Resilience and innovation: how Uber’s head of treasury arrived in the top job

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Resilience and innovation: how Uber’s head of treasury arrived in the top job

Published: Sep 2024

Corporate Treasurer of the Year

Overall Winner

Odette Rodrigues

Head of Treasury, Capital Markets & Insurance

Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly referred to as Uber, is an American multinational transportation company that provides ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and operates in approximately 70 countries and 10,500 cities worldwide.

Planning and preparation are key

Having accepted the challenge of combining the capital markets team with global cash and other treasury functions, Odette Rodrigues became Treasurer at Uber just over one year ago and has already made her mark in a significant way.

She has transformed Uber’s treasury function from that of a scrapy fast-growing startup to one focused on capital efficiency, driving strategy towards the profit-oriented company that Uber has become. What’s more, she has achieved these ambitious changes in only 15 months, accomplishing in this short time what often takes companies a decade or more.

Her background in capital markets has proven invaluable in guiding Uber on its growth journey. As a strategic leader, she believes in the mantra that one of her board members once shared with her, “luck is on the side of the prepared”. Odette epitomises this mantra, meticulously planning, preparing her teams to be ready for the strategic changes needed to meet the ambitions and goals of the broader company.

Odette’s leadership is making a real difference

Under Odette’s leadership, there have been a substantial number of accomplishments achieved by her team within a remarkably short timeframe including the reorganisation of the global treasury team into four key functional pillars: cash management, insurance and investments, capital markets and foreign exchange.

Odette has also prioritised promoting from within and re-distributing talent among teams, keeping junior talent engaged, and providing cross-functional training opportunities for regional and functional managers.

She has driven the strategic direction of the team, focused on automating operational tasks and moving others to off-shore operations teams, directing senior team members to strategic projects and focusing on cash centralisation and efficiency.

There has been a hyper focus on capital efficiency; Odette’s team revamped Uber’s global credit revolver bringing in new partners, repriced their term loan, and completed an asset-based lending deal for Uber Freight.

Her team has re-focused on data-driven analytics to improve cash flow forecasting and attained a three notch increase in credit ratings in the last 12 months, with a goal to attain investment grade in the near-term. Barring M&A, Uber’s trajectory is one of the fastest ratings moves ever.

Odette led her team in writing and implementing key new policies; interest rate policy and a robust investment policy, which have been key to Uber’s liquidity strategy. She also started the review of a foreign exchange (FX) hedging policy.

She has executed an upsized US$1.7bn Convertible Senior Notes offering – a strategic move aimed at addressing a significant portion of the company’s debt obligations, while minimising potential equity dilution.

Early repayment of US$1bn of senior notes due in 2025 and US$500m of term loan due 2030, has provided additional financial flexibility for Uber.

Under Odette’s leadership the company also announced a first ever share buyback programme of up to US$7bn, a true vote of confidence in the company’s strong financial performance and operational ability to coordinate the seamless movement of liquidity across 70 countries to support this important effort going forward.

And if that isn’t enough, she has also navigated a change in leadership as the new CFO was onboarded in the first quarter of 2024.

Taking Uber to the next level

Odette has made a significant impact on Uber’s financial acumen, assembling a strong bench of professionals with a wide range of expertise from across the organisation who are taking the business to the next level. She continually champions treasury to ensure it has a seat at the table among the broader finance teams, engaged in business development discussions, creating synergies across the group to achieve critical milestones.

Odette is a driving force in the creation of the financial backbone needed to accelerate Uber into the future, and she’s a delight to partner with.

Fostering a culture of diversity, mentorship, and collaboration

She has swiftly demonstrated her strategic mindset, drive and leadership, proving herself to be the best candidate for the top treasury position. Amongst her finance accomplishments, her efforts in fostering greater diversity at the company, mentorship and giving back to the community also make her stand out. She is constantly looking for ways to give back and open doors for others. Her team collaborates with minority deposit institutions and banks as part of the investments and capital raising. She supports internship and diversity programmes at the company and creates the connection for community organisations like the Harlem Education Activities Fund in New York and SEEDS in New Jersey.

Born for this role

Odette’s success story is rooted in humble origins. As the eldest of three sisters in an immigrant family, her role models were her father, who worked in construction, and her mother, who was a housekeeper. From them, she learned the value of hard work and perseverance. Growing up, she developed a love for mathematics, becoming something of a “maths nerd” as a kid – a skill that has served her well. As a child, Odette liked the treasurer role, which is certainly a bit unusual. While her classmates would run for Student Body President or Vice President, Odette preferred running for Class Treasurer. You could say, she was born for this job.

The Adam Smith Awards are the industry benchmark for best practice and innovation in corporate treasury. The 2024 awards attracted 389 nominations. To find out more please visit treasurytoday.com/adam-smith-awards

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