“Company culture really facilitated me getting into the investor relations role. Finance was highly respected within the company, and I was viewed as a good business partner with a pulse on where things were headed and who could be counted on to really step in on cross-functional projects.”
- Ramesh Shettigar, MBA, CTP, IRC, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Glatfelter Te culture Royce is trying to create for her team
today requires she think several steps ahead. “For example, we’re not public, but we’d like to go public, and that’s a puzzle piece as I try to think what this team might need to look like in three years,” Royce says. “Where do I want to grow people internally? Where do I think I’d want subject matter expertise, that’s how I’m trying to think about culture.” Occasionally, Royce looks outside to put an expert
on her team. “For me, it’s always a mix, but it’s impor- tant to think about what you want from them, what you want the division or the team to look like, and who are the people that you want to see grow. Ten you gently nudge them into putting up their hand to say yes to something they might not know,” she says. “I’m trying to redevelop that, in a gentle way, at a young company.” “Company culture really facilitated me getting into
the investor relations role,” Shettigar says. “Finance was highly respected within the company, and I was viewed as a good business partner with a pulse on where things were headed and who could be counted on to really step in on cross-functional projects.” Shettigar said those factors made it easy at that
company for a treasury or finance person to step into an IR role, and he had to return that favor. “As I was moving into other parts of the business,
I had to make sure folks on my team were also get- ting adequately cross trained,” says Shettigar. “One thing I came to realize is, in order for you to continue to move into different roles, you’re not letting go of much but you’re taking on more. You really need good people supporting you in order to be able to play this very versatile and fluid role.”
niri.org/ irupdate
Not for Everyone Te increased valuation, compensation and internal recognition of today’s investor relations practitioner means not every IRO wants to be CFO, McDermott points out. “We asked this question on the last NIRI/Korn
Ferry survey, and we were not surprised the data indicates that CFO is not necessarily everyone’s ultimate career goal coming out of investor rela- tions,” McDermott explains. “Te results indicate 18% of respondents want to step into a CFO role as their next step outside of IR, 42% want to stay in investor relations and 16% want to stay in IR but try out a different sector. Tat being said, I think that investor relations officers are very well positioned for the CFO role.” McDermott reiterates IR skills are very transfer-
able among industries. “We’ve seen a lot of examples of best-in-class IR folks moving from one regulated industry to another.” However, if you are among the 18% of IROs
who want to become CFOs, McDermott believes if you plan and position your career path, whether internal or external, the right way and take on ad- ditional responsibilities, you position yourself for succession planning in the future. “And it will happen … more organically and more naturally,” McDermott assures. IR
Alexandra Walsh is Senior Publishing Consultant for Association Vision, the company that produces IR Update for NIRI; awalsh@
associationvision.com.
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