I wanted to be a professional video game player. Then my game died (CS 1.6) and I couldn't see cs source taking off and CS:GO at the time was basically dead too so I gave it up.

I asked one of my friends from CS if they knew of any jobs going, got a role in customer service at an internet company similar to eBay.

Their fraud team interested me and I quickly found myself spending more and more time involved in what they were doing. 6m down the line I asked to apply for a role with their manager who took the chance and after discussion with my manager I worked 50% CS, 50% fraud. 6 months later I was full time in the fraud team as a technical leader of 9 people... felt like I truly found my 'calling'.

Was totally bizarre, through school I was adamant I wouldn't follow my fathers footsteps into corporate jobs or I.T based roles... I taught snowboarding to people all through high school as a part time job, was always involved in sports and gaming.

Fast forward 10 years I am the head of fraud, aml, compliance, reporting and analytics for a payments company that's well regarded and have worked at some multi billion dollar / top 100 financial companies managing their teams.

Every day this job's challenging in a different way and there's absolutely no shortage of surprises. The best thing about it is that payments are constantly evolving and fraud is evolving with it, trying to keep up with fraudsters using new technology in sophisticated ways is incredibly demanding mentally and requires a lot of hard thinking. First time I've actually been challenged mentally in my life was the first day I stepped into fraud (never cared much in school).