Pamela (Pam) Pecs Cytron has more than 30 years of financial services technology industry experience including successfully growing companies from start-up to operationally efficiency while consistently driving revenue increases. Her unique expertise includes a clear vision of tracking financial services technologies and developing innovative strategies to meet the industry’s demands while keeping her focus on providing the ultimate customer experience.
Pam launched her current company, Pendo Systems, Inc., a New Jersey-based financial technology company in 2008. Pendo provides technology for the global capital markets industry and currently serves 25 percent of the US G-SIFIs and is specifically focused on extracting insights from unstructured data. In 2015, Pam pivoted Pendo Systems to create a machine learning platform that helps make financial institutions AI-ready by turning unstructured data in structured, AI-ready data sets at a machine scale.
Pam actively tracks industry trends and future opportunities. As a result, Pendo has received many accolades for their innovative products, for their team, and for Pam’s leadership herself. These accolades include, Pam named “Game Changer of the Year” and her nomination to participate in Fortune’s Top 10 Women Entrepreneurs. Pendo Systems was named one of the 20 Most Promising Companies in Capital Markets Technology and is a two-time winner of SWIFT’s Innotribe and Top Innovator Award.
In 2018, Pam was selected as a female leader globally to participate in the Vital Voices Women Global Ambassador Program. Her clear passion and energy for restoring trust in capital markets makes her a frequent speaker for both importance of data transparency and innovation. In 2018, Pam will be named as of the Top 25 Leading Women Entrepreneurs in New Jersey by the Leading Women Entrepreneur and Business Owners Council.
Pam has held senior management roles at SunGard (FIS), DST (SS&C), BlackRock, Netik, and Princeton Financial (State Street).
Pam’s leadership also extends beyond Pendo to serving the community at the local, state, and national level. In June 2018, Pam was elected to the board of Faces & Voices of Recovery, a non-profit dedicated to organizing and mobilizing the over 23 million Americans in recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Pam is a woman in long-term recovery, and she is the Board Chair of the Global Recovery Initiatives Foundation (GRIF), a national, non-profit community foundation dedicated to addressing the unmet need of those in early recovery of all ages from substance use disorders. She is a breast cancer survivor and actively supports the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. She has been married for 28 years and is a mother of two (Samantha 20; Max 17). She also plays an active role in the public-school system in Montclair, NJ.
Interview Questions
Can you describe your current role?
I am the Founder & CEO of Pendo Systems, Inc., resident entrepreneur, and the Company’s Chief Advocate and Evangelist. My focus is building and growing the business, from working with clients and prospects, to driving our market and product strategy, to accessing growth capital. Each day, it’s advocating for my incredible team to be successful and maintaining our vision and strategy.
The Pendo Platform is a data management and recovery platform. It transforms unstructured data into machine-readable datasets at machine scale and significantly improves on standard NLP libraries by applying real-world, customer training data. The Platform has processed billions of pages of unstructured content. I am currently very excited about how Pendo can be an accelerator to support LIBOR Transformation. To date, it has successfully recovered the fallback terms in over 100 different contract types and created universal ‘accelerators’ to help solve the challenge posed by LIBOR for all types of institutions. Our platform has now been in production for the past four years. There's no shiny object!
How long have you been in your current role?
I launched Pendo in 2008, but given the market conditions, we evolved (a.k.a. pivoted) the company and launched a new product in 2014. It was a complete transition within the same Company.
I spent most of my career in back- and middle-office technology. Pendo started out with a vision to transform and introduce a new investment back-office system. Although we had initial success, it was at the beginning of the crisis. I consider myself very lucky to have survived, but it was tough going and we knew the focus on the back-office replacement had passed us by. Core systems got deeper and more entrenched. Trust in the market was deteriorating and the same question remained: Why is this taking so long? It was because the dependencies of those core systems were not providing the “alternative” data required to fulfill the remits and mandates. Where were they looking for the answers? In documents: #unstructured data. In late 2013, I started to meet with data scientists to learn how we could get the content not only out of them but how we could provide these data sets with precision and accuracy. We were back to the basement and creating version 2 of Pendo. We hired a new technical team, and I even bought unstructureddata.com for $9.99 on Go-Daddy. We began rebuilding the first version and successfully conducted our first POC in mid-2015 with material results! A vital and correct pivot taking Pendo to our current success.
