Catherine Tibaaga is a vendor, supplier and third-party risk management professional who has over ten years of experience working for global firms such as Jones Lang LaSalle, E*TRADE Financial, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Freddie Mac and Commerzbank AG.  As a subject-matter expert (SME), she helps global organizations develop, build, implement and maintain vendor, supplier and third-party risk management programs.  She also works with global organizations to ensure that their vendor, supplier and third-party risk management programs align and comply with regulations (i.e. OCC 2013-29, GLBA and Privacy laws) and industry standards (i.e. ISO 27000 family of standards, and NIST standards).

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In addition to her professional expertise in vendor, supplier, and third-party risk management, Catherine has over twelve (12) years of experience building, developing, implementing and maintaining vendor, supplier and third-party management programs for global corporations. She works with global corporations to ensure that their vendor management life cycles enable them to develop and maintain vendor relationships that meet their strategic objectives and help them maintain their competitive advantage in their respective global markets.

 

Catherine started her career as a financial and accounting analyst at the start-up StreamCenter where she worked with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to perform financial and accounting duties. After three (3) years at StreamCenter, Catherine joined Jones Lang Lasalle as a contracts and procurement administrator to negotiate and execute contracts that supported the ExxonMobil account. During her time at Jones Lang LaSalle, Catherine led the efforts to collaborate with Corporate Risk Management and Legal to create a Risk Management program for the ExxonMobil account. Catherine continued to utilize her expertise to manage vendor, supplier and third-party risk assessments for E*TRADE Financial. She specialized in managing vendors in the East Asian market (i.e. South Korea). 

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After her time at E*TRADE Financial, she negotiated contracts and managed the vendor risk management process for vendors that supported the art-secured lending function at JPMorgan Chase & Co. As a result, Catherine was responsible for managing international art appraisers that provided appraisal services for $3 billion of art-secured loans issued by JPMorgan Chase & Co. To perform her duties, Catherine worked with JPMorgan Chase & Co offices in New York City, London and Switzerland. In addition to managing vendor relationships to support the art-secured lending process, Catherine also managed vendor relationships and performed risk assessment functions at JPMorgan Chase & Co. for vendors classified as private equity and boutique investment banks. Catherine was able to utilize her programming skills to create an automated operational risk calculator that enabled the Vendor Management program in Asset Management to calculate the insurance requirements for art appraisers supporting the art-secured lending process. 

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In 2016, Catherine joined Freddie Mac where she worked with the Vice President of Procurement to ensure that the vendor risk management program at Freddie Mac was in alignment with the strategic objectives of Procurement and Enterprise Risk Management. During her time at Freddie Mac, Catherine engaged in business process improvement and reengineering efforts to ensure that the vendor risk management program was in alignment with FHFA and OCC recommended guidelines. She collaborated with Procurement and Enterprise Risk Management to ensure that the vendor risk management program was in alignment with the three lines of defense model. To ensure the success of the vendor risk management process, Catherine managed a team of ten (10) Ernst and Young consultants. As a result, she was able to successfully manage the team to successfully collaborate with internal and external stakeholders (i.e. legal, information security, privacy, enterprise risk management, finance and compliance) to ensure the effectiveness of the vendor risk management program.  Her time at Freddie Mac gave her the opportunity to work with the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Risk Management to develop a vendor risk management program for financial institutions (i.e. private equity and investment banks) that supported the counterparty risk and trading activities at Freddie Mac.

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Eventually, Catherine left Freddie Mac to join Commerzbank AG in New York City where she worked as vendor information security risk consultant. Due to illness, she decided to leave New York and recover in her Grandmother's hometown of Busunju, Uganda. To honor her Great-Great Grandfather's political legacy as part of the Kingdom of Buganda in Uganda, she volunteered as a risk and data analytics consultant for the town of Busunju where she helped support the agricultural efforts in the town of Busunju. 

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Catherine returned to the United States in 2020 and went back to work in 2022 to work as a Vendor Management Consultant at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA). She has had a great opportunity to work with the Vendor Management Organization at BCBSA to negotiate and execute contracts with global IT firms. In addition to negotiating and executing contracts, Catherine has worked with the Vendor Management Organization at BCBSA to create and support their data analytics efforts. She also had the opportunity to build the Vendor Management SharePoint site at BCBSA and also work with Vendor Management leadership on how the Global Procurement Office and Vendor Management Organization can utilize artificial intelligence technology to improve Vendor Managment and Procurement functions and processes at BCBSA. 

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Since she is fully recovered, Catherine will be returning to school to attend Eastern New Mexico University in the Spring of 2024 to finish her lifelong dream of completing a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematical Sciences with minors in Accounting and Economics. As a firm believer in Women in STEM, Catherine wants to complete her education in mathematics, accounting and economics as she believes in the importance of diversity in science, technology and business. She is also pursuing a Certificate in Data Analytics at University of California- Berkeley Extension School. She is a graduate of the Etiquette School of New York.  

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You can contact Catherine Tibaaga at info@catherinetibaaga.com.