, the payroll services company, he researched it, liked it, and applied for a job there.

In 2004 he started at ADP as an application architect. His mission was to develop a unified, Web-based HR platform, and to manage a team of about twenty geographically dispersed engineers. He moved up to senior director last year.

“I’ve had a blast here so far!” Chaayanath says happily. “I’ve been able to grow, and also to develop associates and managers. I’m very proud of my team. They are a huge part of my success.”

Theresa S. Wilson is a CIO at Wachovia

Theresa Wilson.

At Wachovia (Charlotte, NC), the huge banking chain, Theresa Wilson is CIO of commercial wealth and capital management technology. “My job is a balance between IT and people,” she says. “It requires knowledge of technology as well as the financial business.”

Wilson is accountable for developing new systems, having good procedures in place and supporting the capital management, asset management and wealth management groups, the treasury services division and other areas.

Wilson has been working for Wachovia since she graduated from Howard University (Washington, DC) in 1976 with a degree in math and CS.

That first job as a programmer “gave me an opportunity to add value to the organization right away,” she recalls. She advanced to programmer/analyst, senior programmer, senior analyst, project manager, senior project manager and division manager, and now she’s CIO.

“There are many different career paths in IT,” Wilson notes. “I chose management because I like learning new things, putting new procedures in place and helping the business to grow.”

In the early ‘90’s the company suggested that she get an MBA. Taking advantage of the offer, she attended Queens University (Charlotte, NC) after work and completed the MBA in 1994.

Wilson is involved in Wachovia’s internship program and several diversity initiatives, many relating to women. She’s currently co-leader of the operations and technology women’s initiative. She served on the first operations and technology diversity council, which focused on awareness and communication, and “created best practices on how to integrate a diversity lens into decision-making,” Wilson explains.

Today she sees a fairly even balance of genders and cultures in the IT department. But for a long time she was the only African American female in the group. “I think I brought enough credibility on board to be heard,” she recalls with satisfaction. “If I said something very technical, the men listened to me.

“We’ve made progress, but we have a lot more work to do,” Wilson comments. She wants to continue to make a difference at Wachovia, especially in the areas of diversity and workplace opportunities. “Wachovia is one of the top financial institutions in the country, and I want to help ensure that we continue to grow,” she declares.

Darian Ross manages desktop tech at the Capital Group

Darian Ross.

Darian Ross became manager of desktop technology at the Capital Group (Los Angeles, CA) late last year, transferring from the company’s Orange County, CA location to San Antonio, TX. His new job includes responsibility for software deployment to the company’s 14,000 computers.

His team focuses on troubleshooting new software installation problems. “I managed a desktop support team in California, so I’m the one in the department with the most recent desktop support experience. I can provide a better understanding of problems and failures in the field,” he explains.

“I’m also responsible for finding ways to centralize technology, and for best deploying people on our teams. As the company grows, we need desktop support integration to leverage numbers for efficiency and effectiveness as a team.”

Service in the Air Force, he says, gave him both “people” and organizational skills. “But it was a little bit of a switch from what I was doing then to what I do now,” Ross notes.

Ross grew up in Cincinnati, OH, where his father worked in construction. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs, CO) in 1972 with a degree in management, and completed an MBA at Southern Illinois University in 1985.

For twenty-five years Ross was a navigational crew member in the Air Force’s cargo plane fleet, flying out of Charleston, SC. Navigation involves computers, of course, and he learned a lot about them.

In 1997 Ross retired from the Air Force and went to work as a contractor for the Capital Group in California. He worked in desktop support for four months and then was assigned to the troubleshooting team. Soon after, the group hired him on directly for a job on its desktop support team.

In 2000 Ross assembled a group of subcontractors to handle routine tasks like setting up computers and training users. This freed up the desktop support team for more technical responsibilities. Ross became manager of the team in 2003, and began to assess and institute technical changes and updates to computer equipment.

The next year he took part in a year-long internal internship, part of the company’s associate development program. “The Capital Group is a very feedback-oriented culture,” says Ross. “I made it known during my one-on-ones with my manager that I was interested in the management track.”

Last year he moved to his current job as enterprise-wide manager of IT desktop technology.

At ING, André Gold heads up technology risk management

André Gold.

Early this year, André Gold left his ten-year career at Continental Airlines to work for ING U.S. Financial Services (Hartford, CT) as head of technology risk management. He’s responsible for information and risk management, IT security and crisis management.

“I was looking for an organization with real growth opportunities and one that realized the importance of risk management,” he says. “The companies that understand and manage risk are the ones that survive.”

Gold’s father was a career marine, and his mother worked in financial services. He went to the Wentworth Military Academy (Lexington, MO), a military prep school. At graduation he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. When his military service was finished he enrolled at the University of Texas, then transferred to the University of Houston (Houston, TX) where he earned a degree in business admin.

In 1997 he went to work for Continental Airlines (Houston, TX), and three years later he became the company’s director of Internet services. His team built the company’s e-commerce environment and ran all of the company’s Internet services, including the continental.com website.

In 2001 Gold added direction of global infrastructure to his duties. Two years later he moved away from his Internet and infrastructure responsibilities and created the company’s first information security program. It was an innovative move at the time.

Today, as head of technology risk management at ING, Gold notes that “Legislation has burdened us with a lot of transactional and tactical tasks.” This, he says, was driven largely by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley act, which requires all publicly traded companies to certify their IT and financial controls. But as the legislation matures, he says, “adding real customer value” will again become his core job.

Gold is currently working toward his MBA online from Colorado State University.

