In the five years since her graduation from Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, Chantal Noble Haldorsen has made significant strides in both operations and financial management. Scoring a job at EMC Corporation directly out of college, she started out as an analyst working long hours in the company’s Hopkinton headquarters. The Daily Free Press spoke to Haldorsen about her role as one of EMC’s most prominent financial minds and as the vice president of the company’s Women’s Leadership Forum in New York.
The Daily Free Press: Can you tell us a little about your roles in the company and your experience with EMC?
Chantal Noble Haldorsen: I am an area finance manager, so I am a part of our financial services team. I cover the entire New Jersey area, which includes a lot of our large-scale, global accounts. I primarily try to come up with long-term strategy. It’s definitely a mix of things, from sales to finance to financial modeling. You have to do a lot of work both internally and externally.
FreeP: What has your experience been as a part of the Women’s Leadership Forum?
CNH: I am a part of the Women’s Leadership Forum. I’m currently the vice president. And we host a lot of networking events with the goal of empowering women and connecting them to others who are working in business. I started with EMC right out of college, and when I moved to New York, I really wanted to find a way to be involved. I joined the Women’s Leadership Forum as a way to meet people and network, especially in such a male-dominated field. I wanted to find a way to connect with something larger than myself, and the empowerment of women is very important to me.
FreeP: Can you tell me about your role in the Forum and in International Women’s Day?
I am in charge of a variety of things. I have actually kind of created my role within the Forum. We have various networking events and speakers, so I have been managing those events, reaching out to speakers and organizing the meetings. When I moved to New York, I felt pretty alone, very much like “the girl in the hallway,” and I wanted to change that. The Forum gave me an opportunity to build a network where I live and to make contacts with senior management. We also organize coaching events where we’ll have a younger person matched up with a senior management, in HR or sales or finance, and they can come with various questions. They get to meet people they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet otherwise, and a lot of great mentorships are formed for young women interested in business. It’s a pretty cool thing, it’s a lot of fun, and the Forum has really kicked it up in the past year. We now have over 150 members.
FreeP: How has being a woman impacted your career path?
I really feel like having gone to BU, and having to work so hard for absolutely everything you do in that school, taught me to be proactive. It was really the best preparation possible for the workplace. Moving onto my first job, my superiors would give me a small task, and I would realize that it was part of a bigger process that I thought was really broken, so instead of accepting that, I would come up with a new and better way of doing things. I would pitch it to management, and they would sort of let me run with it.
Within three years, I was managing the commission process for 1,400 new services. I was traveling internationally, and I was working with people all over the world only two to three years into my career. It was really incredible, and I think that coming from a background where I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for someone to tell me what to do helped me get to where I am now. I’m not afraid to speak up, and I think that people tend not to expect that from a female co-worker. There’s definitely a stigma there.
When I did move into the financial department from my original position as an analyst, I noticed a pretty stark difference. I work with maybe 100 sales reps, and of that, maybe three are women. I do find that you walk into the room a lot of times, and there’s that look. Sometimes, guys will actually admit that they didn’t expect me to be the one who built the financial model. I feel like I have a little more weight on my shoulders, but it also feels good to show them that I can do this work and that I can really get the job done. It always feels good to prove them wrong through action.
FreeP: What would you say has been the most rewarding part of your career so far?
I would probably say having the opportunity to travel internationally and really work with people of so many different cultures. I’ve been to Paris, London, Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore. It was very fulfilling to have my previous managers trust me so much and to work so hard to earn their trust. It was great to be able to work with a large variety of people and to show them the work we’re doing. Being able to work through some social differences and help to make the company more efficient on a global scale was very rewarding. I got the opportunity to really help people.
I’ve also been lucky to be in the position to create my own structure and process, working on problem solving and efficiency. My independence has led to something that’s pretty incredible. I was recently nominated to lead the business engagement in my entire division. To feel like I have been a big part of building this model for such a large division, among people who have been with the company for over 20 years when I’ve only been here for three. I’m almost at five years, and I’ve been lucky to have such a good run so far. Moving to New York has been an incredible opportunity for me.
