CFO Thought Leader

Patrick McClymont still remembers the moment at IMAX when the numbers began moving in the wrong direction. Hired to help drive external growth through acquisitions and partnerships, he instead found himself sitting with CEO Rich Gelfond building what he calls an “early warning system.” Together, they agreed to monitor the next three film titles and “hold ourselves accountable” to a short-term scorecard, McClymont tells us. If the numbers shifted further, strategy would have to shift with them.That experience reinforced a lesson McClymont carried from his earlier years at Goldman Sachs and into multiple CFO roles: “the numbers don't lie,” he tells us. Before Goldman, he worked in real estate development, where he learned to “boil it down to the numbers” and find clarity quickly. At Goldman, advising transportation giants including UPS and major airlines exposed him to CEOs and CFOs navigating large-scale operational complexity.When he joined Sotheby's as CFO, however, McClymont discovered that financial fluency alone was not enough. The art specialists running major parts of the business “didn't think about the world the way that Goldman Sachs people do,” he tells us. Rather than force financial terminology into conversations, he changed his communication style, using “brown bag lunches” to connect financial priorities with the realities of individual business units.Today at Hagerty, that same mindset shapes his focus on customer economics, profitability, and building “one version of the truth,” he tells us.

Alex Chun already knew the management team at NEOGOV long before he became its CFO. As an investor at Warburg Pincus, he spent more than four years “in the trenches” with NEOGOV's leadership team, flying to Los Angeles to work through operational challenges alongside them, Chun tells us.His path to finance leadership did not begin in accounting or FP&A. Instead, Chun spent nearly a decade evaluating companies at Morgan Stanley, General Atlantic, and Warburg Pincus, developing what he calls “pattern recognition” by analyzing “dozens, if not hundreds” of businesses, Chun tells us.That investor mindset now shapes how he leads finance. After joining NEOGOV in 2021, Chun focused on transforming finance into the company's “centralized insights engine,” bringing quantitative discipline beyond the finance department and into sales, customer operations, and product decision-making, Chun tells us.He contrasts the polished presentations of boardrooms with the reality of operations, where even changing the pricing of a product can require “90 steps” across multiple teams, Chun tells us.Today, Chun is equally focused on AI's impact across the business. At NEOGOV, teams are using AI to analyze customer conversations, automate workflows, and rethink scalability itself, Chun tells us.

Adam Goldbruch still remembers the celebration. In 2017, he stood inside a Tel Aviv startup office while employees cheered a milestone: a Disney princess quiz had generated “2.8 million page views,” he tells us. Champagne circulated as the founder delivered a visionary speech about changing communication through content.At the time, Goldbruch was young enough to be swept up in the excitement, but skeptical enough to question what those metrics truly meant. Three years later, he found himself in the same company leading cost reductions and layoffs after realizing the celebrated KPI had not translated into sustainable value, he tells us.That experience shaped the finance philosophy he carries today as CFO of DoorLoop. Goldbruch's career began in construction finance, where he learned unit economics by seeing how materials and labor translated into physical buildings, he tells us. He later built FP&A functions across startups, private firms, and public companies, experiences that taught him how to identify the operational “ropes” that actually move a business forward.At DoorLoop, that mindset surfaced again when leadership considered several new monetization initiatives. Rather than chase immediate revenue, Goldbruch modeled one-, three-, and five-year outcomes and concluded the company should focus on expanding the number of property units served, he tells us.For Goldbruch, finance leadership is not about celebrating vanity metrics. It is about identifying the measurements that compound value over time.

When the pandemic began reshaping the world in early 2020, Sarah Riley was helping guide finance at Zoom through an unprecedented surge in demand. “You could see the volume of Zoom almost spiking up by the regions that were going into shutdown,” Riley tells us. What followed was unlike anything most software companies had experienced before. During her four years at Zoom, the company expanded from roughly $200 million in ARR to $4 billion, Riley tells us. At one point, Zoom spent nearly half a billion dollars on AWS infrastructure costs it had not anticipated, she explains.For Riley, the experience fundamentally reshaped how she viewed finance leadership. Rather than becoming fixated on gross margin guidance or traditional planning cycles, she says the finance team had to continually reevaluate the “strategic heart” of the business as Zoom evolved from an enterprise software company into a platform supporting schools, consumers, and businesses worldwide. “Forecasting and discipline comes second” in moments of extraordinary change, Riley tells us.That mindset now informs her role as CFO of dbt Labs, where she oversees finance, accounting, and data operations while helping guide the company through its merger with Fivetran. Riley says today's defining challenge for software businesses is balancing legacy operating models with the realities of AI-driven transformation. “You need to balance that with how do we make sure that we're investing aggressively enough in capturing what our user base is turning into,” she tells us.

