Christa Steele: "SWIFT is so antiquated it needs to go"

1. Intro.
2. (1:35) - Start of interview.
3. (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.
4. (3:53) - Her breakdown of banks: large, regional and community banks. At each level there is a significant difference in corporate governance.
5. (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).
6. (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.
7. (14:08) - What's Balco Holdings and why she's excited about her new CEO role.
8. (17:27) - How she thinks about security in CA, the impact of COVID-19 on how people behave, plus tech and cybersecurity trends.
9. (19:15) - How boards and companies should approach cybersecurity threats: "I think you need the cybersecurity expertise in the C-suite."
10. (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."
11. (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."
12. (35:30) - Christa's parting thoughts for directors in the current environment:
    1. Directors should be asking about their own company version of their CPI index. Are they tracking what's happening internally?
    2. Take measures in case we enter a recession. What's the inventory? Receivables?
    3. Hybrid model (office-home). Where do we go from here?
13. (37:57) - Benefits of joining NACD. She's been affiliated with the NACD Northern California chapter since 2015 (she's currently the Vice-Chair of the chapter): "It has been wonderful for me." They have about 1,500 public company directors in their chapter. 50-60 speaking engagements on an annual basis. "Directors of 20 years ago vs. being a director today has dramatically shifted. It's all about staying current and educated." "I encourage directors to become NACD certified directors."
14. (39:23) - Christa's favorite books (applicable to her board work):
    1. AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, by Kai-Fu Lee (2018)
    2. Think Again, by Adam Grant (2021)
15. (40:25) - Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them? In the board context: "the mentors from which I've gained the most wisdom, are the ones that have been there and done that." "I've learned the finesse of how questions are asked and answered." "I've understood the boundaries that exist between directors and operators." "The mentors and people I admire the most are the ones that lead with humility, they have been humbled."
16. (41:45) - Are there any quotes you think of often, or live your life by? "The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know." Adam Grant from Think Again. The flipside of that is "if knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom."
17. (42:12) - An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves: "I wear Uggs slippers all year long."
18. (42:43) - The person she most admires ("relevant right now"): Margaret Thatcher, "I think that the Iron Lady's anti-communism stance right now is alive and well."

Christa Steele is the incoming CEO of BALCO Holdings, owner of Bay Alarm, Bay Alarm Medical, and BALCO Properties. She also serves as a public and private company board director.

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ 

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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License