Strategic Leadership Insights: From Pentagon to Wall Street

Just because something has lots more zeros behind it doesn't always mean it was that much more complicated. People will say, you know, never let a perfectly good crisis go to waste. So of course you're going to take those bank failures and say, what lens am I looking for? And they said, well, we talked to the CFO there, but, you know, he said it really wasn't our business to go in that deep. What kind of lame board member are you? That should be a red flag.

Welcome to The Deal Table. Today's guest is Maura McNeil, a seasoned financial services executive, board member, and advisor with a track record of driving strategic transformation in institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Toyota Financial Savings Bank, and the US Treasury.

A former US Air Force captain, Maura served at the Pentagon with degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, and the US Air Force Academy. She brings a wealth of expertise in leadership, strategy, and execution.

We know you'll enjoy this episode. I started a community bank in Memphis, Tennessee, maybe 15 years ago, raised $25 million of capital. Our premise was that basically all of the local— locally owned banks had been bought out by state banks. And so the decision-making was no longer local. And we created a community bank and I served as chairman and I dealing with the regulatory environment and really understanding that a bank was sort of like a hedge fund that was leveraged. You basically are borrowing capital, leveraging your balance sheet, and then you have this spread between what you loan and what you charge in interest, and you hope you don't lose enough to kill that spread and that you don't take on the interest rate risk that your deposits and assets, you know, don't— aren't. So it was a great experience for me. And, you know, we grew from a de novo startup to half a billion dollars. But you took Toyota Financial Savings Bank from $1 billion to $6 billion. And I don't know what time period that was.

A 4-year period.

4 years. So I'm curious about that. Tell me, One, I don't— it seems that maybe I read that it was initially just sort of a captive thing for Toyota. And so tell me about the bank and how you ran it and how on earth you got it from $1 to $6 billion in that period of time.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do like community banking. I had come to it from being over at JPMorgan Chase, and I had talked to the man who's the CEO over the Toyota Finance Holdings in Americas. And, you know, he said he knew that the bank that they had and had had for 20 years was kind of underutilized and also a very valuable asset because he came over from the car company to the finance company to basically, you know, make it more friendly and make sure that they could fund all of their product, But they had to worry about their spreads even more than a bank because they were a finance company and didn't have low-cost deposits. So the more you could do on the bank side, the more either profit you could have or the more you could avoid tapping into parent company guarantees and really jeopardizing the ability for Toyota in Japan to have the capital in all the other places that are absorbing capital in the ecosystem. So when I came over, we fortunately had a head of Japan Toyota Finance who had come from SMBC and really for the first time said, hey, let's take a step back and figure out what we should do. If we start, if we, if you were starting fresh, how would you structure this? Also, at the same time, they had just gotten the Mazda captive relationship. So those two things together came so that we could go from just funding dealers' personal mortgages, a little bit of commercial lending, and taking their deposits, to thinking about doing that for Mazda dealers on the commercial side, even more because not only could we do the real estate, we could also do the floor plan for a nonaffiliate and also to do Mazda retail lending for their consumers. And we weren't able to do that for the internal Toyota products because of regulatory restrictions on funding your affiliate product. So there were a lot of things going on. I took over in May of 2020, so COVID had just started. I was the fourth CEO in 4 years. They had been bobbling around under $1 billion because they didn't kind of get permission to unlock this new strategy until then. And so it was, you know, an amazing time to take a step back and work on this new strategy that was going to really help us grow. And it's going to get a lot bigger than $6 billion soon. We put the infrastructure in place And so, you know, Godspeed to— I'll whisper $30 billion out there, but, you know, I'm no longer there, so I can't say that I have inside information. And they're not, you know, they're not a public company anyhow. So, you know, so we grew a lot of commercial lending. We grew more, you know, just our core lending with our dealers on the mortgage side. And we grew in doing floor plan blending, which we hadn't done. I mean, those were the things that would be there and stay there. Another thing we did was it was when our dealers were shut in, you know, May of 2020, and we were the only captive that actually could do the Paycheck Protection Program financing for our dealers. So when a lot of the dealers were, in line with the big banks trying to get those funds and things were going slow and you're wondering if they were going to run out. We were able to get an SBA license very quickly and get— go from $1 billion to $1.5 billion in less than 3 months, basically. So we had about 465 loans. And, you know, we think that helped them save about 40,000 dealer employees at the time. So talk about being able to serve a need for your customers quickly during crises. That was just kind of one of those crises happens and, you know, take the opportunity and do something good with it. And the team members were amazing at the time. It was fortunate that in addition to the bank employees, we could use the rest of the Toyota employees to help ramp up what we needed to do at that time.

So you weren't a traditional bank, I assume, in the sense that you had branches and deposits. So was all the capital proprietary?

We had, you know, we had our proprietary capital. We had, you know, we could fund with the core deposits we got from dealers. We also had brokered CDs, which were a very stable source of funding, despite the fact the regulators don't think of it as sticky money. We find out later, if we go into the 2023 banking side of the house, it was much more sticky than some of the other deposits at that time.

Yeah. And when I was running, serving as chairman of Triumph Bank in Memphis, what we learned was that if we moved our CD rate 15 basis points, people would be lined up outside our door to come move money.

Yeah.

So, you know, we use brokered CDs as well. We always mentally thought of them as capital that would leave if we didn't buy it back at maturity. And so we, you know, we assess that, but It was really educational to sort of shock the portfolio. You know, we had a consultant, but we would take our, you know, some of our loans were variable, some of them were fixed, some of our deposits were variable, some of them were fixed. And so what happens if in all of those scenarios where interest rates move and change and how does it affect the bank? And it was a really interesting exercise. I imagine you guys had to do the same things in— Oh, yes, we.

We had very robust, you know, liquidity and capital planning, the ALCO meetings, and, you know, and, you know, I like to say that Toyota has a nice strong reputation on safe cars. Well, we weren't going to do anything that did anything but give them a strong reputation on banking. So, you know, when it came down to having a whole bunch of extra deposits in '21 and '22, you know, we didn't assume that those were going to stay with us. The way that, you know, especially the uninsured deposits portion of those deposits, the way a lot of banks did at the time when they went and put it in longer-dated securities and then got stuck when people, you know, came in for like Silicon Valley and Signature and others and needed and, you know, were asking for their money back quicker than they expected.

