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Christa Steele: "SWIFT is so antiquated it needs to go"
Episode 54
Published 4 years, 2 months ago
Description
- Intro.
- (1:35) - Start of interview.
- (2:19) - Christa's "origin story". She grew up in Dixon, California. She later went to CSU Sacramento and got her MBA at USC. She started working as a bank teller in college and ended up as the President & CEO of Mechanics Bank in the Bay Area. They sold the bank in 2015 to a PE firm owned by a Texas billionaire. After that sale, she started joining boards of directors.
- (3:53) - Her breakdown of banks: large, regional and community banks. At each level there is a significant difference in corporate governance.
- (5:23) - Her experience joining boards post 2015. She's had 8 board experiences with companies of different sizes and stages of development: from startup, scale-ups, to public companies. She started exploring bitcoin and blockchain technology. She also joined the NACD (Northern CA chapter). The first board she joined was of FIG partners, an investment bank (where she also joined as a partner). They sold the firm to Janney Montgomery Scott in 2019. She then joined the boards of Brainchip Holdings (ASX), Recology, OFG Bancorp, Sasser Family Holdings, Tanimura & Antle and Balco Holdings, Inc (owner of Bay Alarm, Bay Alarm Medical and BALCO Properties).
- (10:08) - The pros and cons of serving in boards of companies of different sizes and stages of development. Her transition from board member to CEO at Balco Holdings (starting on April 1, 2022). The intricacies of family-owned businesses.
- (14:08) - What's Balco Holdings and why she's excited about her new CEO role.
- (17:27) - How she thinks about security in CA, the impact of COVID-19 on how people behave, plus tech and cybersecurity trends.
- (19:15) - How boards and companies should approach cybersecurity threats: "I think you need the cybersecurity expertise in the C-suite."
- (22:43) - Her take on the evolution of ESG in the boardroom: "I've helped my boardrooms develop ESG dashboards." "It's going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next few months." "Boardrooms should look at the company's own CPI indexes and costs given the current environment." "A lot of people will have to take a stance of wait-and-see [on ESG] and not overthink it right now."
- (28:06) - Her take on blockchain technology. Biden's Executive Order on Digital Assets. "SWIFT is so antiquated it needs to go (on how we send wires and ACH)." "It's too early to weigh-in on DAOs, it will continue to morph and evolve."
- (35:30) - Christa's parting thoughts for directors in the current environment:
- Directors should be asking about their own company versio