What is the most challenging project you’ve worked on in your career so far? Can you describe it?
Well, first and foremost, raising a successful family is indeed the most exciting and most challenging project! But as an entrepreneur, your Company is another child and the team is your other family. Building Pendo is indeed the “exciting” and most “challenging” project(s) because you have to balance two of your biggest opportunities and challenges. Making the commitment to start your own Company is exciting but presents one of the greatest challenges in life. It poses many sacrifices and compromises not only for you as an individual but family, friends and a social life.
The challenges:
1) Access to Capital
Innovative companies for financial institutions seem practical when the balance sheet has a lot of outside capital or a well-known PE or VC behind it. To a financial enterprise, cache of the money seems to reduce risk. Obviously, I disagree. Access to capital is a real challenge for female entrepreneurs, not the hype we hear in a news cycle. I don’t consider this a barrier as much as a reality. There is an extremely positive result in this. One must manage the growth of the organization with precision as it is typically a slower process. The advantage of growing organically is failure is not an option. The product is typically more competitive. Why? Because the product has to “rock” – features, functions and support. You are not extending capital for anything but product development, client support and deployment, and capital is revenue. I can proudly say, we maintain a perfect report card of services for our clients. I think this is a very positive thing!
2) Competing in a large regulatory driven market with a small Company.
Regulations go beyond an institution’s own risk; they also extend to procurement and vendor risk.
So, despite the many challenges, all of this is Exciting – yes; Amazing – yes! Think about having an idea; knowing your idea can have an impact and then building, selling it and seeing a positive impact in a Company... “priceless”. The excitement further extends when you get great clients who get a positive impact and return on investment and importantly expand the relationship with you. “Land and expand.” My greatest gift is the reaction I get not only from clients, but prospects and influencers as well.
When you develop something ahead of its time, it is scary, but when it evolves, the day you get your first indication of interest is cherished. An entrepreneur doesn’t do things to get an immediate financial reward; a true entrepreneur is driven by purpose and fueled by passion.
Who inspires you and why?
Andrew Cytron, my husband. He is selfless and the best father and husband. He inspires me because he is the one who has cheered me on and believed in me when no one else did – even when I question myself. Starting your own company puts incredible risk on your family and specifically your marriage. Time, money, uncertainly and levels of stress are unquestionable. But those are obvious; an entrepreneur’s presence in life is impacted. Andrew tries to protect me and remove any personal barrier to my success. Your work family requires your complete and undivided attention, just like your home family, and not once has he been jealous, let alone resentful. Not one day through the highest of highs and lowest of lows has he not encouraged or given me the confidence to see the sunshine.
How do you balance work and life responsibilities?
As women, we always talk about “work-life balance.” As an entrepreneur, it is even slightly more difficult than having a corporate job. As an entrepreneur, work-life balance cannot be compartmentalized. It comes down to communication, prioritizing the time, and saying no to distractions which are not aligned with priorities. The success of your Company is indeed success for the Family. It’s really about getting all those people taking up space in your mind to be quiet, to eliminate conflict and guilt. This starts with focusing on the quality of time vs. the quantity of time. “Being present with whomever you are with” – it is a tall order which I strive to improve. In my house, family dinners have always been critical even if I go back to work in the evening. When my kids were little, I always bought two books so when I was traveling, we could read together long distance. When they have chances to travel for work with me, they do/did. The balance is establishing a way of life vs. a goal to achieve.
What is the best advice you’ve received?
Just like the airlines, put your oxygen mask on first; then you can help others.