Yeah.

So you sat in that seat and I sat in that seat and you understand how compelling the risk management component is and understanding your assets and liabilities. And you've got the regulators scrutinizing you, coming in every X months to evaluate everything. And yet there's Silicon Valley Bank and there are these dramatic failures that occur. Do you have an opinion on that?

Yeah, you know, I'll probably say this more than once in the podcast. People will say, you know, never let a perfectly good crisis go to waste. So of course you're going to take those bank failures and say, What lens am I looking for? And so, you know, some of the regulators that didn't get the capital requirements that they wanted in during TARP, you know, like Michael Barr is not going to be around much longer or is already out, you know, would say, oh, it's because we didn't ask them to have enough capital or this, that, or the other. Well, I don't think there's anything about the capital that really caused that. I don't think there's anything that you need another regulation on the books. I think If you look at what the FDIC and the regulators were finding, if they had acted on it quicker and if boards were paying close attention quicker, I had even heard from somebody, I won't mention names, who was good friends with somebody on the Silicon Valley Bank. And they said, well, we talked to the CFO there, but he said it really wasn't our business to go in that deep. And I'm just thinking, What kind of lame board member are you? If you ask a question, you don't get answered. That should be a red flag. So I don't have— sure, if all the dealers had come to us and asked for their money back, we couldn't have done anything about it either. But there's just a lot of folks that just weren't acting promptly on things that they could have seen.

Right. Where does the, uh, because your, your history and your experience in '08, and we had talked to somebody earlier about how when you, when you deal with somebody with experience, it helps them in the future. Like, I didn't put two and two together about how growing from $1 to $6 billion during the COVID years, like, where does the '08 crisis and your experience there and managing that, that fiasco come into play? Because, you know, You have to have immense leadership skills and fortitude just to be able to weather that storm, but not just weather the storm, but actually succeed and grow.

Well, I have— I like to say I'm passionate about financial stability. And so, so for me, growth is always about going at the same pace that you can grow your infrastructure, including your risk functions and your fraud management functions and everything like that. That. So we really did have to show a large uplift in, you know, what we could do. We were going digital, and that adds more layers to risk of what money is moving in and out. We were, um, we— so we basically had to show a much broader governance. My board risk committee when I got there was more of just a credit risk committee. It was not a full enterprise risk management view of the world. And so we had to build that out because if we didn't have those things while we were growing that fast, the regulators would've come in and, you know, given us a lot of kind feedback that we probably, you know, in the form of MRAs and other things that we would've had to clear in order to keep growing. And if they do too much of that, that can actually turn off your ability to access brokered CDs. So, you know, I think it really helped that me and a number of the others came in from the banking industry knowing what is expected of a bank when you're getting closer to $10 billion and started communicating how we had to build that early. And so, you know, I have confidence that it was built alongside with our growth. And, you know, I think, there was, you know, there was a lot of positive momentum across the enterprise. So I think that the growth path is the fun path. And so it's just how do you, you know, how can you really focus on making sure you're doing that in an area that's your core competency and, you know, balancing the governance with it?

You just said something that is incredibly insightful to me is the expectations of a bank at $10 billion. Yeah, I would think $1 billion would be something fairly— that's, you know, that's a big threshold.

We actually, when I had come in, they had already crossed the threshold of the billion, and you have to put in, you know, think of SOX controls, well, they have fiduciary controls. And so that was already one layer, but then usually a bank can have another 10 years before they have to think about the next layer., but we have to do that in a compressed period.

Yeah, because that, when we led this conversation with infrastructure, I would just assume that any enterprise that has $1 billion under management in their sock drawer, under their mattress, whatever, would already have that infrastructure in place. And then for you to come in and say, hey, we need to, you know, actually put more infrastructure, required of us. For a layman like myself, I'm like, that scares the crap out of me that an institution that big doesn't already have that in place.

Yeah, I mean, it was commensurate with the risk. So, you know, you think about a lot of people, you know, we had sales teams that would go to the dealership and sign paperwork. You know, I mean, there was not as much wrong that could occur than when you had a lot of things digital and, you know, that we did $100 million in commercial real estate loans with, you know, one big public dealer group. And so just— I'm sorry, million. I wish. No. So, you know, I think the— it was, you know, it was in the fledgling stage. And it's not surprising. You can talk to lots of community banks, lots of credit unions on that size that are Yeah, you know, well.

I guess it makes sense because one of the, one of the things that I probably say in every podcast is, is like, what I love about these conversations is, is my problems are the same as everybody else's problems. It's just where's the comma? So it's like, there's times when I look at my books, I'm like, how the hell did we make that much money and none of it's in my pocket? You know? And then you see other enterprises that also have those similar problems. Yeah, hopefully not the same, but it's just different commas.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't actually brag on the Toyota Bank earnings quite yet because, because of that growth we had to do and scaling, you know, we had to do the things for what will pay out when we get even more of the asset funds. So we weren't leading the way, you know, against our peers in that metric yet, but it's set up to do so.

So where does, where does being an academic come into play with being, you know, a CEO?

Well, yeah, I don't know academic or policy wonk. I do I love learning for learning's sake. And so I think just natural curiosity is a wonderful thing. And so, you know, for me, you know, folks will say, well, you know, what do you do for enjoyment? And like, I'll pull out the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in the morning just to read all the headlines and tick and tie. And not that I need to want to get taken off by things or get too focused on the politics of things. But I just love to see trends. And, you know, I think that helped me when I switched over from the military just in the corporate world because, you know, I was starting out a little bit older. So, you know, just catching up on what deals were going on. And then it was really fun to be in the center of like a lot of the articles during '08, all the dealmaking that was going on, you know, just in the Treasury and, and seeing how those stories actually get into the newspapers and through the, you know, the back doors and everything like that.

For me, it's a— it's like a palate cleanser. Like, uh, we met at an event, uh, the World Affairs Council, where Liz Truss was speaking, and it was just happenstance that we ran into each other. But like, I look at those events as like palate cleansers from whether it be because I'm obviously in school right now or building a business or whatever. So those events for me are opportunities just to, just to learn. I mean, it's not like I can apply any of it. It's not— I'm not going to be the Prime Minister of the UK or yet. I don't know if that's even— it's unlikely. It's highly unlikely. Never say never, but that's pretty never.

Yeah.

