I grew up in a tight-knit Philly neighborhood. I was always participating in a bunch of different activities – I was a cheerleader, ran track, played basketball, and wrote for my yearbook. I never latched on to just one thing. At the time, I didn’t know that my range of interests would provide a great foundation for my future career at SIG.

Our Operations team works closely with the many different trading, technology, and business teams at SIG. Our businesses are continuously evolving, so success requires us to constantly learn new skills and come up with new ways to drive efficiency. Looking back, it makes sense that I was drawn to operations given the dynamic and team-centric nature of the work.

I first became interested in operations when I was studying finance in college. While finishing my last semester at Temple University, I started a part-time operations position at SIG on the Convertible Bonds desk. This first role led to other roles with other desks, and I quickly learned that being open to new opportunities would help me continue growing in my career.

While I was working on the Convertible Bonds desk, there were some regulatory changes that required me to learn about SEC capital charges and some accounting principles. This knowledge turned out to be invaluable to me. As our trading business grew, I took what I learned in Converts and moved to new desks to build out our operations in areas including the Municipal Bonds desk, Private Placements, and even our International Trading business. When one of my co-workers left the firm unexpectedly, I took on new responsibilities that required me to learn technology. I coded myself, set up databases, essentially learning anything I could to help myself become more efficient at my job.

Although I was still getting my footing in the professional world, I was always hungry for a new challenge. I worked hard and wanted to make an impact in any new role or project that I was assigned. This attitude led to new opportunities, though I didn’t think of it like that at the time! Later on in my career, I was given more responsibility to help shape the Operations teams in our international offices, where I learned more about creating the best, most cohesive teams to support SIG. As I grew, people’s trust in me (and my trust in myself) grew, too.

Since I started at SIG in 1992, our Operations team has grown by more than tenfold. As our team kept growing, our recruiters began asking me, “How do we mirror your experience of getting so much exposure to all of our businesses?” From those conversations, the Operations Analyst Program was born. Operations works with many groups across the firm – trading, tech, accounting, tax, legal, compliance – and there are so many connections and partnerships to be made. We try to recreate that feeling of “smallness” in the rotations we currently offer, giving new Operations Analysts the chance to learn from many different areas of SIG. Our co-workers keep coming back to me and my team to problem solve because we have a depth of knowledge across many areas of the firm.

"At SIG, you should always be looking for new things to learn and ways to make an impact in your role. As Head of Operations, I still feel like I am learning every day. Don't put limits on yourself. You never know where your expertise may take you."