Rhonda Metz is an SVP at Citigroup

Rhonda Metz.

Early this year Rhonda Metz became SVP of markets and banking database shared services at Citigroup (Citi, New York, NY). Her team reconciles the legitimacy of all information security activities and transactions, and she also heads the database obfuscation team, which encrypts data that needs to be moved from production to a non-production environment.

In addition, she manages an offshore team of fifty techies who partner with the U.S. database admin group to supply support 24/7. She also manages the database tool development team which works out tools and products to maintain and monitor databases.

“We work very closely to support all our business channels,” she says. “Our top priority is to deliver products and solutions that clients need.”

Metz has always enjoyed technology. She grew up in New York City’s borough of Queens in a professional family. Her father was SVP of an engineering firm and her mother managed an office.

Metz graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1990 with a BSMIS. Her 1995 MBA with a concentration in management/international business is from Seton Hall University (East Orange, NJ).

In 1990 she went to work for AT&T (Basking Ridge, NJ) as a team leader for desktop support and development/admin. In 1996 she joined Solomon Bros (Rutherford, NJ), which later became Citi. She developed scripts and tools to automate software deployment, and she and her team put cutting-edge procedures in place.

Metz became a team lead in 1997, managing a small group working on tool deployment. Then she joined the database management group as a DBA, supporting the Sybase, Oracle, Microsoft and SQL data servers.

“They were critical systems and couldn’t stand much downtime,” she explains. “I had very little database experience back then, so I had to learn fast.”

She became team leader in 1999, providing project leadership for a team of five in database admin. Her responsibilities included new databases, architecture and design of new systems, and high-availability solutions for apps that couldn’t support downtime.

In 2001 she became VP of the database management group. She established teams for database info security, database change management and database control.

“At this time there was a heightened focus on security company-wide, and an increased concentration on making sure we had strong controls. These were the drivers for establishing the new teams, which have become the model for the rest of the organization.”

Citi has always supported informal mentoring arrangements, and now Metz is part of a new, formal mentoring program there. The company’s diversity council is active in employee life, and Metz has worked on its networking committee.

“I’ve never felt like a minority in this company,” she declares. “As long as you’re effective in delivering products and services, there’s always room to advance in the organization.”

Adam Stanley is an SVP in IT at LaSalle/ABN AMRO

Adam Stanley.

“Financial IT is the foundation of banking,” declares Adam Stanley, SVP for IT services in business transformation and technology at LaSalle Bank/ABN AMRO (Chicago, IL). ABN AMRO is a global banking group with European roots, and 4,500 branches in fifty-three countries.

Stanley is head of IT services and solutions for all the business units in North America. He monitors the performance of vendors and also manages customer relationships, solution sourcing, risk and compliance and more.

Stanley grew up in Chicago, where his father was a police officer and his mother a school principal. He graduated from Washington University (St. Louis, MO) with a BSBA in finance and international business, and has an MBA in strategic management and management of e-commerce from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA).

“Financial IT is the foundation of banking, and IT is how banking actually works,” he declares. “There isn’t a transaction that doesn’t somehow involve IT. It drives banking through the desktop, mainframe and server.

His first job at Deloitte Consulting (Chicago, IL) was as a business analyst and associate consultant. In 1999 he became a global associate in the Johannesburg, South Africa Baxton practice, developing strategy and operational process flows for the launch of new credit and debit card products there. In 2000 he became a manager in Deloitte’s banking strategy practice and returned to Chicago.

But it was time for a change. “I spoke with people at ABN and found they were interested in outsourcing, and we agreed that I should join them. I brought with me experience in joint ventures and outsourcing, which is a major component of what I do now,” Stanley explains.

In 2004 Stanley became business unit lead for ABN AMRO’s outsourcing program. He led the North American business unit’s global initiative to strategically outsource selected application development, support and infrastructure functions. He likes the challenge that outsourcing poses.

Stanley was promoted to global manager of the infrastructure outsourcing transition program in 2005. He managed the overall program, including cross-workstream coordination and integration for transition of operations delivery responsibilities, resources and assets.

In 2006 he assumed his present role as North American head of IT services and solutions. He’s also a member of the chairman’s committee on diversity and inclusion, and champions the company’s Inroads internship program in North America. “The bank is really showing that it cares about diversity. I’ve been very impressed by the initiative to attract and retain women at senior ranks,” he says.

Stanley represents the bank on the BPDA corporate advisory council, and he’s a member of Leadership Greater Chicago, a community and business partnership organization.

Building diversity in the financial field
“We pride ourselves on being an inclusive company that is committed to building a diverse workforce,” says Francis Hyatt, employee relations VP at Liberty Mutual. Stuart McGuigan, SVP and CIO, adds that “We are always looking for talented individuals to become part of the Liberty Mutual team.”

“Paying attention to diversity in the financial services industry and specifically in our IT division is critical to our success, both now and in the future,” declares Jay Norvell, diversity program officer for ops, technology and e-commerce at Wachovia.

Janice Renock, VP and director of recruiting, notes that the Capital Group “is hiring more than a thousand associates annually, nearly 20 percent of them IT pros. Our culture is very collaborative and we seek diversity in order to make better-informed decisions.”

Diversity is “truly the essence and fabric of ING’s culture, ensuring a rich and varied perspective in our workforce,” says Jacqui Robertson, global head of diversity.

Larry Milan, HR head at ING, expects to fill a number of IT-related jobs across the U.S. in the next year, “from individual contributors to a variety of management positions.”

D/C

Laura Gater is a freelance business and medical/ healthcare writer based in northeast Indiana.

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