But, uh, but it is a good palate cleanser. So I, I completely respect, you know, learning for learning's sake.

So you, you're an expert in fintech and technology within financial services, and, and I wonder what you think about the trends. I, uh, I bank with a large national bank because I like to be able to go anywhere in the country and have a card, and, and, you know, they have great apps and, you know, where I can bank on my phone, um, and They closed the two branches that are closest to me where I live here in Dallas. And I suspect that's not the end of that. And my children, my daughters, hardly children, you know, in their 30s, they've never walked into a bank branch, right? It's all done on their phone. And I started a community bank and the whole thesis of a community bank was that we were going to touch our customers and be warm and friendly and they would want to bank with us because it's relationship banking. And I think that's I don't know how long that is sustainable.

Yeah, I mean, I think on the personal side, it's a little bit more difficult because, you know, you just think about anybody who can, you know, ask AI to get them the best deposit rates. And then, you know, the person who used to look at you and your peer down the street now has, you know, the matrix of everything in the country. And it doesn't matter much to them where they put it, except for the fact if you get, you know, the loyalty. So if you get the, you know, small and mid-sized businesses that are in your communities that aren't really being served by the large nationals or even some of the regionals, you know, you get a lot more loyalty. So at Toyota, it was easy to see the dealers who were all in, you know, they weren't gonna move their money if somebody gave them 15 more basis points at one point in time, 'cause they know we'd also be lending it to them later and that our rates would be good. And, you know, And so I think it's really important for all the smalls to have their niche and really make the most of that to be able to fight off the threats to the larger digital banking or fintechs. I mean, yeah, my kids will do the SoFi and things like that just because it's easier and intuitive and they like the app.

Well, it's— I will just say it's virtually impossible for me to get a human being on the phone at a bank, particularly a large national bank. They, you know, I think by design they want to push you to the app. Yeah. And because they don't want to have those branches on a corner where they're paying rent and they got human beings sitting at a desk. And I get that. You know, I just wonder how long that that community bank model, you know, small bank, high touch can last in the world. I wanna talk about JPMorgan Chase. You brokered a $6.9 billion student loan portfolio.

And am I right? You know, we, yeah, and that was another one that the decision to sell was already, you know, on the minds of people, you know, before I became the general counsel. But because of the, regulatory overlay, you had to almost think of, you know, who you're going to sell to from a diligence perspective, almost like, you know, you do with somebody that you were going to partner with for the next 10 years, because you could imagine either under the contracts or through regulatory consent orders or, you know, anything, it could reach back in if you sold it to somebody else who, you know, didn't have the right controls with this very vulnerable demographic of, you know, of our society.

So you had, I assume, a very small universe of prospective buyers.

We did. It was a small universe. And so we literally had, you know, the Nell Nats and the Naviance. And, and another thing, you know, government had— was wanting to deflect the student loan problem. And so, you know, they put a bullseye on the servicers. As if whether somebody could give you a mod was going to change the whole unaffordability of colleges. And so at that time, Navient was in the crosshairs, but they were clearly the best bidder and servicer out there at the time. And so we had a lot of people who were nervous at JPMorgan Chase to sell to them because they knew the regulators would give us a lot of grief. And so it was, So I love the fact that, you know, some of the best deal brokers, partners that I have are on the legal side or the risk side because we literally had to go through and show, you know, everything that they do with their servicing and how it's compliant, you know, in a way that you wouldn't think that you should have to, but in order to sell the transaction, go forward with something that clearly we needed to do because even though it was $6.9 billion, then it was going to be dwindling because we had stopped originations. And, you know, as anybody knows who has a dwindling portfolio, getting your outside servicers to continue to give you the same level of service when you're becoming less and less important is really difficult as well.

So I'm curious about your opinion on student loan debt, given your experience with it.

There.

Currently, the aggregate amount of student loan debt in the U.S. is $1.75 trillion, a staggering number. It's sort of in the same place that maybe the subprime debt was that torpedoed the U.S. economy in '08-'09. The default rate's been increasing, and, you know, there's been government and political arguments about forgiving debt and not forgiving debt. It seems that it's unsustainable. It seems like it's a ticking time bomb. Am I just a nervous Nellie, or do you share that opinion?

Well, yeah, I think of it as a problem, and I do think of, you know, any large problem is needing, you know, some adjustments to it over time. But some of the broad brushes of what government proposed is hard to say is the best path towards that end. I mean, of course, you talk about moral hazard. Now, somebody who worked the auto bailout during Treasury, talk about moral hazard, careful who's throwing the rock at glass houses. So, you know, I can't say that I have a policy being, you know, solution, even though I love being a policy wonk for that one, you know, other than, you know, people trying to stay ahead of it and not expecting that, you know, just if you think of people who are paying them back, always better to create the plan assuming that they stay out there for the whole time rather than to, play the odds and assume that it won't.

When you refer to the moral hazard, uh, you— the auto bailout and student loan— the moral hazard is that the government forgives debt to one group, um, uh, where another group has paid in, and it creates this conflict. Yeah, um, that is a moral hazard. Why should they have their debt forgiven?

I mean, I wonder if it wasn't all the Silicon Valley guys calling their congressmen about their uninsured deposits, if Silicon Valley Bank would have gotten bailed out so quick. I think there's a lot of political behind that one. You know, that wasn't a clear government step in and, you know, fund all the uninsured deposits.

And that in and of itself is a moral hazard, it seems, if the government is going to stand behind financial institutions who make bad decisions, put capital at risk, and then the shareholders— well, maybe the shareholders don't get bailed out, but the depositors, you know, get bailed out and You know, when you're too big to fail, it sort of widens the boundaries of reasonable decision-making, it seems.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was just a mid-sized bank. And the big banks ended up bearing most of the cost of that. Yeah. But you can't always put it back on the companies to pay for. Right.

I have to interrupt real quick because like I'm currently in a global economics class And like, I just finished the book In Fed We Trust.

Yeah.

And it's just like sitting here and I'm like, I'm just like listening because it's like, man, we just, we just talked about this or I just read about this or I just did this. I'm not versed enough to actually engage, but it is fun just to be on the sidelines.

