In today’s post, we feature Rachel Boyette, a fearless and incredibly confident young financial analyst who works for a state level agency with consumer protection. Due to the nature of her position, she requested that we keep her employer’s information private.
Rachel is a multifaceted person who initially wanted to be a lawyer, became a financial analyst, is an incredible artist, is building an app in her free time and wants to work for the FBI in the future.
Rachel reached out to me to have this conversation, delighted and awe struck by her confidence, I wanted to speak as soon as possible. During our conversation, we discussed her role, what she’s learned, and what exciting future plans she has.
Check out her Instagram page here and her website here. All the images here are her work!
How did you get into the field?
At hearing this question, she let out an infectious laugh. This was going to be a fun story!
Rachel mentioned that during her freshman year at Amherst College, her then advisor advised her to register for two courses in chemistry and calculus. To their dismay, she was not doing well in those courses. Consequently, she did not enroll in a single science or math course during her entire undergraduate career, choosing to major in history instead.
Upon graduating, she returned to her home state in Florida when she began the process of looking for a job. Armed with her skills in research and communication, she connected to an alumna from her alma mater who had worked with government agencies in the area. Through their conversation and various applications, she was offered an analyst intern position in consumer protection. She was very fond of the role and was presented with a full time offer. Rachel mentioned that the most fulfilling aspect of her current position is working with consumers and providing advocacy on their behalf.
What did you learn during this process and what did you learn about yourself?
Having initially wanted to be an attorney, Rachel was looking for positions in the law, but this process has revealed many things to her. She mentioned that the main lesson learned was to not put her capabilities and skills in a box. Being open to opportunities and adaptable to any environment has shown her that she actually wants to start a business and learn how work in an analytics institution not the law.
Another important lesson learned is you must be your own advocate, in career matters and many other matters. According to Rachel, there are many fields and that it is not that hard to start a new career, you just have to introduce yourself and go for it. Although she recognizes that this takes courage, she also encourages us all to learn the importance of networking. From her own experience, Rachel was shocked at how open people were to connecting even based on a loose connection.
What was the greatest professional advice you received?
Rachel mentioned that the greatest advice was not a saying or a quote, but a situation. She mentioned that there was an office colleague who acting erratically and unprofessionally, however, the main focus of her story was the way her boss handled the situation. She admired how her boss was even tempered, firm and fair. This situation taught her that in a professional setting a combination of maturity, patience, and firmness was the best way to handle uncomfortable situations at the office.
Rachel also mentioned that her father was great influence, they both resemble one another in personality and they are both very lively in person. Yet her father, a construction supervisor, has always had a very serious demeanor at work. Rachel is also more stoic and serious at the workplace, and she thinks that this was perhaps a combination of observed and learned behavior. Upon seeing the way that her father carried himself and the respect that he commanded, Rachel adopted that approach and it has worked well for her.
Do you find that women are often a minority in the industry?
In her industry, Rachel mentioned that in fact women are not a minority and then stopped and realized how cool is that! She mentioned that within the very large organizational structure, the top boss is a woman, and that her right hand is also a woman and that even within the different departments, women were very well represented. The Analysts had slightly more women than men, the administrators were mostly women and the attorney were almost exactly split in half.
However, Rachel mentioned that despite the excellent representation of women in the office, ethnic and racial diversity is lacking in her particular division. She thinks that this may be due to geographic constraints. Nevertheless, she also mentioned that while on several trips to offices in different areas of Florida, different offices had varying levels of diversity and mainly reflected the demographic nature of the surrounding towns.
When asked whether having this many women was an explicit initiative by her employer or simply the way it worked. Rachel mentioned that it might have been the result of policy, however, she is sure that more women apply for her office than men.
What is one skill that you’d like to learn? And what skill do you consider crucial and would recommend learning?
At this question, you can sense the excitement radiating through the phone. Rachel mentioned that she had learned so much about excel spreadsheets and that she wanted to learn coding languages more proficiently. Despite the fact that she knows how to code better than most of her colleagues, she is hungry to learn more and bring her expertise to her position.
Another skill that Rachel encourages everyone to have is a foreign language. She said that she didn’t realize how valuable it is to have a skill like that, but she’s glad that she finally has.
What are you excited about in your professional future and where do you see yourself going?
She mentioned that someone had asked her that question prior to our conversations that she didn’t have an answer which rendered her embarrassed. But being a woman of action, she immediately set out to create a 5-year plan that includes further education, more coding, starting a business and painting!
Starting with education, she will be going back to school to study cybersecurity and aim to work at the FBI or the FTC. She also wants to paint a 7×8 foot tall painting of Elon Musk , and her business idea is to build an app aimed toward artists. She is already coding the iOS version herself with Java and XCode using Swift language and has contracted the android version to another developer. She is excited to begin promoting the app very soon!
7×8 foot tall painting of Elon Musk by Rachel Boyette
Do you have any advice for young women excited to enter the field?
Rachel’s main advice is to network and not be afraid to contact anyone in their network or even random strangers. The worst that can happen is that someone will ignore you, but Rachel says that when you send out more than 50 personalized notes, what’s one rejection, be excited about the other 49. Be your own advocate and go for it!
Make sure to to follow Rachel on her Instagram and if you think that you have some resources that you’d like to share with her and to support her, please reach out!