Career Path of a Director of Technology Alliances at Glia

I went to Boston College, where I studied political science and minored in music. Coming out of college, I had considered a couple different career paths, including law, business, and medicine. I pursued these to some extent while in college, doing some exploration when I graduated.

I ended up taking a job in financial services kind of by happenstance. As I was recruiting for my first role, I secured a position with Standard & Poor's in their Global Rating Services group, rating CDO Bond securities. I was then able to leverage my political science background to move into municipal finance ratings.

This role involved rating the debt of local municipalities and school districts, assessing their willingness and ability to pay. This allowed them to take on big capital projects. I liked this role because it was analytical, gave me the ability to travel, and provided insights into the financial services industry.

What I didn't love about this role was that it seemed very repetitive; I felt like I was doing the same thing every day. So, while at Standard & Poor's, I spent time soul-searching and exploring my options. I started taking post-baccalaureate classes to look at med school but quickly decided that wasn't the right path for me.

I got the inkling that I wanted to be part of an entrepreneurial venture or build and grow a business. I decided that business school was the best route for me. So, I went to UCLA Anderson School of Business, choosing the full-time program because I knew I was making a career switch.

Anderson's program was heavily focused on entrepreneurship and technology. Personally, it offered the ability to live in Los Angeles for a time, which was appealing. While at Anderson, I took a number of internships at startups. These were low-paying but allowed me to see firsthand how entrepreneurs deal with growing a business day-to-day and the stresses involved.

I also worked for a brewery for a short period, helping them with marketing analytics. This was a cool subset of real-world experience that I might not have gained in a standard nine-to-five job. This was an important experience for me coming out of business school.

After business school, I took a job in technology, working for an automotive startup called TrueCar. I was on their strategic partnerships team. Strategic partnerships wasn't something I had necessarily considered before, but I found it rewarding and interesting because it's operationally and strategically minded.

In this role, I worked in marketing and analytics programs and collaborated with partners. That's where my career turned toward business development and strategic partnerships. I liked the small company experience but knew I needed big tech experience to grow my career.

My next role was at Yahoo, working for Yahoo Finance in their business development team. This role was more focused on content acquisition and building product partnerships. While TrueCar sold cars, Yahoo's primary revenue was advertising, so my role was to help increase page views, time on site, and provide additional content for users.

I spent about two and a half years at Yahoo Finance and then got the desire to return to something smaller. I also wanted to leverage my financial services experience. So, I took a role with a loan origination company called OnDeck Capital, which was a small business lender. This was my first foray into FinTech.

Again, I was working in business development. Business development can encompass many things. In this role, it included a sales component where I sold software technology into banks and financial services. There was also a partnerships component where we worked with other technology partners to find synergistic solutions.

I was with OnDeck for about three or four years. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, I ended up at a loan origination platform called Amount. From Amount, I was able to pivot into a strategic partnerships role at Glia, a digital customer service platform focused on the financial services industry.

I took my FinTech experience and applied it to customer service and call center technology. My role here is Director of Technology Alliances, which means I manage relationships between Glia and our channel partners, who are either resellers or referral partners. I've been with the organization for about half a year and have really enjoyed it. And that's been my career thus far.