Rick Hasselman recently boarded “a moving train,” describing his arrival at a newly merged SalesLoft and Clari business as both complex and energizing. Just a month and a half into the role, he is already immersed in integrating a $300 million-plus revenue company, he tells us.That early moment captures a defining pattern across Hasselman's career: a willingness to enter dynamic environments and impose structure where complexity dominates. At SalesLoft, that means unifying systems, aligning data, and translating operational activity into actionable insight. The merged platform combines sales engagement, forecasting, and conversational intelligence—capabilities that, when integrated, allow teams to “become smarter and smarter on what the next best activity is,” he tells us.But for Hasselman, integration is not just a technical exercise—it is a strategic opportunity. As he explains, bringing together two organizations creates a chance to rethink workflows entirely. Processes that once took “three or four days” can be redesigned to take one, he tells us. This mindset reflects a broader approach: finance as an enabler of operational clarity and efficiency, rather than a function limited to reporting results.At the center of this effort is data. Hasselman emphasizes that combining systems—from ERP to CRM—requires precision, but also unlocks new possibilities. By connecting internal data with external AI capabilities, the platform can extend its value beyond its own boundaries, he tells us.For Hasselman, the challenge is clear: unify, simplify, and position the business to act faster—turning complexity into a competitive advantage.

Macrina Kgil recalls a moment when she first encountered blockchain technology and “could not grasp whatever it was trying to do,” she tells us. Even with an engineering background, the concept felt distant and unclear. Yet that early confusion would later become a defining thread in her career.Years later, when the opportunity arose to join Figure, Kgil recognized something different. The company had moved beyond theory—it was actively commercializing blockchain to reshape capital markets. That realization, she tells us, drew her in. What she saw was an intersection between consumer lending and blockchain innovation, two domains she had come to understand deeply through prior roles.At Figure, that intersection takes form as a capital marketplace where loans can be originated and sold with greater speed and transparency. Traditional processes, she explains, required extensive validation and negotiation across multiple parties. By contrast, blockchain enables a standardized system where loan ownership is visible and singular—“you can only have one owner,” she tells us—reducing inefficiencies and risks like double pledging.This progression—from uncertainty to conviction—mirrors Kgil's broader strategic mindset. Rather than waiting for technologies to mature, she leans into complexity, learning from within. Her decision to engage with blockchain early reflects a willingness to navigate ambiguity in pursuit of long-term impact.For Kgil, innovation is not simply about adopting new tools. It is about applying them in ways that improve outcomes—making financial systems faster, clearer, and ultimately more effective for those who depend on them.

At Sage Future in San Francisco, three conversations reveal how AI is reshaping the finance function—from vision to execution to industry impact. Sage CTO Aaron Harris outlines the shift from assistive tools to autonomous systems, where trust and transparency will determine adoption. Sage's Jon Fasoli brings that vision into today's finance workflows, where teams are cautiously embracing AI to accelerate decisions while maintaining control. And Sage's Julie Adams shows how these changes are unfolding inside construction, where real-time visibility and connected data are becoming essential to protecting margins and managing complexity.Aaron Harris, CTO, Sage Explores AI's evolution toward autonomy, emphasizing that trust, explainability, and governance will determine how quickly finance leaders are willing to let go.Jon Fasoli, SVP, Sage Details how finance teams are applying AI today—balancing speed with control, and reinvesting productivity gains into faster, more informed decision-making.Julie Adams, SVP, Sage Highlights how AI is connecting fragmented construction workflows, enabling end-to-end visibility across projects to better manage costs, labor, and profitability.

