Meet Kathleen Hebert Price

We sat down with Kathleen Hebert Price, one of our 2024 keynote speakers, for a Q&A about her background in financial services and what she's up to today. 

Get to know Kathleen Hebert Price, Sustainability Risk Executive at Ally Financial. She'll be joining us at Women in Consumer Finance 2024 as our closing keynote speaker.

Q: Could you tell me a bit about yourself and your career trajectory thus far? 

A: Sure. I have been a longtime banker, longer than I care to admit. I spent most of my career at Bank of America in lots of different roles. Then, I came to Ally about seven years ago, in compliance originally, and then created the role I'm in now, which is really focused on climate and climate preparedness and risk. 

Q: Is that something that's always been of interest to you? How did that transition come about? 

A: I've always been a nature gal. I've really been passionate about nature, but I like to say really passionate and also really ignorant. So about four years ago now, I went back to school at night to get a master's in sustainability. And I will finish with that, God willing, at the end of this year. So it was lots of passion, but I didn't know much, and then, I recognized there really was a challenge. Banks have a unique role to play in the transition to a low carbon economy. So I started studying and reading, and then I was like, "I need to know more." So I went back to school. 

It's been a real challenge being in school at night. I've got three kids. One has gone to college since I went back to school. Two are still at home. One is about to go to college in the fall. So there's a lot going on. 

Q: Do you have any magic secrets for managing all that? 

A: I have none, no. Give yourself grace, I think would be the answer to that. We are all doing the very best we can. We have to stop comparing ourselves to other people. I think we always look at other people and say, "Oh, they've got it all worked out." And you don't know that. We all have to figure out our own path and be comfortable with our path and how we manage our lives. 

Q: And did you say that you created this position at Ally? 

A: I did. I started talking internally in the summer of 2019 about climate change and saying, "Hey, I think we've got a gap. We've got to be doing more as a company in this area." In December of 2019, I finally talked to my Chief Risk Officer, who is now my boss. I said, "Hey, I'm here to talk about climate change." And he said, "You don't have to tell me anything." The night before I showed up in his office, he'd been at a conference, and the keynote speaker was a climate change evangelist who said, "If you're not focused on climate change, you'll be out of business in five years." 

That was at the end of 2019, and then we pitched the idea of a sustainability office in March of 2020. So, you can imagine that that got delayed a little bit to the summer of 2021. We opened this office and created this role on the risk team, and I took the role. 

Q: It's so great that you had someone who was on board right from the beginning. 

A: Yep, I'm very, very fortunate. He's been super supportive, and we've come a really long way in a short period of time. But it is interesting to me, when I talk about climate change, the differential of what people understand, and that's partly what my talk is going to be about. It can be very confusing. There's a lot of misinformation, and I really want to cut through that. So I think a lot of my job in this role, while it is risk management for the company, is also education of our employees and our stakeholders on the crux of the matter, what really is important in this transition.

This is the challenge of our time, and how we navigate it is critical. 

Q: Nature and sustainability have always, it seems, been a concern and a part of your life. How was it to bring that into your more professional life? 

A: For a long time, when my kids were small, I had a really sort of intensive career at Bank of America, and I worked a lot. I feel like I sort of forgot my passions or forgot my purpose. I think our purpose is set early on and it's really easy to get distracted from it or to move away from it. So, it's not so much that I discovered my purpose. I feel like I remembered my purpose. And once I got on this path, it became very clear to me that this is what I want to do.

So, I started pursuing the master's degree as a way to give myself credibility on something that I felt passionate about. And it's been very effective. I've loved that. I've loved the learning and getting a much more scientific basis for what I sort of felt and knew.

And it has been rewarding to know that everything that I did in my career before has really prepared me for this. I had sort of an odd career that bounced around, and I did a lot of different things. I know sometimes when I talk to young people, they're like, "Oh, this is my career path. And I'm going to do this. And I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this." And they think it's like a linear, direct path. And it is never that; it is always a squiggly line. And now, when I look back, I'm like, "There was a reason for that," because all these different things that I did have really helped me do what I'm doing now. It'd be very hard to do my job in climate if I didn't have experience in operations technology and capital markets. All these things that I have done in the past have really served me well in this role. 

I do sometimes feel like the dog that caught the bus because this is the first time that I really said, "This is the job that I want." And then I got it, and it was like, "Holy cow, this is really hard."  There's no blueprint for this. There's no roadmap. So it's a lot of getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, but it's very fulfilling. 

Q: Do you have any insights or advice that you would share with someone who's trying to find that kind of alignment?

A: I will say I came to Ally because the culture here is really something special, but I did not want to work in compliance. So when they called and said, "Hey, we think we have a role for you." I said, "Oh, what's that in?" And they said compliance. I said," Do you have anything else?" Because I really did not want to work in compliance. But if I hadn't, I wouldn't be where I am today because I had to learn that space. That role had me doing a lot of risk work, which I hadn't done before. And this role is really focused on risk.

You can learn something from every role, even if it's a role you hate. And also, being able to say, "I don't want to do this," is almost as important as saying, "What do I want to do?" I would just say don't spend too long there if it's soul-crushing. If you're really not enjoying it, it's a personal decision to step away from it, but there's always something you can learn. And I do think no matter what you're doing, it will serve you later if you think of it that way, as a learning experience.

I would also say it's all about the people. People don't leave jobs or companies; they leave people. If you work with good people, you can put up with a lot. Someone told me the best person to talk to when you're going to work for a new boss is their assistant. How do they treat their assistant? Then you'll have a much better sense of what kind of boss they'll be. 

Hear much more from Kathleen at WCF 2024, where she'll close out our three days in Fort Worth with an unforgettable keynote speech. Get your ticket here.