Leadership Spotlight

As part of our leadership spotlight series, we’re sitting down with leaders across Council Advisors—including our colleagues at SSA & Company, The Miles Group (TMG), and High Lantern Group—to share insights on leadership, execution, and what it takes to drive results in today’s business environment.

What has changed most in how leaders think about risk in the last five years?

It has become a first-line, front-office conversation from day one of any transformation. In the past, risk professionals often sat in the second line and were consulted after requirements were built. Now, they are much more likely to be at the table alongside leadership from the start.

Leaders are also far more attuned to interconnected risk. They routinely probe how a change in one function, such as onboarding or payments, might cascade into others such as compliance, data, or customer experience.

There is much less appetite for “build it now, control it later.” Regulators, boards, and auditors expect controls to be designed in parallel with the operating model rather than bolted on afterward. That mindset has also expanded beyond risk teams. Employees broadly, and transformation professionals specifically, need to understand what makes a control complete so it can be built correctly from the outset.

Where do organizations most often underestimate the complexity of modernizing operations while meeting evolving regulatory expectations?

While technology gets the lion’s share of attention, investment often lags on the people and process side. Organizations plan system migrations in great detail but underinvest in how roles, decision rights, and controls need to change alongside them. Regulators recognize this too, and it is often where organizations struggle to adopt the changes needed for a successful transformation.

Organizations also tend to underestimate the transition period, when legacy and new processes operate in parallel. That interim state frequently presents the greatest regulatory exposure.

Finally, there is also a tendency to assume regulatory expectations will remain static over a multi-year program, when in practice they often evolve midstream. Target operating models have to be built to flex as those expectations change.

What core design principles matter most when setting up a durable enterprise controls/regulatory operations framework?

A durable framework starts with clear ownership. Every control needs an individual, named, accountable owner. It also needs to be proportional, because not every process requires the same level of control, and over-engineering can breed workarounds.

Auditability should be built into the process, too. If evidence that a control is operating is not produced naturally through the way the work gets done, people will not produce it consistently. And the framework has to be designed for change from the start so it can absorb new products, regulations, and organizational shifts without quickly becoming obsolete.

What drew you to SSA & Company, and what felt different about the firm’s approach to transformation?

After 25+ years inside large, top-tier financial institutions, I wanted to work with a firm that treats transformation as something delivered in partnership with clients, rather than handed to them.

SSA’s model of smaller, senior-led teams that stay on through execution rather than handing off after strategy reflected how I believe this work actually gets done inside organizations. The firm’s ability to meet clients at the highest levels of sophistication, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all playbook, was just as compelling.

What advice would you give senior teams trying to avoid “initiative fatigue” in their transformation programs?

Senior teams have to prioritize and streamline ruthlessly. A shorter list of completed initiatives beats a long list of items in progress. The same principle that applies to controls applies here. Overloading a program breeds disengagement, just as overloading a process breeds workarounds.

It is also important to make progress visible early and often. Teams disengage when they cannot see tangible forward movement, which is why a thorough communications plan is so critical. People need visibility into what’s been completed, what is ahead, what’s changed, and why. They stay engaged when they understand the trajectory as well as the progress already made.

Every initiative should tie back to a small number of enterprise priorities so people understand why it matters and what they are being asked to do. At the same time, senior teams need to protect the people doing the work. Sustained pace requires sustained capacity, which means building in real recovery time and making sure people actually take time off.

Early wins matter too, but they need to be sustainable rather than isolated moments of momentum. Recognition should be paired with clear ownership and accountability so that success carries through into continued responsibility.