Meet Catia

I grew up in Portugal, living and studying in Lisbon where I received my first degree in social and organizational psychology. I started my career in recruitment shortly after and then began pursuing my master's degree in human resources management. Upon completion of my master’s in 2011, I quickly began pursuit of my MBA. After graduating with my MBA in 2014, I moved with my now 10-year-old daughter to join my husband in the UK.

We settled in Manchester. It is a very green country, so we enjoy going to a park or doing outdoor activities. There are many educational and job opportunities in the UK (though I like Portuguese food better, to be quite honest), and I found my way to BNY Mellon’s human resources department in 2017.

I always imagined myself following an HR path, but I found a keen interest in operations and its international scope. As it happened, BNY Mellon’s human resources department was relocated to Romania, so I decided to apply to internal opportunities at the company. I have been working in the UK control room ever since. We oversee cash operations when it comes to funding and defunding CREST (a UK-based central securities depository). We monitor CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payments System), activity. We monitor several liquidity and system health dashboards, and we are highly involved in testing, incident management and reporting. In addition, we play a role in the money markets function executing the trades and payments on behalf of Corporate Treasury. My role is very market-oriented, fast-paced and client-driven.

In terms of technology, BNY Mellon is a place that likes to innovate. We are always working on better solutions to enable us to do a better job every day. The people that I've been working with throughout my career here are competent, helpful and always willing to give you a hand if you need it. If you are surrounded by the right people and if you have a good team, it feels less stressful and can be exciting at the same time. We also have plenty of employee resource groups that we can support or get involved with. Outside business as usual, there are plenty of opportunities for you to grow personally and professionally here.

I have been involved with various E/BRGs in my four years at BNY Mellon – the women in technology (WIT) sub-group of the Women's Initiatives Network (WIN), the working parents’ network, PRISM, some events with IMPACT and of course, GENEDGE. With GENEDGE, there was a purpose for me joining the program as I think it made me feel closer to my HR roots and previous mentoring experience. Once I saw it advertised, I thought it would be a unique experience not only to reverse the roles in that situation, but to also have the opportunity to work with a senior member of the executive team.

I was paired with Brian Ruane, who was a wonderful mentee. He taught me that every opinion is valued and that it is important to stay fresh and to have different viewpoints in order to make better decisions. It would be the highlight of my week every time that I got to speak or have a meeting with Brian. There are few occasions in our working life where we can really discuss corporate strategy, for example, and I got to do that. I was sharing my opinion and my personal view with a member of the executive committee. Brian taught me that being organized is key to having a successful career. And he also shared how important it is to take care of ourselves – both for us personally and to take care of other people.

For me, dancing is one way to do something for myself. I normally do salsa and tango on a regular basis – tango is harder than salsa! Apart from that, I really like to explore my surroundings, and I think that COVID-19 gave us the opportunity to do so. We have amazing places nearby, with parks, mountains and lakes to explore and make the whole family happy.