Getting a start in the business world at 16 years old and turning it into a career.

Few people find their careers at age 16. Yet, Jenna M. Buretta did just that.

Buretta, who grew up in the Gloucester County town of Pitman, started as a part-time teller at TD Bank in Glassboro in 2001.

She fell for the banking business at the young age, stuck with it, and in May was named senior vice president and New Jersey market executive for business banking at Investors Bank, which has 57 branches in South Jersey.

"I grew up in the bank," Buretta told 70and73.com in a telephone interview.

Buretta, now 35, said there's "not one day" she doesn't remember her time as a part-time teller while in high school. "Every day I go into this really, truly very happy."

When business moves beyond virtual, made necessary by the pandemic, Buretta will work out of Investor's Mount Laurel office on Route 38. Her team focuses on the business side, not the retail side she started in, and works to provide the bank's full line of services to companies and small businesses.

She said her early years in the business made her a better leader and "makes up the fiber of who I am."

Buretta was working in banking when she attended Gloucester County College. At first, she thought she'd follow her mother's career path in medicine and study radiology. But an early class convinced her otherwise: anatomy and seeing a cadaver.

"That kind of cemented things for me around 18 years old," said Buretta, a Pitman High School graduate. She didn't complete her bachelor's degree, choosing instead to focus on gaining experience in the banking industry.

Much of her learning has come from observing how others manage — "both good and bad." Buretta said she found some management techniques to emulate and others that made her realize "that's not who I am as a core person. That's not what I believe in."

She now mentors younger banking employees and takes it seriously. Too often, the word "mentor" is used loosely, Buretta explained. In her view, mentoring isn't a "Hey, how ya doing?" 

Buretta said she has thrived with being mentored and still is in contact with one mentor who is retired and no longer in banking. He still is a big part of her growth and development, she said, and she continues to reach out to him for advice.

"In a world where we all move at 1,000 miles an hour, sometimes you've got to hit the pause button," Buretta said. She will call her long-time mentor and ask, for example: "Hey, am I thinking about this in the right way?"

Buretta, now a Clarksboro resident, was vice president at HSBC bank, a vice president at TD Bank and has held other senior management positions.

She found that the so-called "career ladder" really isn't a ladder that goes straight up. "It squiggles," Buretta said. At times, you step on a rung that isn't a rung above where you are in your career, but you do so to gain experience, she added.

COVID-19 has presented its challenges to businesses. She said that she's learned from working with small businesses that many do not have a plan in place to manage a crisis.

Part of the job of the banking advisers at her bank are to help guide small businesses to think about a plan and how to survive an event like a pandemic. "We're not there to just give them a loan," she said.

"There's been quite a bit of lessons learned as businesses reopen," Buretta said.