Eight Questions: Kennedy Thibou Jr., Head of Client Operations

Welcome to Eight Questions, where we profile individual members of the Anchorage Digital team, diving into their career paths, what brought them to crypto, and what makes them tick. Why eight? Because it’s the number of decimal places a bitcoin can be divided into. It’s also the last single digit number in a Fibonacci Sequence, and we like that.

Next in our series, meet Kennedy Thibou Jr., who leads our client operations, keeping business running smoothly and safely for the many institutions we serve. Kennedy’s been with Anchorage for over two years and has set the industry bar for best-in-class client experiences and safety. Kennedy brings a passion for financial inclusion, writing about financial diversity in his spare time. He’s also the author of a soon to be published finance book for kids, entitled, Brother Bull and Sister Bear Go to the Stock Market. Prior to Anchorage, Kennedy managed fund securities services at Carta.

1. What was your experience with crypto before joining the team?

I had very limited experience or interest in crypto prior to joining Anchorage. I’d heard the term SAFT come up in my previous role at Carta, where we delivered custody for institutions and I always thought crypto custody seemed hard to imagine.

As someone that has gone through SOC audits and FINRA exams, I understood the role that a Qualified Custodian would play in an emerging asset class like crypto, but I wasn’t really sold on this until I met with our CEO, Nathan McCauley. Nathan’s singular focus on creating a safe, secure, and regulated form of Qualified Custody is what ultimately brought me to Anchorage. He was able to really discuss the custody role end to end and was committed to bring regulation to an unregulated market. Today, I’m really excited about blockchain’s potential to get payments to individuals faster, as a borderless solution that’s not reliant on one bank.

2. You’ve grown your team from a handful to a robust group of individuals spread across time zones for maximum speed in client responses. What’s it been like scaling and growing this group of individuals?

I’ve spent quite a few years building operational and support teams for the traditional financial markets so hiring is not unfamiliar to me, but the challenge and rewards of building my team at Anchorage really stand out. While traditional finance ends at 4 pm ET and closes on the weekends and holidays, crypto never sleeps as a 24/7 market. As a leader, I stress the importance of security, compliance, and efficiency while delivering industry-leading service to our clients. This was a high bar to find the right candidates for this type of environment.

When I interview candidates, I always mention that they will have two titles at this company: the title on the job description, and title of “owner”. Every single full time position here at Anchorage Digital receives equity in the company. Because of this opportunity, operational excellence is the responsibility of every “owner” in this organization. I’ve been fortunate to find and build an amazing and diverse team that fully exemplifies this notion.

3. What’s one of the most impressive scenarios in going above and beyond you’ve seen on your team?

At Anchorage, everyone including our CEO is a client experience professional. We live to “impress our clients” with our digital asset solutions and service interactions. Two years ago, we built our first governance integrations, adding Maker Governance voting through Anchorage Custody. This service would allow Anchorage clients to vote on governance decisions within the security of our platform. On a Monday, we’d promised the feature would be ready by that Friday. In true Anchorage fashion, we believe in over-promising and over-delivery so we wanted to have it ready in advance. We had the tech built on time, but still needed a smooth and beautiful interface experience. Our Head of Product, our CEO, Nathan, some of our lead engineers, and myself stayed up until 4:30 am the Wednesday before to design, implement, and quality-test the user interface. The amazing thing about this story is that Nathan, our CEO, was right there in the office alongside everyone right until the job was done.

4. As an early employee, what keeps you driven at Anchorage?

For me, it’s the people. I joined when we were just 27 people. Now, there are over 100 people. Every new hire since my joining impresses me with their passion and amazing credentials. We’ve managed to create a culture that has not only survived in a fast-paced, and now largely remote environment that actually thrives.

It’s knowing I get to work with brilliant people every single day, people that are relentlessly driven to succeed and achieve things that have never been done. This consistent drive can only be attributed to our leadership team’s strategic approach to hiring.The founders made a decision in the beginning to embrace diversity in the organization. If you look at the leadership team, it includes a high number of diverse and talented mixture of strong women and minority leaders including myself. This approach carries through employee profiles across our organization. I’ve been in previous companies that had 100–500 employees and could only identify less than 2% of individuals that looked like me. The talent is there, but you have to start by hiring leaders and hiring managers who will promote diversity as a strategic initiative.