I do have a fun story. I actually defended Chairman Powell and got burned, like literally got burned. So my husband and I were talking about, you know, the interest rate policies And, you know, we like to debate these things and it was summer. So, you know, you can, you know, be in summer attire and cooking. And I was arguing saying that he was actually doing a pretty darn decent job under the circumstances. And I took the hot tray from the oven and, you know, hit it against my stomach and I'm like, I got a burn from Jerome Powell. Sorry, I just had to go there.

It was fun. It was.

Fun.

So one thing that was interesting is like, you know, you're at the Treasury and you're helping with the General Motors, Chrysler. And is that your first foray into auto? And is that what got you into that trajectory of your career?

Yeah, yeah. You know, I like to say that life is just this winding or windy path, you know, and I always find it more fun if you take a path that nobody else took from here to there. So growing up in blue-collar Warren, Michigan, I knew lots and lots about auto. Most of my friends' parents worked at a plant. My dad was an immigrant who worked on cars in our backyard. You know, when I went over to Treasury, I thought that I would be going in working on the banks. I had been working with private equity and hedge funds at Fried Frank law firm for Goldman Sachs and knew something about having assets and doing side pockets and thinking of what would have to happen to try to get those assets off the bank balance sheets. But ironically, when I got there, they said, we, you know, loans, let's have you do the autos. And so, you know, and then later on I joked that everywhere I went people were throwing lots of money at Detroit. So, you know, that was $80 billion for Detroit. And then it went to JPMorgan Chase and they put $100 million to, you know, Detroit. So I think it's Detroit's benefits when I move around sometimes.

When you work with those types of numbers, does it ever numb you to how big that really is?

Yeah, but I mean, just like all politics is local, I mean, all deals are hard. I mean, you know, like the same thing that, you know, it takes to do a buyout for, you know, some lower middle market company is like super, you know, all these moving parts. And so, you know, just because something has lots more zeros behind it doesn't always mean it was it's that much more complicated. Or, yeah, so it was— I would sometimes feel a little bit funny because when I went back to a law firm in Michigan for a couple of years and people had put down on their deal sheets aggregate deals, I was just like, oh really? I mean, I know it was a lot of work.

It's kind of like a similar situation. We were at lunch a couple of months ago and Lane, Andy and I, and this woman walks by, Julie Silcock, and Lane's— Andy's introducing because Andy knows everybody and Lane's like, yeah, we do this. And Julie's like, oh, that's cute.

You don't always say cute.

Yeah, because she's, you know, 13 billion in transactions.

She's upstream from us.

That's a very much— that's a more eloquent way of saying that. She probably didn't say that, but that's.

The way Lane would pretty much say it. She's a straight shooter. I think she said you can work on those. And I won't use her exact term, but a descriptive term for small.

Deals.

And but, but it's— but her description of that reminded me of that situation.

Yeah. So I don't want to invite you into a political swamp, but you have an auto background and you know that area. And we now are looking at significant tariffs being placed on on automobiles coming in from foreign countries, and a lot of automobile production, or a portion of a lot of automobile production, is happening outside the U.S. And depending on whose data you believe and what assumptions you make, you could be talking about dramatic increases in the price of new cars for a period of time.

Yeah.

And so I'm not sure whether I want you to opine on tariffs and what that means, or whether you'd just like to talk about the impact that could have on the auto industry.

Yeah, I mean, obviously the auto industry is very cyclical and the dealers had a nice ride after COVID. Having a little bit of shortage is a good thing for profitability. And, you know, any time that supply and demand get out of whack, you want to make sure that people don't take advantage of that. I remember Toyota having our big dealer meetings and warning all of the dealers like, we really don't want to see you going way above MSRP. You know, we're here for you and we don't do that to you. Don't do it. And most of the good dealers don't do things like that. And so I am not for things that cause massive disruption to supply and demand in a way that economists have shown many, many a time is, is counterproductive to efficient markets. Uncertainty isn't good. Inefficiency isn't good. So I'm not for it.

Yeah, I'm not either. But they didn't ask my opinion.

No, me.

Neither. I can tell you that I can't imagine it will not have a meaningful impact on car sales. Yeah, I know that the auto dealers sort of lobbied the current administration to— and they gave them a month, you know, sort of deferral.

But yeah, and I just pull ahead demand.

And so yeah, right. So I don't know, uh, but it's, uh, it's a challenging environment, um, and there seems to be a lot of movement in what's going to happen and when it's going to happen. It does create that uncertainty. Markets don't like uncertainty, um, business owners don't like uncertainty. I talked to a private equity group recently that said they had a deal, um, uh, LOI, letter of intent, for the acquisition of a company. And they use steel in the manufacturing of their end product. And they couldn't, they couldn't make any determination what their cost of goods sold was going to be because there were so many variables, because the steel started over here and then went to Canada and then came to the U.S. And so multiple tariffs being placed upon it, you know, the cost was going to go up so significantly. And it blew up the deal. And we're— I'm starting to see M&A retreat because of that uncertainty. So I think legitimately transactions will, will not occur as a result of that. And so I hope that we can transition through this period. I hope that there's a quicker resolution, whatever the intent of the administration is, what they're trying to gain out of this. I hope that there's some resolution sooner rather than later. For the benefit of everyone.

Yeah, I mean, speaking of policy things, you know, when you, you know, when you get to foreign policy, I, you know, my dad, I said, was an immigrant. He's from Latvia. And so, you know, I went to see my Latvian family with my daughter this summer. She graduated UCLA, and it was before she went to work this fall. And, you know, they knew that Trump was coming in office, and, you know, they knew that he could open the door more for Russia to, you know, get more concessions from Ukraine. And they were very nervous about it. And so I have some Israeli friends who said they feel more safe. And I said, my Latvian and Baltic friends feel a lot less safe. And so, yeah, it's another complexity, you know, back in, In the Air Force, I actually got to go to Northern Italy to work with NATO during the Bosnia air operations. And I came back and I was working at the Pentagon. And I was wondering how this peace would get brokered. And I had this naive view at the time that maybe if we let Russia in a little bit, that they could actually help. And I even wrote and got my op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. And I looked at it now, I'm like, that is the stupidest idea to think they're going to be the ones who are breaking things up. And so I still, you know, given the fact that they trod all over Latvia and, you know, my grandmother who had to flee there pregnant with my dad was stuck in a refugee camp for 5 years and they killed a number of her family members or sent them off to camps. You know, I don't have a lot of trust in them, not just taking advantage of our brokering a truce for them.

