#InThisTogether: Sarah Roberts, FINRA’s BCP Guru

Business continuity planning—or “BCP” for short—is a term most of us have heard. But do we really know what it means? And how important is it leading up to times like these, as we navigate our response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

One person who knows the answer to both questions is FINRA’s own Sarah Roberts, an Associate Director in Corporate Real Estate

Helping to ensure that FINRA is prepared to continue operating in the face of major crises or natural disasters has been part of Sarah’s job since her first day at FINRA, nearly 20 years ago.

Sarah started in Corporate Real Estate in July 2001—and today, she is the primary manager of FINRA’s Business Continuity Plan. As such, she is one of the key players in helping to make sure FINRA can continue business as (almost) usual.

What’s involved in this specialized and essential work? “When you are putting together a BCP, you need to work through how you’re going to accomplish your critical business operations without being able to leverage the usual resources—ideally before everyone is running out of the building,” Sarah says. “It helps to have everything down on paper well in advance.” She adds that this unique type of planning suits her skills nicely: “I like being behind the scenes, and I understand processes and procedures.”

The current pandemic isn’t Sarah’s first time helping to lead FINRA through a crisis. She has lent her expertise to the organization’s efforts to operate in the aftermath of 9/11 (which came just a few months into her career at FINRA), as well as catastrophic weather events like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, which forced massive building closures.

According to Sarah, planning for a pandemic like COVID-19 is not that much different—and in fact, FINRA has had a pandemic plan in place since 2005. “Concepts hardly anyone thought of a few months ago like ‘social distancing’ have been part of our BCP vocabulary for a while, so we were well prepared as an organization,” she explains.  

One major difference in our current BCP versus when she first started? Remote work. “The fact that remote working capabilities are now more prevalent and widely accessed than ever before is huge,” Sarah notes. “That made this transition to nearly 100 percent remote work for staff so much easier.” 

Business continuity planning is not Sarah’s only responsibility. She and her team provide essential (but often unseen) support to FINRA—whether it’s sending an all-staff alert at 5 a.m. during a snowstorm about building closures or walking the FINRA Crisis Management Team through various disaster scenarios. Thanks to these efforts, FINRA remains nimble and prepared to do our essential work during times of uncertainty.

How does FINRA’s BCP guru decompress during these challenging times? “My husband and I are both working from home now with a four-year-old daughter, which has been a big adjustment,” she says. “What keeps us going are the little things, like regular outdoor adventures on the swing set and plenty of episodes of The Great British Baking Show.”