Becky Pomerleau

Tom O'Reilly: Becky, you could have done anything in the world. Why Internal Auditing?

Becky Pomerleau: It was a bit of a process of elimination. I knew I didn't want to do anything science or engineering-related with the extra lab classes. At the same time, I was good at math and was genuinely interested in business. When I was in high school, we had a career day to dress up like our future selves. I dressed up like a businesswoman. Being a female business executive has always intrigued me, and I knew accounting was a great foundation for business in general, so that’s the direction I headed.

As I got out into the business world, I toyed with the idea of going into a more traditional finance or accounting role or staying in a risk or audit role. The thing that I've really enjoyed about the risk and audit roles is that they are more project-based, and you have the opportunity to be an internal consultant. With the more traditional accounting roles, there’s the repetitive nature of month-end close. With FP&A, forecasting and coming up with something that’s always going to be wrong the moment you predict it wasn’t something I latched onto.

Tom O'Reilly: I want to take a step and dig a little deeper. What drew you to join Leslie’s Pools? What is it about internal auditing where you’re like, all right, let’s go?

Becky Pomerleau: I was really excited about the role here. It's public knowledge that we have a couple of material weaknesses. Leslie's has only been public for a few years, so I knew that there was going to be a lot of opportunity to add value and come in and make an impact, and that's something that I think has been a theme throughout my career.

Tom O'Reilly: Almost ten years ago, you had a very significant health event that likely had a major impact on your personal and professional life. Would you mind sharing your story, and sharing how this may have changed your approach and outlook working in corporate America?

Becky Pomerleau: I had been with eBay corporate in a finance transformation role for a little over a year. Honestly, things were a little stressful. The transformation had a lot of challenges in terms of stakeholder management and cost overruns, and so I was very much looking forward to de-stressing. It was Thanksgiving week, and my husband and I were in Breckenridge, Colorado, skiing. On Black Friday, after a morning of sledding I felt a different pressure in my chest, so I took two aspirin, and my symptoms went away. Two days later on Sunday morning I woke up with the same pressure in my chest. I tried to wait out the symptoms without the aid of aspirin. Unfortunately the systems did not go away without aspirin. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had suffered heart attacks. 

My husband insisted that we go to the emergency room. Thankfully, he continued to insist because I wanted to go skiing. If we had gone skiing, I might not be here talking to you today. The doctors found that I had a condition called spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD. I had no prior family history of heart disease. In fact, I ran D1 cross country and track at the University of Missouri and never expected to be the a heart patient. Long story short, noneof the strategies to repair my heart worked, and I ended up needing a heart transplant. Thankfully, I was blessed with a new heart just a couple of weeks later.

Tom O'Reilly: How has this event affected how you approach your internal audit leadership role?

Becky Pomerleau: Any time you have a near-death experience, it puts things into perspective, especially when you know that someone else had to die in order for you to live. A few things I'll highlight, one being the importance of succession planning. From this experience, you realize how much you need to invest in your team so that if something happens to anyone on the team, we can backfill for each other and be there to support each other when life happens because life does happen.

Second, as a leader, I have more empathy when something happens in the life of one of my employees, and giving them some grace and the opportunity to work through that. Before I was so career-driven, and still am to an extent, but I have much more grace for understanding that there are times when people have something that happens in their life, whether it's with a child or a parent or their own personal health situation. Employees are much more likely to stay with your company, and of course, you want your best employees to stay with your company if you support them through those difficult times.

Tom O'Reilly: When you took on your leadership role, you transitioned from an internal department of 80+ to a smaller team.. What was the hardest part of transitioning from a large to leading a smaller internal audit team?

Becky Pomerleau: The internal audit function at PayPal has around 90 employees or so. When I came to Leslie’s, there were around 15 consultants supporting audit activities. Self-advocating for internal resources in a retailer that does have the capital adequacy of a Silicon Valley tech company has been the biggest shift.

Tom O'Reilly: Looking back at your time with your previous employer, you were promoted pretty fast and consistently across your roles as a 2nd line SOX leader, a 1st line risk management leader, and a 3rd line Internal Audit leader. What was your secret ingredient to getting promoted into these different roles?

