Voice of Experience: Pamela Click, Director and Senior Development Manager, TIAA-CREF

“You will work hard, but it will be rewarding,” says Pam Click of a career in technology. Now a senior manager and respected technologist at TIAA-CREF, Click’s hard work has finally paid off.

Her path to her current position at TIAA-CREF was somewhat circuitous: After earning a degree in accounting, Click started her career as a management consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), working with various clients in industries as diverse as consumer products, utilities and oil and gas.

“This work was very foundational for me,” Click says. “It set the tone and pace for my future.” As one of the first women managers in the Dallas office, and subsequently the first woman manager and Associate Partner in the Charlotte, N.C., office, Click says she was on the forefront of the male-dominated industry. “At that time, consulting was still very much a man’s world.”

Although Click enjoyed the challenging work and helping to break the stereotype of a typical consultant, she left the consulting industry to move away from the grueling travel schedule. “I left consulting to get off planes…but quickly found myself in a Global Role with Oracle…So much for limiting travel” she says, although she is quick to add that her time there was an important part of her career growth. At Oracle, Click’s role was to sell consulting services to the top 200 strategic accounts. “That’s where I learned about quarterly financial pressure and the importance of being very number oriented,” she says.

After her time at Oracle, Click entered the financial services industry in Charlotte, where she spent time at Bank of America and Ally Financial before joining TIAA-CREF a year and a half ago. As part of TIAA-CREF’s Corporate Systems and Emerging Businesses Technology group, she runs the Finance, Actuarial and Corporate Functions Technology (FACT). She also is responsible for financial crimes prevention technologies.

Click’s diverse breadth of experiences helped set her up for success in her current role. Her accounting background has been crucial in overseeing financial crimes prevention technologies, as it allows her to look at transactions from the bank or on the web and make sure there are safeguards in place to oversee compliance, risk and fraud detection.

Also helpful in her current role is Click’s interest in the emerging field of data governance and data management. “You could call me a data geek,” she says, noting that she is jumping in with both feet to improve standards for data management with her partners in the business and from across the enterprise. She says it’s vital that companies have good data governance – to see where the core data came from, where it’s going and who has manipulated it – to ensure its integrity.

Mentoring for the Future

Aside from her passion for data, Click is also an avid supporter of mentoring other professionals. Over the years, Click has maintained her robust network of former colleagues, and as she considers her career, she is most proud of how she’s been able to mentor others and build and develop their careers. She says that even though she’s moved on, she participates in alumni sessions at Accenture and conferences at Oracle, and is pleased to see the careers that her former employees and colleagues have created. “I knew they were great then, but it’s rewarding to realize that other people think they’re great too, as they continue to advance in their careers.”

When Click returns to the alumni sessions she remembers that consulting is a challenging industry, especially because of the travel. “You build your life around being on the road, which is exciting when you’re young and constantly learning about new industries and business issues. But at some point, most people, both women and men, want to start a family and build roots. That can be a challenge but if it’s something that you love, then you figure out how to overcome the drawbacks.”

For young women entering the industry, she advises them to realize that the work will be challenging, but very rewarding. “This work has what I call a short satisfaction cycle. When you are helping others use and work with technology, you get to see right away what you have accomplished and how you have helped make their jobs easier – you fixed this issue or solved that problem.”

For women she considers her peers, she mentions that it’s important to look outward and mentor others. “We have to remember that we need to bring others along,” she says. “It’s a great career path and we have to spread the word.”

Helping her along her journey have been colleagues at a variety of companies. One in particular stands out, who currently works at Ally but had been a colleague at Andersen. “We stay in touch and continue to talk about careers and development goals. At one point we both had small kids, then maturing children and now we’re still collaborating and sharing experiences on coping with our empty nests.”

Click takes great pride in her two “terrific daughters;” one who has followed in her footsteps working in the financial services industry after graduating from UNC Charlotte; and the other who is a sophomore at NC State. She loves to travel and has passed on the bug to her daughters, especially her younger daughter with whom she recently travelled to Italy and Turks and Caicos.

Engaging Women throughout the Firm

Click’s career progression has helped her become more appreciative of the value of teamwork and how everyone can be a contributor. The culture at Andersen and Oracle encouraged people to do everything themselves, with lots of Type A personalities. At TIAA-CREF, she’s realized it’s important to find, and flame, the spark in others and to value the contributions that everyone is making.

“I always set very high expectations for myself, and so I look for that in others too. But I also know it’s important to value the diversity of thought that comes from collaborating with others from varying backgrounds.”

Currently, Click is excited about her involvement in IT Women’s Council, a diversity and inclusion initiative launched at TIAA-CREF last year that focuses on mentoring and development. “We are working to create interest in technology from high school and college-aged women – when you look at graduation rates, you realize there are not as many women in technology as there could be, and we are trying to determine what the barriers are and contributing factors that are keeping them away.”

As part of her work with the IT Women’s Council, Click leads the Engage Team, which is designed to increase engagement of women across the firm. She coordinates a monthly meeting which serves as a forum to promote knowledge-sharing of what is happening across IT. “It’s important that we collaborate so our work isn’t siloed,” she says. “We need to build connections and network with people who work in different parts of IT to understand these other areas and how skills, tools and best practices might transfer.”

By Cathie Ericson