Tell me about your decision to go to the Air Force Academy and be an officer in the Air Force. You were, you know, you're in high school. Yeah. What attracted you to the Air Force Academy?

Well, originally I wanted to be a ballerina. But my dad told me, you know, you are out of the house at 18 and you're completely on your own. So you'll probably be a starving ballerina. Does the Air Force have a ballerina team? You know, we started a dance team.

When I was there. Bixies or it.

Didn'T happen. We did do that. So I, you know, I started looking at college in Michigan, but then, you know, I realized I could get loans for college, but I had nothing to live on either. So I told my guidance counselor that I was going to just enlist and get the GI Bill and then go to college. He said, "You got great grades and you're in athletics and this or the other, just go to an academy." And that's when I said, "What's an academy?" And so fortunately, in little Warren, Michigan, we had some high-quality counselors. And so when I started reading about that, I'm like, "Great." You know, I love, math and science too, in addition to ballet. And leadership sounded great and the opportunities that they had. And so I am so thankful that that's how I started out. It was an amazing experience.

How long were you in the Air Force?

So after graduation, I was in until the year 2000. So from 1993 to 2000.

Okay. That experience inform your current roles? You took things you learned from your.

Military service to your current— Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I'd even start basic cadet training. I like to listen to leaders talk about leadership. And so, you know, they give you a little book, Contrails, and you have to memorize all the quotes. And so there's a quote from Major General Schofield to West Point in 1879. And, you know, it's the longest quote that you had to memorize. So you'd always have upperclassmen getting in your face, yelling at you, just making you nail that quote and, you know, trying to get you to go faster. But the funny thing is the quote itself is, you know, the discipline which makes soldiers reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. You know, and basically— While you're being treated in a harsh and tyrannical way. And at the end of it, you know, I won't go through it all, you know, but it basically is, you know, it's basically the commander that doesn't have respect for the subordinates is not going to instill anything but lack of respect for them as well. And so, you know, I always took that. So I've heard from some people that discipline is, you know, is what you do when you're You know, instruction and discipline are one area, but if you really, you know, can coach and teach, you know, you can be more motivational. So when I got to be an upperclassman and was working basic training, I even got the nickname Ma Skirmance. My last name was Skirmance with my Latvian last name, because, you know, I would be challenging them to go harder, But then I'd be like, no, and don't forget your sunscreen because I didn't want them all burnt and whiny later. And so I think I've always taken a— yeah, there is an approach and there's a way to do this leadership that looks like everybody else. But I'm going to do what feels kind of best here. And so, you know, I just spent a lot of time kind of, you know, and I shouldn't bin people because people evolve over time, but, you know, just seeing what you like and what you want to replicate and what you don't.

I had a slightly different reality because in Marine Corps boot camp, we learned the rifleman creed, which I don't know it by heart anymore, but it's basically, it's the thing from Full Metal Jacket, you know, Basically, it's like, without my rifle, I'm useless. Without me, my rifle is useless. Yeah. You know, and it's just like, but we would, we would literally be in our racks every night and just say it, you know, this is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Yeah.

You know, without me, I am useless. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just like, you know, not much leadership. It's just you and your gun go, you and your rifle go, go do some, go do some damage.

But they definitely teach you about the VUCA, you know, the uncertainty and ambiguity and fog of war. And so that's, you know, something that I think got normalized for me in the military, that crisis is normal. And, you know, so I like that now. We, you know, transition intelligence is probably one of the most important areas of intelligence, I think. And the military, I think, was really good at that.

You brought that up because I was reading about that and I wasn't sure what you meant by that. So I would love to dig into transition intelligence.

Yeah, lots of people will talk, obviously IQ and EQ on the social intelligence. I've heard there's a woman, Dana Zohar, that did SQ, spiritual intelligence. And she doesn't just mean for people who have a particular religion, but, you know, just a deeper, you know, something that you, pull from yourself that's deeper. And I've been just focused in a little bit more in different reading on transition intelligence. So I say I'm on my third career, I might be on the verge of a fourth depending on what my next is. And I think, and I always knew, you know, in the military, they had this view of Well, home is where the Air Force sends you. And when you get somewhere, you have to get up the learning curve as quickly as possible. And when you leave, you got to make sure everybody is ready so that anybody who was under you that maybe is taking over for you is ready. And so there's just— there's a grace about feeling like wherever you are, you're just there as a steward. And that you are gonna get smart fast and you're gonna help people and your job is to make yourself go away. And so I do think that there's just a freedom in thinking that way rather than an empire building and, you know, figuring out, you know, you see your founders that hold onto things or stay too long because they've kind of outlived whatever their original, goals were. So, yeah, I think that being able to remake yourself and move in a lot of different environments will be more and more important.

So when you say your job is to make yourself go away, can you.

Just dig into that? So I'm very much like, we all have a purpose and we all have an identity and we all bring that to a certain place. And a lot of times I've gone to a place and I think, oh, so I can make these things happened for the business, but then I really realized it was about the relationships at the time. And yeah, I feel more pride about like what changed in my heart or what changed in their heart, or, you know, and knowing that that's the eternal thing that would happen in that. So, for me, like there's this element of being there to be, you know, the mortar between Bricks, but if nobody ever put the name Mara on a brick, it doesn't matter. You were there to be the mortar for the building that was going on. And that purpose, whether it was people having character built or someplace that is going to grow capital and reinvest it in a lot of good purposes, the important thing more so than anybody whose name was in any of the C-suite at a given point in time.

One thing I wanted to chat about, because I would, I would say that you're probably like a fintech expert or a leader of that, that world. But one thing that blows my mind is the velocity of change in that sector. So how do you stay ahead of it, or is it even possible And do you just pick one little lane or do you keep a wide spectrum.

Of— Yeah, I, you know, my only lanes that right now have been in banking and auto in that area, which are kind of wide lanes. But, and so I think there are a lot of people who put out helpful communications like in the auto area. There's a bank's report and Cliff does this AutoVate. And so I got to go to that in the fall and speak at that with some others and just talk to other entrepreneurs in that area and investors in that area that may have started with one or two and now this nice platform company and they're seeing all this scale happen. DAS is one of the auto companies that does that. And then there's folks just on the smaller funds side growing. So it's, I think it's, you know, reading and talking to people who are doing the communications, doing the services, doing the investing in the area to, you know, just see what's going on and try to be useful to the sector.