Becky Pomerleau: Talking about what I personally have done is something that doesn't come as naturally, and I think that's true of a lot of people. You need to be able to articulate the impact that you’ve had, whether that's in your annual reviews or in your self-assessments. Building your network of people who are not just going to be your mentors within the company but  your sponsors is key.

A mentor is someone who will meet with you, give you career advice, and give you operating advice, but they're not necessarily going out of their way to have those conversations with other leaders in the organization. That’s what a sponsor does for you. That first hurdle to securing a sponsor is to make the ask and be okay if sponsoring is not their thing. That doesn't mean they don't support you or don't think that you're great, but maybe sponsoring is just not their thing, so stick with it.

Continue to make sure that you're asking folks, and when you find those who probably start out in a mentor capacity, and you've built that relationship with them, they're giving you good advice, they’re respected in the organization and have influence in the areas where you would like to drive your career path, then you do have to make the specific ask for them to serve as your sponsor.

Tom O'Reilly: When you are looking to hire new internal audit staff or senior auditors, what are you looking for in their resume and during the interview process that will give you comfort they will be a great hire?

Becky Pomerleau: For one, I don't want to see someone who's changed jobs every year. It gives the perception of a Job Hopper. There can be factors outside of your control at times as to why it may appear that you're a Job Hopper, whether it’s because they’re focusing on parenthood or supporting an ill family member. Those examples aren’t a deterrent for me, but your cover letter or some other means should give an explanation.

Second, I am looking for a resume that articulates the impact that you've had. Not just your job responsibilities but also the impact that you left on the company in a quantifiable way. Did you help the company identify, through some of your audit work, certain cost savings, either through rationalization of key controls or a process improvement opportunity that saved the company a certain amount of money, or helped the company avoid a certain amount of costs.

Third, I look for job progression. Have you had the opportunity to take on expanded responsibilities, or have you been promoted in the past few years? Fourth, external audit experience in public accounting is also important. Now, I don't necessarily want a team of all people who came from one of the big four audit firms. I like to have a little more diversity than that. But what I like about and why I encourage university students to  intern in public accounting because you just learn so much about business auditing many different clients. You learn so much about the core skills of auditing that you don't necessarily learn in college.

Tom O'Reilly: Do you differentiate risk advisory public accounting experience from external audit? Can you speak on the interview process and what you’re looking for?

Becky Pomerleau: I do lean towards preferring the external audit and public accounting, at least a couple of years of that before they moved over to risk advisory. What I'm trying to pull out from people is their ability to deal with ambiguity and their ability to influence others. Can they communicate in a clear and concise way their personal value proposition?

A pet peeve of mine that I've noticed in more recent years is that candidates earlier in their internal audit career are not sending thank you letters or thank you notes. I don't know if they don't teach that in university anymore, but you will definitely stand out from other candidates by taking the initiative.

Tom O'Reilly: Thinking about all of the team members you’ve managed throughout your career, what are the attributes of those internal auditors who you have promoted versus those you have not promoted?

Becky Pomerleau: I think this is an especially important skillin the audit world, but someone who's naturally curious. They're not afraid to ask questions. They're always poking into something and trying to figure it out. They're self-driven, and they have taken the initiative to better learn how our team could more effectively and efficiently use our audit tools. It’s also the person others are going to for advice.

Tom O'Reilly: To the extent possible that you can speak to it, what are you looking to accomplish from an Internal Audit perspective and help your company within the next 1, 2, and 5 years?

Becky Pomerleau: At Leslie’s, we’ve created an Internal Audit logo with a lighthouse.

Currently, I’m focusing on listening, learning, and charting a path forward to ensure we’re set up for success.

I've laid out a three-year vision, which includes a tool implementation to create a sustainable and cost-effective risk and audit function, and putting in place a risk management committee, and enterprise risk  frameworks. As I look further out,  Leslie’s has a unique opportunity to further establish integrated risk management or IRM.