Every unique and talented Avantee is a co-creator of the Avant culture we love. We hope the @Avant series helps you get to know who we are, how we do what we do, and what it looks like to build your career at Avant.
Nikhil Mehra
Chief Risk Officer on the Leadership team
With Avant 2015-2016, then rejoined in 2022
What’s it like to work @Avant? We asked Nikhil for his take on our culture, and here’s what he said:
1. How would you describe Avant’s culture?
The three words that come to my mind: entrepreneurship, ownership, and opportunity.
What’s different about Avant, and where we stand out as a company, is the fact that we want people to take risks. We encourage it. We want people to get a little bit outside of their comfort zones. If someone from one team wants to try out something completely different, we support that.
A good example: just this year, someone from my team who managed our debt sale process became a developer and actually created an app by herself. That can only happen when people have the ability to take risks, get a little outside their swim lane, and completely own their path.
2. Why are you happy/successful here?
I think there are two reasons. Number one, even as Chief Risk Officer, I stay close to our problems. At heart, I’m a problem solver, and Avant gives me the opportunity to bring as much attention to the details as I do to the big picture. In one moment, I’m going deep with an analyst on my team who’s sitting right next to me, and in the next, I’m talking with a board member about blue sky thinking. In a relatively senior role at a larger firm, it can feel like you don’t have time for others and they don’t have time for you. But here at Avant, you do have that time.
And then the second reason is that I like the entrepreneurship. There’s a lot of trust that comes with ownership at Avant. I like owning a P&L. Those are the catalysts of my success at this firm.
3. What’s something Avant is really good at? What’s something you’d like to see us get better at?
Avant is really good at developing people early in their careers—the amount of market value that you add to your future by working here is absolutely phenomenal. After this, you will be an outperformer pretty much anywhere you go, because we challenge our people for sure. We have high standards, a collaborative environment, and a culture that gets things done, so people have a lot to put on their resumes.
What I’d like to see us get better at is retaining more of our top talent over the years. I think we could do more as a leadership team with retention in the mid-career stage. We want to keep more of our rock stars here if they want to be here! With our current size and stability, we can focus more on this now. That said, often, if they do leave, we get them back—I’m a boomerang myself. I came back to Avant after six years at another large firm because I missed it.
4. If you were to describe who you are and not mention your work at all, what would you say?
I’d say I’m a 20-year-old in a 45-year-old’s body. Especially when I’m with my kids and their friends, I’m still trying to speak in their lingo, I’m still doing a lot of sports, and I’ll be the first one to play against them. Like, I play defense, and I figure that if I can guard against a teenager, that means I’ve still got it.
The same goes with technology. We hire a lot of very smart people, way smarter than me, and if I can keep up with them, then I feel like, yes, I made my day’s worth of contributions. It’s a sort of self-motivation, to be able to do that. So, I’d describe myself as continuing to strive to be as youthful as possible.
I also derive a lot of inspiration from sport, especially the philosophies of former Liverpool FC manager Jürgen Klopp (I support Liverpool). Liverpool is a team that grinds, and they’ve been successful even without a big budget. They’ve done really well with limited resources, purely because of the amount of effort they put in. I derive a lot of my inspiration from that.
5. What’s a superpower you get to apply at your job?
On the leadership team, we have a lot of pro-growth individuals. As the Chief Risk Officer, I have to maintain a balance between growth and making sure we don’t tip over. So I spend a lot of time looking at a lot of data, which means I always have a little more information than anyone else—and that’s my superpower. Information is powerful here. I’m always looking at data and triangulating them together to tell a story. My coworkers know that I always have that one nugget of info that makes us all pause and think, and they really respect that.
6. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a soldier in the army. Actually, I think I watched Rambo and thought, I want to be John Rambo.
