by Fraser Chapman
For the third session of our latest Finance to Leadership [F2L] program, we were lucky to have Lisa Lee, CFO and Richard Kennerley, CEO of Rapid Securities Limited presenting. Both presenters shared valuable insights into their careers and some of the challenges they faced on the journey to their current role, as well as, a lot of laughs.
Lisa has had a fast-paced and dynamic career to date spanning across professional services, investment banking and now a broad, hands on CFO role within Financial Services. Richard spending the most part of his career in big end of town financial services in the UK and Australia to now as CEO at Rapid Securities.
Lisa stressed the importance of networking to your advantage both internally and externally and shared insights into her approach. Both Lisa and Richard spoke about the importance of getting your team right when stepping into senior leadership roles, looking for the “Ying Yang” relationships rather than like for like.
Lisa left the room with 3 key tips for success when stepping up into senior finance roles:
- Stay true to yourself – both at home and as your “professional self”
- Understand the key people in your business, do your due diligence. It will help you build relationships and increase your ability to influence.
- Work is not the most important thing in your life, do not burn yourself out!
We would like to thank Lisa and Richard for their contribution to the program and we certainly enjoyed having them on board for this series.
