Vanwege het internationale karakter van ons bedrijf en onze medewerkers hebben we hun verhalen en ervaringen in het Engels weergegeven.

"Being aware of cultural differences and finding the best way to send our message across, is the most interesting part of my job."

Catherine has quite an international background, with Portuguese parents and growing up in Venezuela, where she lived until the age of 23. Due to this, she has deep-rooted feelings about both countries.

Catherine joined Medtronic in 2016, moving from Spain to the Netherlands. Currently, she is reconstructing her house in the Southern part of the province of Limburg (Heuvelland), which will take a few more months to finish. Although the renovation is taking most of her time, and lifting stones and dirt could be considered a sport, she is also taking skiing lessons at the indoor ski slope Snow World, and she tries to spend time on her other hobbies as well: walking her dog and enjoying landscape photography.

Catherine about her position at Medtronic

In my current role and together with the team, I prepare the quarterly Balance Sheet Memo (BS Memo) that is presented to our Finance leader in Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA), which is subsequently reported to Price Waterhouse Coopers and External Reporting. We also prepare the statutory and tax compliance support for several entities within the region. Next to that, we prepare the financial update for the Dutch board meetings, as well as the external reporting for quarterly and yearly reports.

To summarize: in my role, I am responsible for compiling, creating and reporting services for EMEA, internal and external purposes.

Catherine’s education and career path

I completed all my studies in my hometown Caracas in Venezuela. Here, I obtained a degree as a public accountant at the college “Universidad Catolica Andres Bello”. In my last year of college, I combined my studies with working at Deloitte in the External Audit team. After finalizing my studies, I decided to move to Madrid and continued working at Deloitte for the following eight years. In the year prior to starting at Medtronic, I worked in a smaller financial service firm that specialized in statutory compiling services, which was also very useful for my current role.

Most challenging in my current role

Communication! My job requires receiving input from and collaboration with over
one hundred colleagues across the region, people from both the finance department as well as the businesses. We need to be aware of cultural differences and find the best way to send our message across.

What I like most in my current job

The communication challenge is at the same time one of the most interesting parts of my job. Our customers are scattered across the region, and the opportunity of getting to know them and understanding their businesses, is what keeps us engaged and busy.

What I like about working for Medtronic

The culture and the shared values. This can be felt from day one. I have never seen another company so strongly driven by its mission. And after being in an auditing role for nine years, you know a lot of companies!

Each person in his/her role is important in contributing to our mission, also in Finance.
If I speak for myself, I am providing the highest possible quality in my reports, improving the processes that I can influence, and sharing ethical and constructive messages with my team and peers.

What ‘Further, Together’ means to me

Cross-collaboration to achieve our common goal. Sounds easy, but we always set challenging goals in a changing environment, industry and company.

My most memorable experiences at Medtronic

The patient event in Prague in 2016. It was my first one, so I was very impressed by the organization, speakers (patients and doctors) and products.