Tell us about Sky Lynx.

Well, Sky Lynx is interestingly, it's owned by a disabled veteran. My husband is actually, he had a detached retina in the Air Force, not very disabled, but you know, when you go out, they check everything and they're like, well, you, you know, you qualify. So he was using it for FAA, doing his contracting through that firm to the FAA. And now he's in with a different company. So I've flipped, and it employed both of my kids for a period of time while he was doing some of that. And now it's just me. So doing some of the consulting and speaking and coaching for, you know, in auto and banking.

And your clients are banks, some of them?

Yeah, I mean, just right now I've got just a couple of small ones 'cause I've been, you know, when we were talking about preferment, so I spent a little bit of time between my Toyota and then ramping this up.

So, got it. One thing we haven't talked about yet is Harvard Kennedy School. Yeah, in policy and the politics side of things, because like the going from Air Force Academy and then obviously being an officer and then going to Harvard, you know, politics, that makes sense to me. But then going from the politics world to auto, that's, that's a little different. But coming from the Treasury, And knowing the history, that makes sense. So like you were talking about that, your weave of going in and out of— when you zoom out, it makes sense. But what do you like most about that phase of your life in the either not Harvard specifically, but the politics side of your career?

Yeah, well, I liked it because I was like learning with super brilliant people. So I had strong interest in math and kind of graduated top of my class in ops research. And when I went to the Kennedy School, I got to do a course with Richard Zeckhauser, who's one of the preeminent scholars on decision analysis. And I got to go over to MIT to do, it wasn't Peter Singe, but it was one of his protégés who was doing systems dynamics. And so, you know, there were so many things where, you know, I had learned linear programming at the academy, but when I was there, I could see just a whole realm of different tools that people use, whether it was negotiations or supply chain planning. And, and then, you know, just seeing how you could get case studies we just— it was a much broader platform for doing in-depth case studies than we had at the Academy, which is more strictly math and sciences. And so the classmates that I had at the Kennedy School just brought a nice diversity of thought. And yeah, I really enjoyed it.

So you just said something that kind of blows my mind because When I think politics, I think relationships, I think kissing babies, I think shaking hands. But that strong math and analytic side of it, I mean, it's obvious when you say it and when you hear.

It, but like— not all of them took that part of the courses. I guess I knew a lot of different— yeah, they'd have a curriculum for the MPPs where everybody had to get a dabbling in it. Because I think they know that especially if you started out on the nonprofit side, you could start out a little bit more on the softer side and, you know, they just would show to really be effective how you bring data to bear and really help convince people with more of the hard facts rather than just the soft arguments, which, you know, a lot of the times you'll just be talking to. The people who are already in the choir if you, if you don't bring.

More facts to it. Have you ever thought or considered about going into politics?

I'm not a good enough schmoozer.

I don't know if that's true because like that's one of the things that, that I, I recognize with you is like, you know, CEO, multi-billion dollar corporations, etc., all this experience, but it's just like, but you're just super nice, you know. You just come off as super sweet and nice, and I don't know if.

That'S a negative work today. What about— you can't be super sweet and nice in politics, you know that.

But that— well, I guess you're right. But, but it— but I just see that and I'm like, oh, you're just likable. So I— but, and then from my point of view when it comes to politics, because we're, you know, we're talking about Douglas, it's just that the eye-to-eye being likable aspect of that. And, and maybe that just shows my naiveness when it comes to that world.

Yeah, I mean, I wish politics was more about the debate. I mean, you used to be able to have people on both sides debate, you know, and go over and, you know, have a drink. And I always— I've moved around a lot, and I always love taking the, you know, kind of devil's advocate to whatever side I think people are just in their echo chamber on, because, you know, it just makes— you know, I say we had like this big tapestry, and you hear a lot about like you know, what makes America great. And I think it is appreciation for that tapestry, and it is appreciation for differences and respect for people. And if we have politicians that don't respect people, you know, there's consequences. I like— one of my classmates at the Kennedy School was Mark Esper. He was a sec def for Trump. He didn't feel respected when he left. And another person, you know, that I really admire, I got mentored by Jimmy Lee, You know, he did the GMIPO with us when I was on the treasury side. He's the, you know, quintessential JPMorgan deal guy. In, you know, in 2015, he told me at the beginning of the year that they didn't want to do deals with, you know, a certain person by the name of Trump because, you know, they generally didn't— he didn't really back what he promised. And so when I see people that I respected like Jimmy Lee and Mark Esper say that they're big boys, they've played with a lot of folks and there's a trust there, then I respect that a lot. So, I just wish we had more politicians that respected people and respected the advisors that they had to be skilled and actually bring thoughtful recommendations to them.

Well, I think it also is just having respect for higher learning and actual— the point I'm trying to make, and it'll be very ineloquent, is I look at you, Air Force, Harvard, and Georgetown. We even talk about Georgetown. And it's like, oh, clearly you have a higher intellect of someone like me who is at North Texas. And that's not to put down myself or put down North Texas at all. It's just, it's just a different level of mindset. And I would highly— I would rather trust you with the '08 crisis, the 2020 COVID crisis, over someone like me. But I also recognize that, you know, I'm somewhat likable and I'm like, I shake hands and I kiss babies and people like me and, and maybe I could get elected.

Yeah.

You know, I probably shouldn't air this part if I do want to air, but, you know, but if I ever wanted to run for office, maybe I would win. Yeah. But is that fair to the public when you have someone who's so much.

More— I don't think people really care about elitist universities that much anymore. I think they should. I, I don't think they do. So you can just— that's the point. Don't worry about that one.

But that's what I'm saying is like, I think they should. Like, and not because the elitist aspect of it, but it's just like the level of intellect I think matters. Now I also think the level of integrity matters. Yeah. And just because you did go to those Ivy Leagues doesn't mean you're a good person. Yeah. So I would wager my good person against somebody like that all day long. But, you know, I do think, you know, at this table, the two of you are way smarter than me.

You could talk about a bunch of other things, including, you know, how to do marketing, go-to-market strategies and sales strategies that you just throw me off on. So, you know, it's a topic.

