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.
Yefen Zhou
Director on the Account Management Strategy Team
Joined Avant in 2022
What’s it like to work @Avant? We asked Yefen for her take on our culture, and here’s what she said:
1. How would you describe Avant’s culture?
The way we work collaboratively across different teams is the most impressive part of Avant’s culture. Anytime we see a business challenge, we work together to find the root cause and decide what’s the best next step to resolve it. And it’s not isolated to just one team—every team has ideas to share.
Before I came to Avant, I was at a very large traditional bank where each team had very specific responsibilities. There wasn’t much communication across teams or departments. When I joined Avant, I noticed right away that we have a really different culture where all of the teams work together. I’ve seen it over and over throughout my time here.
2. Why are you happy/successful here?
The most important thing that makes me happy here is the business ownership. You get to own some key metrics that drive company performance, and every time you implement something new, you can immediately see the impact on your metrics. That gives you a sense of your achievements. That’s what I like. And, I like that we do a lot of cross-functional projects, working with different teams, which enriches my knowledge about this industry.
3. What’s something Avant is really good at? What’s something you’d like to see us get better at?
What Avant is really good at is transparency. In every Town Hall, Matt and the Exec Team share the latest business performance numbers, no matter if they’re good or bad. I get regular updates from my manager on our overall performance and what we expect in the future. Keeping everyone up-to-date on the business is what Avant is doing really well.
What Avant can improve on is closing our feedback loops rather than just moving ahead. Sometimes after we take an action, we move on to the next thing without closing the feedback loop. I would like to see us sharing whether the previous decision really impacted the business positively as expected or not, so we can learn from it.
5. If you were to describe who you are and not mention your work at all, what would you say?
I’m a person who likes to make plans—I don’t like unexpected things. If I want to do something, I will make a very concrete plan for how I want to complete it and then do my best to follow the plan. I also like to play with my friends, but I am just as happy to be with myself, finding interesting things to enrich my spare time at home. I’m thinking my next step is probably to buy a single family home for myself—time to make a plan and save some money.
7. How does your work at Avant fit into the rest of your life?
My major was statistics, and I really like mathematics. So my current job really fits my interests, which is a very good thing. It makes me very happy to come to work and learn about something I am really interested in. That makes the job fit well as a part of my life. Also, I have credit cards, bank accounts, and savings, and learning about all these financial things at work is great. These topics are very close to my life, so I appreciate that I get a lot of knowledge that can help me to make better financial decisions for myself.
8. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a singer! I have always liked singing, especially pop music. When I was little, I joined singing groups and performed a little bit. I also attended some small competitions at school. Today, singing is still one of my hobbies.
