Meet Anna Brandi Holum – a Nordea Graduate based in Copenhagen where she works with non-financial risks. Anna has a Master’s Degree in International Business and Politics from Copenhagen Business School and a keen interest in the relationship between business and politics. In September 2023 she joined the Nordea Graduate Programme and her home team is the Risk Reduction Strategy and Execution unit. Learn more about her journey below.
When I’d finished my Master’s and started to look for my first full-time position, I wanted to find a job with real opportunities for learning and growth. A graduate programme seemed the best alternative, as it allows you to explore multiple business areas and functions and offers great networking opportunities within a big organisation.
Nordea caught my eye for several reasons. First of all, joining a major company at the beginning of my career would give me a large network across countries as well as insights into multiple teams who work with different things in different ways.
Secondly, as a cand.merc.pol., I found the banking sector interesting; as banks are considered critical infrastructure in society and represents a heavily regulated industry, I was excited to deploy my interest in and knowledge of business, politics and the regulatory landscape in my new role as a Nordea Graduate within non-financial risk.
Thirdly, Nordea’s Nordic identity appealed to me. I enjoy working in an international environment, with colleagues spread across the Nordics, and meeting people with different backgrounds and perspectives. Around 30,000 people work at Nordea so you will meet many different and interesting people, and that makes work stimulating and fun.
The open and curious attitude displayed both by close colleagues and other colleagues. Before I joined the Graduate Programme, I was told of Nordea’s unique culture where everyone is happy to share their experience and knowledge. And they were right. Over the past six months, it’s the people who have contributed most to my learnings. I’ve learnt about risk management from dedicated colleagues, I’ve got together with inspiring people who have given me valuable career advice, and I’ve met like-minded people who are passionate about diversity, inclusion and gender equality, just to name a few examples.
My advice is to be curious and speak your mind when you have something to say. When I joined Nordea I had no financial sector experience and I was relatively new to non-financial risk. I wondered how I could contribute and if my background and skills suited a bank. I did have a lot to learn (and I still do), but I quickly realised that my ideas and perspectives actually add value to the work we do in my team. So you should dare to speak up and ask questions. If you show what you can do and say what you want to do, people will trust you and give you responsibility. So trust your own abilities and remember that you always bring something to the table.
I don’t want to sound like a cliché, but every day is different. When you join the Graduate Programme, you get involved in many tasks and projects. Where I’m now in the bank, new projects and deadlines can emerge from left, right and center and they need to be handled asap. To create structure, I start my working day by making an overview of today’s priorities and work from that.
As Nordea is an international company, virtual meetings take up a lot of my time. Between meetings I make sure to schedule focus time when I can do the work decided on in meetings. I also try to break up the day with a nice lunch with colleagues or a coffee with others attending the Graduate Programme. So a typical day is full of variation – and that’s the way I prefer it.
Even though there is still room and need for improvement, diversity and inclusion is an important topic for Nordea. As an example, Nordea has various employee resource groups that work for different causes, i.e. one for Gender Equality that I am myself part of. Additionally, one thing I find quite cool about my workplace is that Nordea, as a way to empower employees to give back to society, offers all full time employees 16 hours of paid absence per year to do community engagement and create positive impact for the communities within which it operates.
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