Kim Petry is the executive vice president and chief financial officer of Paxos, a high growth Fin Tech Company, where she leads a global finance organization and is in charge of the human resources division.

She graduated first in her class with a B.A. in accounting from Adelphi University in 1991 and earned her MBA in finance and international business from New York University. Petry served as managing director of finance at U.S. Trust Corporation/Schwab Corporation; audit senior manager in financial services at PricewaterhouseCoopers; vice president of corporate finance, planning and analysis and business finance and analysis with TIAA-CRE; CFO, global commercial/corporate card payment with American Express and CFO at Broadridge. She is an author and has contributed to several publications, including “101 Ways to Compete in Today’s Job Market” and has served as an adjunct  finance and accounting professor at Adelphi. In 2017, she served as the keynote speaker for the inaugural Women’s Leadership Conference held on the Garden City campus. Petry lives with her husband and two children in Garden City. During her undergraduate years at Adelphi, Petry said she thought it was important to be involved on campus. She was a part of a number of campus clubs, including the Accounting Society, a marketing and advertising organization and a law club.

Kim’s Tips for a Long and Successful Career in Any Field:

1. “The most critical thing is you have to network by going to clubs or applying to internships. Those relationships go a long way. A lot of the roles I have gotten happened because I was keeping in touch and reaching out to people.”
2. “Explore your career. A lot of people say I want to be an accountant, or whatever their profession is, but that is a very broad term. The list is extensive as to which direction you can go. It’s up to the student to ask ‘What direction do I want to go?’ More often than not, people will get into a job and say ‘I didn’t know this was accounting. I don’t like it.’ The best way [to explore a career] is to talk to people in those roles and ask ‘What is the day to day like?”

Originally published in the Delphian Vol.73 Issue 2 – With updates made by Alumni Relations