Andre Mancl recalls sitting only a few months into his first CFO role when a senior technology executive arrived with an urgent warning: engineers were leaving for Google and Facebook, and the company needed an immediate across-the-board compensation increase of 30% to 40%. It would have been a major financial commitment. But Mancl hesitated. Drawing on years spent reading markets and assessing business conditions, he tells us the moment felt “toppy.” The SPAC market was imploding, IPO activity had stalled, and he believed private-market conditions would soon tighten. Instead of approving the full request, he supported a smaller targeted pool of compensation adjustments. A week later, hiring freezes began spreading across large technology companies.That decision captures the uncommon path that shaped his judgment. Before finance leadership, Mancl spent nearly nine years in the U.S. Navy, including seven as a helicopter aviator. There, he learned that decisions carry real consequences. He describes flying night landings onto ships with junior pilots, keeping his hand near the controls—not to take over, but to prevent a dangerous mistake. The lesson still informs how he leads teams today.An MBA earned while teaching ROTC at UCLA opened the door to investment banking, where he spent roughly 15 years advising high-growth internet companies on IPOs, financings, and M&A. Over time, he says, business assessment became instinctive: when margins or growth rates looked wrong, something usually was.Today, as CFO of Nium, he applies that same blend of discipline and pattern recognition to a global payments market he values at $100 trillion, he tells us. His focus now includes automation, stronger margins, and using data to drive sharper decisions across the company.

In the desert during military officer training, Yuval Atsmon entered one wrong number into a GPS device. Instead of reaching the intended destination, he and his team ended up in the wrong location, and the simulated mission failed. The mistake cost him the chance to finish at the top of his class, he tells us. Years later, he would recognize that moment as an early lesson in leadership: numbers and systems matter only if you truly understand them.That principle resurfaced when Atsmon was working with McKinsey in the Philippines on the privatization of an electricity asset. He spent several late nights studying a pricing framework that did not make sense. Eventually, he concluded the formula was recursive and would allow prices to rise indefinitely. Others initially thought he was wrong, but the process was halted and reexamined, he tells us. The experience reinforced what would become one of his core beliefs: “You can never delegate understanding.”That mindset helps explain a career shaped by movement across industries, cultures, and responsibilities. Raised in Israel, Atsmon studied law before joining McKinsey as a business analyst roughly 25 years ago, he tells us. His career later carried him across more than 20 countries, including six years in Shanghai during a pivotal economic period. There, he became one of the few non-Chinese leaders in the office and made partner during a moment of global uncertainty, he tells us.Today, as CFO of McKinsey & Company, he applies the same discipline to a far larger stage. Whether assessing liquidity, guiding investments, or navigating AI-driven change, Atsmon returns to the lesson first learned in the desert: leaders may delegate tasks, but they cannot delegate understanding.

Before his career became closely tied to middle-market businesses, Scott Thorell built his foundation in larger arenas. He began at Ernst & Young in New York, auditing financial services firms, then moved to Campbell Soup Company, where financial and operational audit assignments took him to Australia, Hong Kong, Europe, and locations across the United States, Thorell tells us. Those chapters gave him technical range and global perspective.But the defining stretch of his career emerged after he returned home. In entrepreneurial and founder-led businesses around Philadelphia, titles mattered less than adaptability. At 28, he was unexpectedly asked to lead a printing operation with roughly 175 employees after managing a much smaller team. He suddenly found himself between an entrepreneurial culture and a corporate parent focused on quarterly performance. Looking back, he says he made “a lot of mistakes,” particularly around people decisions and compensation changes, yet the experience became one of his most formative leadership chapters, Thorell tells us.The printing business became its own classroom. He encountered operations where overtime was uncontrolled, jobs were mispriced, and employees were highly skilled craftspeople with limited exposure to financial concepts, Thorell tells us. His task was not simply to improve margins, but to build understanding without damaging quality or morale.Today, at Benetrends Financial, he brings that same cross-functional mindset to helping entrepreneurs access capital through retirement funds, SBA financing, or both. For Thorell, leadership was forged far from the spotlight—close to customers, close to owners, and close to the decisions that determine whether businesses grow or stall.