5. You recently took a month-long sabbatical. What did you do to recharge during that time? A lesson you learned in that time? What have you learned about balance in this time to recharge?

My sabbatical kicked off with a three week road trip with my wife and two small dogs to Lake Tahoe, CA. We crossed over to Utah where we went horseback riding in Zion National Park, and made our way through Yosemite National Park. When we got back home to the San Francisco Bay, we quickly packed for the last leg of vacation where we flew to Florida for a family trip to St. Petersburg Beach (voted #1 in the nation last year).

During this needed rest, I learned the importance of promoting self care. We should celebrate employees when they take a vacation and truly disconnect to come back refreshed. It’s so easy to get used to responding to work during your vacation but you won’t come back as creative or ready if you can’t step away. To me, the greatest investment that you can make is investing in yourself. It doesn’t have to be a month-long sabbatical, it can be daily decisions, like choosing to exercise or seeking out therapy or time to meditate. The greatest investment a company can make is in their people as well. I feel extremely privileged that Anchorage allowed me to take this time. As a leader that leads by example, I’ve already seen my employees feel comfortable taking time off themselves more regularly and I see the benefit when they come back refreshed.

6. We’d be remiss not to ask about your writing. Where do you find inspiration for your children’s books? What character do your own family members connect with in your stories?

Inspiration for my books comes from me trying to find a simple way to teach financial literacy to kids at a young age especially as I plan to start my own family. For Brother Bull and Sister Bear, I thought about my nephew and how to introduce this concept to him. Brother Bull loves anything that goes up high like his favorite toy rocket ship, while Sister Bear loves anything that goes down low like her favorite toy submarine.They end up on going on an educational roller coaster ride tour through the stock market learning about the ups and downs in the market. These two characters teach kids the concept of how the stock market works in a playful way so they can understand it early on.

In my next book, Maya and Marcus Go to the Bank, two African-American kids get their introduction to banking. It’s important that all children hear and see relatable representations of themselves making smart financial choices, so this book has Maya and Marcus learning good habits like saving and what it means to have a good credit score. Often we think we should wait until high school to teach kids about finances, my writing seeks to help kids form good behavioral patterns early on when it matters.

7. On that note, if there’s one thing parents should teach their children early on about finance, what would it be?

Teach kids about saving. It’s never “too early” to teach children about financial habits, banking, or the stock market because they are still in a safe environment to learn best practices before they get pulled into a world where you are defined by your credit score (credit worthiness). Show them the value of a dollar by having them earn money doing small jobs or making a lemonade stand. Show them how a dollar can buy a candy bar today, or add up to be a $100 bill if they save it. Earn money, and fill up that piggy bank, build those positive associations of taking that money to the bank.

8. What was it like getting FINRA certifications? Any tips?

I’m a nervous test-taker, and FINRA licensing exams are different from your standard test because once you’re applying for one, there’s firm-wide visibility of your scheduled exam date. I have my FINRA Series 7, 24, and 63 licenses and obtaining them was definitely an accelerant for my career, specifically the Series 24. I highly recommend any new entry level financial professionals to always obtain any licensing they can through sponsorship from their firm.

I have a story for you, the Series 24 was one of the most difficult exams I’ve taken in my life. To prepare, I locked myself in a room for a week and took over 100 practice tests. When the Saturday morning exam date rolled around, I was so nervous and couldn’t remember the passcode to my phone, which I needed for directions to the test center. You only get ten tries before you are completely locked out, and before I knew it, I was completely locked out. This, of course, didn’t help with test anxiety, but I went into the test center and I passed the exam. In the process of resetting my phone to get in the exam though, I lost years of photos since there was no time for doing a backup. Despite this, it was still one of the happiest days of my life.

So the three tips I have are: Read all the explanations for why you got a practice question right or wrong. 2. Practice until you can’t get it wrong. 3. Backup your phone.

Interested in shaping the future of crypto finance with Kennedy? Anchorage Digital is hiring for a variety of roles, check our job opportunities here.