I understand. And it's like, it's funny because like I'll talk like that and people will be like, Brian, stop putting yourself down. Trust me, I'm very confident, but I also am aware that you're absolutely right. Like, if we're talking about mergers and acquisitions, boom. Auto finance, boom. You know, exposure on video, maybe I.

Can help you out. Yeah. So the political environment today is just so toxic. And we're on the campus of old Parkland, which is Harlan Crow's creation. And he was one of the leaders in the No Labels Party. I like that. Yes. And had privilege of going to his and Kathy's home, and Joe Lieberman was there and others. And I look at the Joe Liebermans and the John McCains, those sorts of statesmen who would walk across the aisle and communicate with each other. And even though they may have very strong disagreements, there was that respect. And we miss that in politics today, and it's very disappointing. I hope we can find a way to get to a place where there is dialogue and there is respect. And the Labels wasn't able to field a ticket. And I don't know whether it'll be relevant going forward, but the two-party system, certainly from my seat, has failed us miserably for a period of time now. And I hope that we can— I'd like to see more qualified people, people that I think are more capable and qualified to run government running for office.

Yeah, I just realized that if I ever do run for office, I'm going to have to edit out that section. Or maybe I just lean into the authenticity.

There you go. That's right. I mean, I like— unlike Romney, where he's like, what could you have done? I could have tried harder. You got to have something a little raw.

So one thing with you that I think you lean into a lot is this— so many careers. Like, I had my Air Force career, my legal career, my politics career, my auto and banking career.

What's next? You know, I have, you know, I do believe that there's this bit of this cloud that goes before me and I have to figure out where it is. And usually it's not until like right before I'm supposed to jump that I know where that cloud has gone to. So I don't know.

Wherever the wind blows?

No, no, this is the God cloud. It's very planned. I just don't know what it means yet.

So where is faith in business for you?

How is that? Yeah. I think there's a lot of alignment. I've always admired people who brought their faith into the public square. You know, there's people who wrote all kinds of books, Bowling Alone, and, you know, other things that just made me realize that leaving that part of who I am out is giving somebody an authentic view of who I am. And so, you know, I've tried to always have the two more integrated. You know, I'm part of a nonprofit, I'm on the board for Forward. And so there's a lot of professional women of faith who connect to help, you know, grow and network and read the Bible and, you know, just try to figure out what it means to us. I know there's a lot of men's groups that do that, and you know, some integrated groups that do that. And you know, and I know there's the skeptics. I told my daughter, I'm like, I've got the business Bible. She's like, oh, there's no such thing. The two do not go together. Like, well, you know, there's— the Bible says a lot about money and how to use it and how to steward things. And so, you know, I think it's wonderful when you can respect diversity and respect that, of course, you know, everyone's not going to have your religion, but they can listen to where you're coming from and you can listen to, you know, where they're coming from. And, you know, hopefully just have a richer dialogue. And that was another thing I appreciated about Toyota. They did have a Toyota Christian Fellowship as one of their business resource groups to, you know, enable that dialogue.

So you spoke about authenticity. How far— where is that line of authenticity? Like, like, because that's one of the things that I struggle with currently is how much transparency. Because I, because I— for context, I come from like the single-family real estate world where there's a lot— it's a very guru space where people, they'll buy one or two houses and they go sell a course online. You know, they get on the stages. So I have this this, this bias that everybody you meet is full of, full of crud. You know, out of respect for you, I'll say crud. If somebody else, I'd probably say something else. But like, so I'm always like, I lead with that where it's like, and I'm never disrespectful, but like, you're not going to impress me. But because of that, I'm overly like transparent, like in almost the point where people think like, Ryan, are you okay? I'm like, no, I'm just being me. Yeah, but I've recently learned it's like, hey, there's— you can be authentic without sharing too much. So it's like, where is the line for you when it comes to being strategically confident and, and, you know, strategically authentic, if you.

Understand? Yeah. Um, you know, I think I haven't had too many people counsel me to share less. Um, You know, but I do think, you know, I've had political consequences for sharing too much. You know, interestingly, my first mentor when I was at a law firm, you know, like we would do things and his wife was like, gosh, I don't think I've ever met like a smart Republican Christian in my life. You know, I'm like, oh, I know you all think that, but you know, you said that. It kind of hurts. But, you know, I mean, just there's a lot of kind of background noise to assuming somebody's short-sighted if they're just a lot different from you. But, you know, the opposite is like T. Duckett, who's the head of TIAA, and she was, you know, my boss at JPMorgan. You know, she would come into any town hall and list like all kinds of things and have everybody like, you know, start, you know, or stand up when you have something that you share with her and you realize, you know, and she did it because, you know, she'd probably have a bunch of people who'd be like, oh, this Black female executive, I don't have anything in common with her. And everyone's standing, you know, after like 5 things she mentions. And, and so, you know, I think it's— I don't know, I just, I like to know more things. And I'm not really usually turned off if it's something I don't connect with. But if it's something that's more real to you and I do connect with it, I— we're going to hit it off that much faster. So why not share?

Yeah, for me, it's— if we're talking about politics, we're talking about religion, we're talking about everything, it's— you have this giant bucket which is yourself. And if you're going to let less than 1% of your personality, like, affect somebody else, or, or 1% of somebody else's personality affect you, like, that says more about you than them, at least in my mentality, you know, because I think you're absolutely right. Like, whether— it doesn't matter what religion you are, or as long as you're a good person, you know. Like, some of the best people I've ever met was when I lived overseas in Dubai and Doha. And, you know, obviously it's a Muslim country, and I think perspective matters of getting in a different location and seeing other people and how they live and whatnot. Now they have their problems as well. But as far as the individual person, you know, I think good people shines through versus, you know, maybe not so good people. Well, I'd like to get into, as we, as we get towards the end here, you know, strategic transformations in complex financial institutions. You know, that's something that was listed in your bio. You know, for the less educated, that's like several really complex words next to each other. Like, let's dig into that. Like, what does that mean for you?

