Finding Treasury: The Path I Didn't Plan For
When I started my MBA, if you had told me I would spend this summer falling in love with treasury, I would have laughed. Coming into the MBA, I wanted a role that merged my accounting background, capital markets experience (especially derivatives), and strategy, but treasury never came to mind, and it wasn't a typical, traditional MBA pathway either. My internship this summer in Controllership and Treasury Transformation at Deloitte Consulting changed that.
What I loved most about this internship, honestly, started with the people. I got to work alongside people who were sharp, genuinely diverse in how they thought and where they came from, and, more than anything, generous with their time and knowledge. My manager, my coach, my onboarding advisors, the Boston office recruiter, OSU alums at Deloitte Consulting, and my team members all of whom made an effort to make me feel seen, appreciated, valued, and actually connected, not just an intern passing through for ten weeks. That's a big part of why the experience felt as well-rounded as it did.
On the technical side, this internship gave me a real, insider view of what corporate treasury actually looks like: accounting, capital markets activity, and strategy all working together, from a hedging, accounting, cash management, and investing perspective. I had worked with financial instruments before, but this gave me a different perspective on how clients actually arrive at the decision to use a particular instrument, and how they use it once they do. It was an opportunity that genuinely challenged me: to learn, ask questions, get corrected, and eventually get to a place where I could advise. I also gained exposure to cash management and netting operations outside an exchange, from a client perspective. You can't fully learn this without doing it. Finally, I had the opportunity to see Kyriba, a robust treasury management software system, in action and engage with its functionality.
If I had to leave current and prospective students with anything, it would be this: get curious about the paths that don't come with a clear script yet, take the coffee chat even when you're not sure where it leads, and pay attention to which rooms actually energize you. That tends to be a better compass than whatever the "typical" path says you should want. I said it in an earlier post, and it keeps proving true: "stay open to unconventional opportunities, because breakthroughs rarely come from the most obvious paths”.