In this special episode, we revisit a past conversation with Hilary Maxson and explore why her appointment as CFO of Oracle Corporation comes at such a consequential moment. As Oracle accelerates investments in AI infrastructure and cloud capacity, the finance role now extends well beyond stewardship into capital allocation, operational discipline, and long-term value creation. Maxson's career—from banking to global leadership roles at AES and Schneider Electric—offers clues to why she may be uniquely suited for this chapter. Joining us is industry analyst Bob Evans, who helps unpack what the hire could signal about Oracle's future direction.

As a child in Austria, Thomas Baumgartner bundled unwanted toys into mystery bags and sold them to classmates. Buyers could not see what was inside—they simply paid and took their chances. He cleared out old toys and earned spending money, he tells us. The story is lighthearted, but it reveals something enduring: an instinct to create value, move decisively, and keep looking for the next opportunity.That same mindset has shaped a career spent inside the voestalpine group. Baumgartner began in controlling roles in Austria, where he developed an early view of finance as a forward-looking discipline. A controller, he explains, is the person spotting the iceberg ahead, while others are still measuring the water temperature. The distinction matters. For him, finance was never only about recording results—it was about anticipating scenarios and helping steer the business.A promotion to the UK expanded that perspective. Suddenly, he was navigating unfamiliar pension systems, new tax rules, and a different business culture, he tells us. The move required more than technical knowledge. It demanded adaptation. Over time, he learned that direct leadership styles do not travel seamlessly across borders, and he evolved toward a more collaborative approach built on listening and buy-in.Today, as CFO of voestalpine Metsec plc, he applies that same blend of discipline and curiosity. The company invests heavily in certifications, fire testing, and trusted solutions rather than competing only on price, he tells us. He has also championed internal AI Test Labs to help employees explore new tools and generate ideas from the ground up. “Stand still is not an option,” he tells us.

David Larson still recalls the moment he challenged conventional thinking inside Thomson Reuters. A shared services team in Hyderabad, long viewed as transactional, held untapped potential. Rather than accept the status quo, Larson pushed to integrate the team into the broader finance function—despite resistance tied to time zones and skepticism. The effort required planning, persuasion, and patience, but ultimately reshaped how the organization operated.That moment reflects a career defined less by linear progression and more by deliberate expansion. Larson began in tax at Ernst & Young before pivoting into M&A, where he “didn't know anything about valuing companies” (tells us). Over two decades, he developed a deep understanding of how businesses function end-to-end, leading due diligence, integrations, and go-to-market alignment.His willingness to step into the unfamiliar—relocating internationally, raising his hand for new roles, and moving beyond corporate development—enabled him to broaden into enterprise leadership. At Thomson Reuters, he progressed through finance leadership roles before becoming Chief Strategy Officer, gaining a long-term view of growth and competitive positioning.Today, as CFO of Feedzai, Larson applies these lessons to an AI-driven business where trust and execution are paramount. He emphasizes that finance leaders must understand “how companies operate…from A to Z” (tells us), pairing data discipline with business insight.For Larson, the CFO role has evolved beyond numbers. It is about shaping strategy, guiding investment, and helping organizations see the business clearly—end-to-end.

In this special third installment of Suite Voices, featuring general counsels from The L Suite, Laura Belmont explores how organizations can adopt AI responsibly while balancing speed with strategic direction. Building on insights from earlier episodes, she emphasizes that AI success depends on aligning usage with business goals and governance frameworks—not just rapid deployment. Belmont highlights early risks such as “shadow AI” and underscores the importance of CFO–GC collaboration in evaluating financial and legal exposure. She also stresses continuous training and vendor scrutiny, while looking ahead to a future where GCs act as systems architects embedding accountability into AI-driven decision-making.