So I'm not in consulting, but one thing I did when I was at JPMorgan was, you know, we got brought in when they were looking to take what was kind of run like a subsidiary, little finance company, auto finance, you know, and bring it into the larger enterprise and think about, you know, what you could do when you take all the consumer functions and you put them together and you say, if I was going to create this from scratch, what would it look like? And so, you know, there can be a lot of questions of, you know, where can you see synergies, where can you create a common group to, you know, do a function that can cover multiple products. And that's for a larger organization. You know, some of the low-hanging fruit from if, you know, maybe you had a number of acquisitions and you haven't done that type of, you know, work to rethink. I mean, a lot of times when you're doing those, you're planning to do some of those efficiencies, but, you know, really kind of getting down to the nuts and bolts of those type of efforts are one thing. You know, other ones are, I would say, working with smaller companies that are, that have a really great technology and they've got one use case for it, but they're trying to kind of build out another use case that, you know, and as I think a lot of people know is, you know, the one that you started with might not be the application of how it's going to really hit and land. And so, you know, when you've been in, for instance, the auto finance or dealership ecosystem, there's a lot of people trying to sell into that one and, you know, helping them to, you know, ask questions about whether it's meeting that need, you know, especially in a place that's as fragmented as that. It's harder to scale in that industry.

Than some of the others. In terms of continuing education and whatnot, what book, business books have you been reading, or would you recommend, um, just.

In general? Um, you know, I had a little bit of time between here and my Harvard networking one tonight. I should, I should give you my copy. The Beautiful Business by Stephen Morse is— I love this one. Um, you know, he's like a zealot too and a person with tons of peace. Um, so, and I love podcasts. I was just listening yesterday to one that featured Jim Wilson, and he had written a book, Battle Cry, and it talks about— he's one of those guys who had a Detroit upbringing and helps coach young men who are kids that didn't have dads. And I had seen a lot in Warren, Michigan. I mean, literally, I think I had one person I knew that had a role model dad. M&M was 2 miles down the street from us. It wasn't like apple pie being baked and peaceful families and stuff like that. I recognize a lot of people come into the world with trauma or dad hurt, or anything. And so I think just looking at people who are serving that niche, and also just thinking about when you're in the workplace working with some younger people, like being aware that not everybody's coming in as a complete person. I think you realize that when you're starting out in the Marines, and you could see that a little bit more raw when people are trying to take you down to your kind of break you, but like most people come in all sheened up and there's so much loneliness and brokenness. And if you can have more, especially men normalizing talking about it, I think that's just fabulous. So those are a couple ideas.

That's amazing. How involved with the Harvard alumni group are you here?

I was a little bit more busy until recently, so I'm actually just now getting a little bit more involved with it.

So going there tonight. That's one of the things that at least I have aspirations to do is after I finish SMU is like, and again, I haven't fully researched it, but like, and I don't even know it's valuable. I'm sure it is. But like the executive education track ironically is more expensive than the SMU MBA track. But it, it's just, it's like a 3-year program, like 2 weeks a year. So I have aspirations for that just so I can— but maybe that's just my own ego and, and my inadequacies of like, oh, it's North Texas.

Oh, you know, SMU is great.

I agree. SMU is great. But I think maybe it's just like now that I've got a taste of like the higher education, maybe I want more. Yeah.

So But I was a proud Boston University alum. I have to say, I get a little intimidated when I'm with somebody from MIT and Harvard, right? Yeah. So we've had a few Harvard, MIT, and MIT today.

Yeah. So, yeah, because Victor was Harvard as well. And MIT.

And Stanford. And Stanford.

Yeah.

So no matter how— where you are, there's always something higher, right? So, but Harvard certainly has a cachet.

That's, that's one of those lessons that I learned. Do you know what? Randy Zuckerberg, you know her? No. It's Mark Zuckerberg's sister. And she was Facebook's first marketer. And I was in her mastermind in 2019. And so like once a month to drive— or not driving— fly up to New York. And, and she said something that out of the whole experience of being in her mastermind, this is the one thing that stuck the most is like, when she was talking about imposter syndrome. And I'm like, okay, here's this lady who's got more money than everybody I've ever known put together, and she suffers from imposter syndrome. I have got nothing to worry about. There's no chance in whatever that I'm ever going to be able to compete with that. And it's not a, it's not a cutdown to me at all. It's just like, it's just that awareness that like it's one of those things that everybody suffers from. So if you've got this person who's already at the top of the mountain talking about it, well, I'm okay. We'll be all right. Do you ever suffer.

From that? Yeah. You know, I read something recently that said, I don't think telling— coaching everybody that they have to have confidence at all times is the best thing. I think it's easier to focus on, like, if you're driven by results that you see and you want, like, and you don't let things get in the way, it doesn't matter if you have confidence or not, you're focused.

Do you think that's the military aspect, mission accomplishment?

I don't know. But yeah, so, you know, for me, it's not just sitting around feeling confident, it's just, I feel like there's a purpose and I'm here to do it.

Yeah. So as we wrap up, is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to tackle real quick?

Yeah, I mean, this year, I have the word of abundance, and most people think that this is, that means I'm expecting like some big windfall or something, but I feel like I already have all that I need. So I'm just hoping that people move on with abundance and find ways that we can connect. So if anyone hears this and has something to connect on, happy to do so. And yeah, I'll lead, you know, we were just talking a little bit of lament of different things in the world. I'd lead with like, John 16:33, where Jesus says, you know, you're going to have troubles, take courage, I've overcome the world. So take courage, my friends.

I read that your word this year is abundance. I read last year's word, but I've forgotten it already.

Shed, that was more painful.

Yeah, that was a little more painful. I like abundance, you pivoted. And I'm thankful, we have our youngest daughter's getting married in 2 weeks. And our oldest daughter is having her first child, our first grandchild in June. So abundance. I'm getting a son-in-law that I love, a grandchild. You know, what an exciting period of time.

Yeah, my son got married in our house the day after Christmas to Bree, our wonderful daughter-in-law, and they just moved back. They drove here yesterday. And so he starts at Santander Bank on Monday.

Saturday. Nice. And it's nice to be in proximity to your family, um, uh, and that's why we're in Dallas. We moved to Dallas because we have a daughter here and a daughter in Denver, and we were living several states away, and it brings great joy to us to be in proximity to our children.

We get to go visit my daughter Micah in Montana, so she's in a beautiful place a little further away.

Yeah, great state. Well, thank you, Mara, for sharing your time with us today. You have a fascinating background Thanks for your military service to our country. And we look forward to seeing when you figure out what cloud, where that cloud is you're going to land on and what that means, to seeing where that takes you.

And expect a tax next time I'm.

Trying to buy a car. Hey, is this a good rate? Sounds good. All right. Thanks.