One of FinancialForce CFO Gordy Brooks’ most valuable early career-building experiences began by butting heads with his CEO. The chief executive insisted on issuing sales commissions on a weekly basis – an ask that would have most finance chiefs pulling their hair out. After the CEO stuck to his guns in the face of counterarguments, Brooks spent two weeks carefully unpacking the problem behind his CEO’s requested outcome. He discovered that the root cause of the request involved ineffective oper...
Jan 28, 2019•51 min
A regular on Treasury and Risk Management Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in Finance” list, Smartsheet CFO Jennifer Ceran joined the company, a SaaS platform for managing collaborative work and automating work processes, in 2016 with impressive Silicon Valley bona fides. She’s served as CFO and in senior finance executive roles at Quotient Technology (formerly Coupons.com), Box, Ebay/PayPal and Cisco. Ceran’s current mission is to help lead Smartsheet’s long-term strategy, and she’s thri...
Jan 25, 2019•44 min
Props to Anaqua CFO and COO Justin Crotty for allowing us to first zero-in on his early career chapters when the economy showed no mercy. Crotty, who joined the leading provider of intellectual property management software and services, about three years ago, launched his career with a tech consultancy at the height of the dot.com era. In his mid-20s, he took on the role of project lead for a prickly client that all of his colleagues ducked (a professional development approach he advocates). Cro...
Jan 21, 2019•39 min
On first glance, Ra Medical Systems CFO Andrew Jackson’s 20 years as a finance executive in life sciences and technology companies seems have progressed in a traditional, orderly manner. A closer inspection of Jackson’s experience reveals that taking early-career risks can pay off handsomely. Jackson joined the manufacturer of laser-based solutions for the treatment of cardiovascular and dermatological diseases two weeks after the company decided to go public, and he filed the company’s initial ...
Jan 16, 2019•33 min
Of the three traditional paths to the finance chief’s seat, Bluesnap CFO Chris Menard took the approach less traveled, and it’s made quite a difference. Most fledgling finance executives begin their journey in public accounting or investment banking, Menard parlayed an undergraduate experience rich with entrepreneurial grooming (along with an MBA) into financial planning and analysis positions at several high-growth software and fintech companies. One early career assignment – where he assisted ...
Jan 14, 2019•33 min
In a sector known for advancing leading-edge risk mitigation strategies, CFO Rejji Hayes offers a risk-minded response to those who ask why he steered his career into the power and energy sector. “I had this epiphany where I said ‘It would be nice to find (a sector) that’s was a little less cyclical and a little less transactional.’ … And people generally need heat and electricity irrespective of economic cycles,” explains Hayes, who exited an investment banking career in 2009 to join the treasu...
Jan 10, 2019•45 min
Tony Tripeny’s remarkable career at Corning can be defined by some impressive numbers: 33 years of service in every aspect of corporate finance at the 167-year-old company whose cutting-edge materials reside in nearly every cell phone and flat screen among so many other products. Yet, the veteran EVP and CFO prefers to describe the keys to successful corporate finance leadership with qualitative measures such as time, location and communications. Tripeny continually exhorts his group to deploy a...
Jan 07, 2019•48 min
Cimpress CFO Sean Quinn likes to set increasingly difficult professional goals for himself. His commitment to continual personal growth hasn’t hurt his mass customization company: Cimpress’ annual revenue has soared from $500 million when Quinn joined in the company nine years ago to roughly $2.6 billion today. We catch up once more with Quinn, who assumed Cimpress’ CFO position in 2015 and who was recently named to The Boston Business Journal’s annual ‘40 Under 40’ list honoring Beantown’s best...
Jan 02, 2019•37 min
A brief summary of this episode
Dec 31, 2018•26 min
A brief summary of this episode
Dec 28, 2018•33 min
A brief summary of this episode
Dec 24, 2018•40 min
Serving as a corporate finance executive for an organization on the perilous journey from “small and private” to “large, publicly listed, and thriving” taught Catalant CFO Anitha Gopalan what to hone in on as a finance chief. That experience and others like it also sharpened her gambling chops. She says that her Silicon Valley start-up experience showed her “how important and relevant it is to completely understand the company story and strategy” along with “the drivers that create value for sha...
Dec 19, 2018•41 min
The executives and staffers profiled on Possible’s web site are described by the non-profit integrated healthcare provider as “possibilists” – “people with the perspective to embrace extraordinary challenge and the grit to get remarkable results anyway.” The term suits Possible CFO Pavan Makhija, a former investment banker who possesses dual undergraduate degrees in math and religion, a master’s in financial engineering from Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, and a...