Tom DiDesidero describes a period when SmartRecruiters was actively taking customers from a much larger competitor. It wasn't just momentum—it was proof. “We were stealing a lot of their customers,” DiDesidero tells us, describing how that traction became a defining signal of value.At the same time, SmartRecruiters was moving quickly on a new front. “We were really the first mover in the embedded AI product,” DiDesidero tells us, emphasizing that speed and execution—not perfection—mattered most. The team brought its AI platform to market early, leaning on strong customer relationships and credibility. Beta users quickly became paying customers, reinforcing that the strategy was working.This combination—customer momentum and early AI execution—positioned SmartRecruiters as more than just a product. It became a strategic asset. “It's important… it's not just the theory, it's the execution,” DiDesidero tells us. That distinction ultimately shaped how SAP evaluated the opportunity.Still, the deal itself was only the beginning. Integration, he explains, is where value is realized. “You keep being you. Don't let our bureaucracy slow you down,” DiDesidero tells us, recalling the message from SAP leadership.Six months in, the reality is nuanced. “It's a mixture of progress and pain every day,” he tells us. Yet, for DiDesidero, the differentiator remains the people—teams committed to building, adapting, and pushing forward.In his view, success at scale isn't just about strategy or technology—it's about sustaining the behaviors that made growth possible in the first place.

Within his first 90 days at Docusign, Blake Grayson recognized the company needed to make difficult efficiency decisions following a post-COVID slowdown. Acting quickly, he partnered with leadership to address the issue, noting that “making the hard decision faster is way better than waiting,” Grayson tells us. That moment set the tone for how he approaches finance leadership—decisive, data-driven, and focused on forward momentum.That same mindset now shapes how he views Docusign's evolution. Long known as the “default eSignature business,” Grayson tells us, the company serves over 1.8 million customers worldwide. Yet he emphasizes that the real opportunity lies beyond the signature itself. “There's so much more to an agreement than just the act of the signature,” he tells us, pointing to missed renewal clauses and buried pricing terms as examples of untapped value.This realization underpins Docusign's push into intelligent agreement management. Early results suggest traction: the platform reached more than $350 million in annualized recurring revenue within 18 months, Grayson tells us, contributing to a broader milestone of over $1 billion in both billings and free cash flow. Still, he remains measured, describing the progress as “early validation” while acknowledging the company is “in the early innings,” he tells us.Across these moments, a consistent theme emerges. Whether evaluating operational efficiency or unlocking customer value, Grayson's approach centers on acting with clarity and speed—using finance not as a constraint, but as a catalyst for disciplined growth.

Late one night in Calgary, Amy Wang was running final checks on a billion-dollar transaction when something didn't sit right. “My immediate instinct…was to dismiss it,” she tells us. After all, multiple teams and advisors had already vetted the deal. But she couldn't let it go. Instead, she challenged the work—carefully, respectfully—and was right. The correction prevented more than a million dollars from being misallocated.That moment became a defining inflection point. It reshaped how Wang viewed leadership—not as deference to expertise, but as the willingness to trust one's own judgment. Titles and credentials, she tells us, may signal experience, but they don't guarantee accuracy.Her path to CFO may appear traditional—beginning in audit and progressing through finance roles—but Wang emphasizes that the real education came from moments like this. Early in her career, she believed success meant mastering the numbers. But during Solium's acquisition by Morgan Stanley, she saw that “everyone can read a spreadsheet,” she tells us. What truly moved the deal forward was the ability to articulate a compelling narrative behind those numbers.Today, as CFO, Wang carries both lessons forward. Technical skills may “get you into the room,” she tells us, but leadership requires asking better questions, making decisions with imperfect information, and having the courage to speak up.In an era increasingly shaped by AI, she believes that judgment—not data alone—will ultimately differentiate finance leaders.

In 2023, stepping into the CFO role at Twilio, Aidan Viggiano faced a defining reality: “the first hard call was a layoff,” she tells us. The company had surged during the pandemic as digital communications accelerated, but by mid-2022, growth slowed while profitability lagged. “We can't be slowing in growth and not be profitable and not generating cash,” she explains, describing the moment that forced a fundamental shift in strategy.Over the next six months, Twilio reduced its workforce by about 40%, she tells us—a decision that tested not just financial discipline but leadership resolve. For Viggiano, the experience underscored a core principle: communication is as critical as the decision itself. “The importance of over communication…being transparent… and treating everybody with humanity,” she tells us, became central to how she navigated the transition.This moment reflects a broader leadership mindset shaped by aligning growth with accountability. The pivot from rapid expansion to balanced performance required not only cost action but a cultural reset—one grounded in clarity, trust, and execution.At the same time, Viggiano continues to frame Twilio's value through its role as a communications infrastructure provider, powering interactions between businesses and consumers at scale. From authentication codes to real-time customer engagement, the company's reach is often invisible but essential.For Viggiano, the lesson is clear: finance leadership is not only about numbers—it is about guiding organizations through inflection points with transparency, discipline, and humanity.

