Agnes Falconer

Vice President of Operations, Gibraltar Business Capital

40 Under 40 Category: Operations

Message from Agnes Falconer

Biography:

Agnes Falconer is the vice president of operations at Gibraltar Business Capital, an asset-based lender located in Northbrook, IL. Throughout her 11-year tenure with Gibraltar, Agnes has held several roles. She started as a collateral analyst, then became a department manager, an account executive, and in 2018 the vice president of operations. In her current role, Agnes is working to drive customer focus to ensure that the client’s onboarding process is seamless and her team provides exceptional customer service. She is passionate about helping her team reach their potential and has created training and development programs. She’s undertaken several projects, one of which is to leverage new technology to support business growth.

What is the best professional advice you have been given and how have you implemented it? 

The best advice that I was given earlier on in my career as a manager was, “If you can sit back with your feet up and not have to worry if things are getting done right, then you did your job.”  My takeaway from this advice was to invest time in each team member, specifically; training, motivating, and inspiring them so that they could be the best version of themselves at work. Motivated employees are more productive and independent. In my one-on-one check-ins, I make it a point to ask what motivates you, and are you challenged?  These questions come up at least every review period, which is twice a year. I look back at my career with Gibraltar and the challenges and additional responsibilities that were given to me kept me motivated and excited to come to work every day.  So this is the same opportunity that I want to give back to my team, whether that be through additional responsibility within the department or learning a new skill in another department; I want them to be excited as well. 

How have you managed to stay in touch with colleagues and clients during this time of working remotely?

I stayed connected with the team by scheduling virtual check-ins. The first two months they were daily, and once, everyone was acclimated to the new norm, I scaled back to every other day. In addition to the team virtual meetings, I scheduled a weekly individual meeting. Staying connected personally and professionally was important because everyone’s experience working remotely was different due to personal circumstances (i.e., kids or spouse also working from home). Sharing our challenges, laughing, and showing that we were there for each other, helped us get through this time. More importantly, these meetings helped us keep the strong close-knit culture that we worked hard to build. As for staying connected with the clients, this was not as challenging from the operations side because I generally do not meet with clients; all communication is on the phone or email. As we have been working remotely, Zoom and Teams have become a very useful and popular tool. Since I was using these tools for internal meetings, I decided to incorporated Zoom as a tool to communicate at the start of the onboarding process, which I’ve never done before. Using video for my calls helped me connect more with the clients.   Overall, I leverage technology, whether that be video calls or sharing my screen; these tools help streamline the onboarding experience and make it personal.      

When interviewing newcomers to the industry, what do you say to pique their interest on why they should accept a position in this industry?

When I’m interviewing, from time to time I get asked why I’ve been with the company for so long. My answer is that I learn something new from each client. Each client has their own unique way of conducting business, each loan is structured differently and there are different risk factors in each industry. And, due to all of these reasons, each loan is monitored differently. In addition to risk and client management, you have the opportunity to learn the business side. There are also certain experiences that you may learn through exposure that hopefully only occurs once or twice in your career; for example, a debtor-in-possession or a liquidation, maybe even a fraud situation. There is an endless opportunity to learn something new and this is why working in this industry is exciting.