Dec 17, 2018•36 min
Whenever he’s faced a difficult crossroads in life or business, Varnonis CFO Guy Melamed focused squarely on goals – sticking to them and scoring them. Despite playing for Israel’s under-21 national soccer team and fielding alluring offers to continue his playing career there, Melamed chose to leave his home country. He attended Boston College where he simultaneously played soccer, studied accounting and business, and learned English. His stick-to-itiveness helped him earn a B.A and an M.S.A. wh...
Dec 13, 2018•59 min
Before joining Tableau four years ago and taking over the CFO seat last July, Damon Fletcher worked through a progression of experiences that could serve as a career roadmap for up-and-coming finance chiefs. After earning his Master of Accounting degree, Fletcher joined PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he worked closely with one of the fastest-growing companies in the world during the early 2000s. His early-career work included M&A valuations and integrations, extensive travel, valuable gui...
Dec 10, 2018•37 min
Cloud ERP + Time = Strategic Influence When Kote Lomidze became World Learning’s CFO four years ago, he immediately began enhancing the functionality of a cloud-based ERP platform the global educational non-profit had implemented six months earlier. The work, which Lomidze oversaw in a very hands-on way, generated valuable returns as measured in dollars, time and influence. Thanks to his technological savvy, Lomidze and his team spearheaded the adoption of applications that streamlined timesheet...
Dec 06, 2018•47 min
After starting his career in a Big 4 accounting firm and then steadily ascending through numerous (and varied) corporate finance roles over nearly two decades, Michael Hug possessed a clear vision for his CFO tenure at the world’s largest publicly traded timeshare company. “I didn’t want my team to just be the people who come in, count the money and deposit it in the bank,” he notes. “Rather, I want us to be embedded in the business – to have a great relationship with our business leaders … whil...
Dec 03, 2018•28 min
Prior to joining Sysmex, a medical diagnostic testing equipment and information systems technology company, five years ago, spent his formative years in Siemens where his varied experience covered every aspect of corporate finance in addition to stints as the head of strategic projects for one of the conglomerate’s companies. One Garini’s guiding principles as a finance executive is to get as far away from his desk as possible and deeply engage with broad and diverse group of stakeholders. Over ...
Nov 29, 2018•37 min
Eagle-eyed vision may be Mphasis Executive Vice President and CFO V. Suryanarayanan’s most valuable leadership skill. His ability to zero in on crucial but obscured factors – market conditions affecting the timing of an IPO or the surprisingly high cost of indirect materials used in the motorcycle manufacturing process, for example – has helped him add substantial value to the companies he’s worked for while earning him impressive recognition. Honored as one of India’s 100 Best CFOs for 2017-18,...
Nov 26, 2018•47 min
Wasabi CFO Michael Bayer’s career ah-ha moment struck early. He was a college math whiz in the early days of PCs when a professor enlisted Bayer to move all of his paper-based finance and accounting records to a computerized system. “He took me under his wing and taught me a lot,” recalls Bayer, whose 25-plus year professional career includes various finance, operations, technology and business development roles primarily for venture-backed technology companies. “Only recently have I realized th...
Nov 21, 2018•51 min
When he started his career, Western Union CFO Raj Argawal never expected to wind up leading a global finance function. That seems appropriate today considering he defines his role – first and foremost – as “driving and executing the strategy of the company.” Trained as an electrical engineer at General Motors, Argawal also earned an MBA and then set out in pursuit of a variety of job roles (in the treasury function at General Mills, running one of Western Union’s business units) and diverse expe...
Nov 19, 2018•34 min
Tim Saunders seems like the kind of leader you’d absolutely follow into battle. He thrives in high-pressure situations, remains cool under pressure and truly values his troops’ expertise. Saunders also fully commits to taking on new -- and seemingly overwhelming – challenges, like the one that greeted him in his first finance executive role following his time in public accounting. During his first week on that job, Saunders discovered his telecommunications company had lost $25 million the previ...
Nov 15, 2018•37 min
Circle CFO Naeem Ishaq’s Forrest Gumpian career trajectory has given him extraordinary exposure to most of Silicon Valley’s touchstone technologies – the semiconductor, cloud computing, mobile payments and, most recently, cryptocurrency. After a stint as a dot.com-era entrepreneur he launched as an undergraduate, Ishaq has invested the past 18 years accumulating a trove of experience within some of the technology industry’s most iconic companies, including Intel, Salesforce, Square, Box and Circ...
Nov 12, 2018•51 min
A brief summary of this episode
Nov 08, 2018•48 min
A brief summary of this episode
Nov 05, 2018•33 min
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Nov 01, 2018•37 min
NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).
Oct 29, 2018•21 min
NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).
Oct 24, 2018•44 min
NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).
Oct 23, 2018•52 min
NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).
Oct 18, 2018•26 min
