Starting Lean, Thinking Big: Treasury Lessons from Trupanion’s Samma Hollier
What do you do when you’re the first-ever treasury hire and there’s no system, no team—and no playbook? In this episode of Fintech Corner, Trovata’s Joseph Drambarean sits down with Samma Hollier, newly promoted Senior Treasury Manager at Trupanion, to talk about building treasury from the ground up. From logging into dozens of bank portals and exporting 10,000-line spreadsheets, to implementing automation and creating scalable forecasting, Samma’s journey is packed with hard-won lessons for anyone navigating a lean or growing team.
Samma shares how Trovata helped her go from reactive to proactive, how she shifted out of spreadsheet survival mode, and why building a strong network has been key to every step of her career growth. Whether you’re the first hire or the next, this episode is for anyone ready to build smarter, lead confidently, and scale without burning out.
Episode Highlights
- What to automate first when you’re doing everything yourself
- How to build a scalable treasury function with limited resources
- Why transaction tags matter (and how AI might make them better)
- From being the first hire to managing a team
- Advice for treasury pros evaluating tools and building their network
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Show Notes / Resources
Read the full transcript.
Learn more about Trovata at https://trovata.io.
About Fintech Corner
A podcast for fintech lovers that starts conversations between bankers, financial technology innovators, and their clients to evolve finance and treasury for the 21st century. For decades, there has been a gap between the technology that banks can offer and what corporate clients need for modern cash flow management and analysis. We’ll cover emerging trends to help bridge this gap, technologies that can reshape the roles of treasury & finance, and the in’s and out’s of API bank connections & open banking.
Joseph Drambarean
CPO & CTO, Trovata
Joseph is one of the founding members of the company and the first engineer. Before Trovata he worked with companies like Capital One where he was at the forefront of digital transformation, leading product management as head of the innovation labs and mobile banking teams. Joseph is driving innovation around rapid deployment and customer onboarding, bank-grade security, and machine learning at Trovata, creating a more consumerized user experience for customers from small businesses to enterprises.
Samma Hollier
Senior Treasury Manager, Trupanion
Samma Hollier is the Senior Treasury Manager at Trupanion, where she leads enterprise-wide cash management, investment strategy, and financial risk oversight for a $1BN revenue pet insurance company. With over eight years of experience in corporate treasury—including key roles at Starbucks—Samma brings deep expertise in liquidity planning, capital markets, and banking infrastructure. She is passionate about optimizing financial operations and fostering high-performing teams to support strategic growth.
