Julian
Senior Business Leader
Enterprise Risk Management
Opportunity Knocks
When his two-year overseas assignment with his previous employer’s corporate banking office in Santiago, Chile, ended, Julian decided to look for a new opportunity in his hometown of Miami. Though he originally planned to take six months off, a friend from high school who worked at Visa quickly approached Julian with a lead on an urgent opening at the company that the friend believed was “a perfect match” for Julian’s background.
After interviewing with several Visa team members and the CFO, Julian began a credit risk management assignment focused on developing procedures to support Visa’s Latin America and Caribbean region through the Y2K transition.
What followed was a unique career path, including the chance to build a regional treasury department, participate in the organizational restructuring of Visa’s various geographic divisions in preparation for the IPO and help establish a global enterprise risk management function — experiences that afforded him an opportunity to collaborate with colleagues, clients and other stakeholders on the ground in over 20 different countries.
“The continued possibilities for growth and development, along with tremendous managers, are what keep me here,” Julian notes. “Visa supported me in learning Portuguese, which significantly increased my effectiveness while working closely with Brazilian clients, joint venture partners and regulators.”
Poised for Continued Growth
After spending nine years in Visa’s Miami-based Latin America division, Julian moved to San Francisco to take a position in the Global Enterprise Risk Management group. Among his more recent projects was the chance to lead an impact analysis following the economic challenges that occurred in the financial markets in 2008, a time when many of the largest banks in the world were on the verge of collapse. The analysis examined how Visa’s various lines of business and functional areas were likely to be affected.
“The most impressive thing to come out of the analysis was the realization that even as the rest of the world’s economy is contracting, Visa remains poised for growth. When you step back and consider that the majority of the world’s monetary transactions are still by cash or check, you realize how much opportunity there is for Visa and its employees. It’s an exciting proposition.”
