Today I continued to delve deeper into the world of SAS finance. The first thing I went to was a meeting about meetings. They were basically scheduling meetings for the future. It also had something to do with this thing called “change management” which is all about this system overhaul that the department is going through.
Then I met Mr. Jeff Eakes who is head of Treasury at SAS and also a member of Cary Academy’s board of directors. SAS has around 60 branches world wide and the treasury’s job is to consolidate all the different kinds of currencies that are brought in. HQ used to force their international branches to exchange their revenue into USD, but they stopped doing that so now HQ receives a large portion of their revenue in foreign currency. Part of the treasury’s job is to exchange those currencies into USD at the most opportune time. Mr. Eakes said the exchange market is very volatile right now. I can’t imagine why.
Then I met with Tyler who is in charge of internal auditing. At first I thought I was in for a snoozer but this man loved his job. He spoke of it with a passion I didn’t think was possible for an auditor, and I learned a lot about the auditing process. They essentially first examine the flow of money, and then the numbers. We also discussed Taiwanese culture as his wife is Taiwanese.
Then I ate lunch with the college interns. That was fun. Matthew Cinoman was also in the T building cafeteria.
After lunch I met with some of the coolest people: the tax people. They are legitimately geniuses because their job is to essentially take the tax code and find every area SAS can save money. Ms. Kelly literally had Trump’s new tax code printed out and it was 7 inches high. She had read through most of it and was already devising new money saving schemes. The fact that she knew the tax code so well amazed me. We also discussed the difference between an S-corp and a C-corp.
Lastly, I met with the intercompany department which is charge of collecting royalties from SAS’s international branches. They had some of the coolest backgrounds as one went to college in Iran and one went to college in the Philippines.
Then I walked around SAS campus with the college interns for an hour. That was really fun, and I got to know them a lot better.
Overall, I’ve been amazed at the work these people do, but I’ve also really appreciated how interested they seem in me. They’ve asked a lot of questions about my passions, and have offered some great advice that will guide me into the future. All of these people have a ridiculous amount of life experience, and I’m just along for the ride.
