At the time I joined Citizens, our online banking platform was up and coming, and growing rapidly. It was a great chance for me to get in on the ground floor and build something exciting that would show me so many different areas of the bank. This role was what launched my career here.

You can probably do a lot more than you give yourself credit for.
When I look back at how I made moves across the bank, I realized that most of the new roles I stepped into found their way to me. This happened for three reasons:

1.) I was always open and networking.
2.) I’m committed to being authentic. Regardless of your role or title, everyone who works with me has a similar experience and always has my respect as a fellow colleague.
3.) I don’t shy away from hard work and I’m always learning.

When it felt like time for me to grow beyond my first role in Online Banking, I had a network to prop me up. That’s how the Lean Six Sigma work found its way to me. And even though I knew it was time to stretch myself, I still had a lot of trepidation about my qualifications and my ability to do the job well. Thankfully, I managed to push through that discomfort of feeling unqualified. I knew that it would be hard but that I could learn. And I was blown away by what was on the ‘other side’ – turned out, I really enjoyed this work and was more than capable of doing it! Many of my skills were transferable, and my motivation and determination helped me learn any necessary new skills. Within the second year of this role, I had learned all Six Sigma methodologies and became a Black Belt executing my own projects. Here’s the lesson – you can probably do a lot more than you give yourself credit for.

I was craving an opportunity to make things better.
A big part of what drives me as a person is to have the opportunity to make things better – to create positive outcomes for my team and the customers we serve. I stepped into the role I’m in now, as Head of Data and Analytics Transformation, because there was so much potential to use my skills, institutional knowledge and established relationships to make good things happen. I was excited by the pace of change happening in this space and could see a big runway where I had hands-on access to re-shape our work and our strategy.

It’s amazing to look back and see how much our organization has grown since I joined 25 years ago – there are always new opportunities and challenges popping up, making it easy to explore new paths. In fact, the focus in recent years on attracting, growing and keeping talented colleagues means that if you put in the effort to grow your skills, to network and to ask questions, it pays off in the end. I’ve built a meaningful career here that I’m proud of.

Read more stories showcasing the unique paths our colleagues have taken to achieve career success.

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