How would you describe your role?
I oversee many of the accounting and finance functions at Veilant. I’m primarily responsible for closing out the books, making sure everything’s recorded properly on a monthly and yearly basis. I oversee our audits, financial, tax, and R&D credits. I make sure that everything from our expense management systems also run appropriately. I oversee the timekeeping processes and manage the day-to-day of what goes into our accounting system and how we’re reporting back to the executive team. I also support our CFO with the reporting.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I like to think of myself as a teacher. I’ve always told folks that I would rather hire people I can help educate and teach, as opposed to those who just want to do their thing, work on their own and not be involved. I feel like it’s easier to help people progress when they’re willing to learn, and so I try to let people figure things out on their own first, and then I walk through helping them come up with the answer and/or solution to a question or a problem. I also expect people to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, so when they don’t, I get involved and I help explain and teach them, even if it means drawing something on the whiteboard, writing something down, or explaining to them the workflow.
Can you tell us about a time when you were inspired or impressed by the work of another Veilanter?
I would say I am very impressed with the way the employees at Veilant tend to just gravitate towards helping each other, figuring out solutions together, and making sure that every team member is always involved. I’ve never gotten the impression that it is “my way or the highway.” It has never been, “This is what we’re going to do, please make it work.” It’s more like, “Hey, this is a problem we’re facing,” or “Hey, this is the project we’re trying,” or “This is the person we’re trying to recruit – what do we need to do to make it work and get the results that we need.” So, it’s a very collaborative effort. Nobody ever says no. They’re always willing to help. They’re always willing to get involved, even if it’s outside their field of expertise.
A lot of our employees have been here for a long time. In my case, for example, I’ve been here for such a long time, and so people can come to me and ask me questions without me necessarily being involved in that, but I know who to reach out to, who to talk to, or even potentially know the answer to already just because I’ve been here for so long and because I was involved in so many different aspects of the company for a long time. I think just the collaborative nature of everybody is something that I really value and treasure at Veilant and appreciate.
What’s your superpower?
Is being loud a superpower? Is being opinionated a superpower? I think actually all my employees, my co-workers, and the people that work with me always say that my patience is my superpower. I think that in the seven years I’ve worked here, none of the people that have worked with me the majority of the time have ever experienced me upset or angry or annoyed, but I calm people down. I make them feel like not everything is a big deal, even in times where we found an issue or an error or something that needed to be fixed. People tend to freak out or just get flustered, and I’m always the mind of reason, like, “No, let’s figure this out. We’ll make it work. Let’s do this, let’s solve this, let’s fix this, let’s figure this out.” And then, I just lay down steps and foundation to either help them get to where they need to get or give guidance on where/what to do with that. So, I would say it’s probably my patience.
How do you think we uniquely demonstrate value to our customers?
It’s the people. Our people are our biggest resource and also our biggest superpower. They go out of their way to satisfy any requests. They go out of their way in their presentations from a training perspective, in their programming skills from a software development perspective, and in their ability to explain, do, show and tell the customers what our products are, what services we provide, and what we do at Veilant. It’s everybody’s willingness to cooperate and do things with each other that gets us the solution and/or end result that we are looking for.
How would you describe Veilant’s culture?
Great minds, great people, a lot of smart individuals. Everybody’s always willing to go the extra mile for other people. I remember we used to go out to happy hours, and 50 people would show up. I’ve been in places where you do a happy hour and like three people show up. We do happy hours and like 30-40 people would show up, and everybody wants to go out, meet everybody, and hang out with everybody. It’s a very collaborative kind of environment.
