25 Year Reflections: Julia Opipari’s Story
As we celebrate 25 years of building community, we asked our team to reflect on their own growth from 1999 to today. Julia Opipari was just beginning her professional career at a credit union in Michigan and sported business attire daily. How did she find herself at Bridgepoint 25 years later? Read the full interview below to get an inside look at Julia’s story.
Reflect on where you were 25 years ago and your career aspirations. What would you tell that person now? I was just beginning my career as an “Accountant II” at a credit union in Michigan and thought I wanted to be a CPA, but working in the industry made me realize that I wanted to continue to do what I was doing and work my way up to CFO somewhere. At the time, I wasn’t aware of the CMA designation, so I continued to work in the financial services industry with sights on finishing my Bachelor’s degree and climbing the ladder.
How does your career progression align with or differ from your expectations 25 years ago? Generally, I knew what area of work I wanted to be in, but not a specific role or position. Wherever I was or whatever I did, I always achieved because my talents are diverse, so I didn’t spend too much time thinking about HOW to be a CFO or anything else because I was generally happy with what I was doing.
What was your biggest work tech headache 25 years ago? Since I worked in the Accounting department at a credit union, we had to process customer mail-in deposits on a daily basis. The IT department would come collect all the checks and deposit tickets and run them through an encoding machine. I also processed ACH at the time and reconciled the daily deposits – which depended on the encoding machine. Sometimes that encoding machine would break down and it would delay the reconciliation process. Sometimes we also had to work with green ledger paper and sort through hundreds of pages of paper to find what we needed to reconcile. Can you imagine – it’s 1999 and we’re using green ledger paper?!?
Did your job require wearing a suit and tie every day in 1999? Yes, my job required me to wear skirts/heels except on casual Fridays, when we were allowed to wear khaki-style pants, dress shoes, and a company-branded polo shirt. That was the ONLY acceptable attire on casual Fridays! I was active in many different groups at work and attire/dress code was always an issue. HR was always bringing up dress code “violations” and discussing enforcement (LOL). I’m glad that we’ve mostly moved past this issue today.
What office supplies did you hoard the most back in 1999? I am a huge office supply hoarder, in general – but in the 90’s, my favorite office supply to hoard was WHITE-OUT! We couldn’t use pencils at the credit union for creating JE’s because someone could easily erase it without someone knowing, so the only option in fixing an error was white-out, unless you started from scratch.
What was your biggest work disaster 25 years ago? The data files for our ACH processing were not able to be processed into searchable files on our computer – they had to be printed on the green and white continuous feed paper and we had to manually search thousands of records to reconcile that day’s ACH file.
What skill did you use the most at work in 1999? Persistence is my most used skill – in 1999 and still today. No matter the technology, I call it a skill because your abilities will only get you so far. Technology provides the tool and persistence provides the answer.
Looking back, what surprises you most about how work has changed from 1999 to 2024? I can’t say that I’m really surprised by how things have changed … I’m really happy that we have much more work-life balance than ever before!