Early in his career, Rich Schmidt recalls presenting an analysis to leadership—only to be told, “we want you to go fix it” . The assignment marked a turning point. What began as financial analysis quickly became ownership, execution, and accountability across the business.That moment would come to define Schmidt's path. After starting in public accounting—“a grind,” as he tells us—he gained exposure to multiple industries in rapid succession, from manufacturing to healthcare . Yet it was the convergence of finance, technology, and operations that ultimately shaped his trajectory. Rather than remain on a traditional finance track, Schmidt chose what he describes as a “multi-dimensional” path, embracing both financial depth and operational breadth .At times, the decision created uncertainty. He admits he wrestled with whether he was moving “sideways” instead of forward . But over time, the combination of skills proved differentiating—particularly as he took on M&A integrations and enterprise initiatives that required both insight and execution.Years later, that same mindset informed a defining leadership decision. Facing operational complexity after multiple acquisitions, Schmidt led a transition to a cloud-based ERP system—an investment that ultimately reduced the company's close cycle from “eight to ten days” to “four and a half days,” he tells usLooking back, Schmidt's journey underscores a consistent theme: finance leadership is not just about analysis. It is about stepping beyond it—owning outcomes, building capability, and continuously moving forward.CFOTL: For those among us who might not know much about the Inmar Intelligence, tell us about it. What's it about today?Schmidt: The company, Inmar Intelligence, was founded in 1980 by John Whitaker. He set out to solve a problem in the grocery retail and CPG industry. At the time, paper coupons were being accepted at stores and then sent to different providers across the country, where they were literally being weighed to determine the value owed back to retailers.Whitaker saw an opportunity to use emerging technology—the PC—to solve this. The company created a way to digitize coupons, capture the data, and know exactly what was owed and to whom. That allowed us to invoice on behalf of retailers and manage the money flow between retailers and brands.What that really did was solve a complex, two-sided marketplace problem where transparency was limited. That became the foundation of the business—using technology and strong governance to solve difficult problems. Today, we operate largely in what we call the MarTech space, delivering incentive and media services for retailers and brands, and we also serve healthcare—supporting pharmacies, hospitals, and life sciences companies.

Tony McDonald prefers a different image of the CFO role—one that replaces restraint with direction. “I would like to be considered as one of the people on the stagecoach that helps hold the reins,” he tells us, describing sales as “the horses that I want galloping always full speed ahead.”That mindset was shaped during his time at Oracle, where he operated inside a deeply sales-driven organization. There, McDonald learned that finance could influence growth not by limiting it, but by guiding it. His role extended beyond oversight—he led financial planning across an organization of roughly 140,000 people, gaining visibility into how revenue engines scale and where they break down, he tells us.Today, that experience informs how he approaches revenue operations. Rather than acting as a gatekeeper, McDonald positions finance as an enabler—rewarding “exceptional performance…unconditionally relative to quality revenue,” while maintaining rigorous control over the metrics that matter, he tells us.This balance requires precision. From lead generation through the sales funnel, McDonald emphasizes continuous calibration—using data to refine performance and ensure that growth is both measurable and repeatable. He remains actively involved, even helping build marketing dashboards to improve visibility across the funnel, he tells us.For McDonald, revenue operations is not a support function—it is where finance and strategy intersect. The goal is simple: let sales run fast, but make sure they're headed in the right direction.

In this CFO Thought Leader episode, Jack Sweeney speaks with technology general counsel Akin Adekeye about when AI becomes a board-level concern. Adekeye explains AI crosses into governance when it impacts risk, capital allocation, and competitiveness. He highlights “shadow AI” risks, regulatory uncertainty, and the need for structured oversight. Effective governance includes board involvement, executive ownership, and clear operating controls. CFOs play a central role in balancing innovation with risk, ensuring organizations neither lag competitors nor expose themselves to harm. Looking ahead, AI governance will become standardized, with rising expectations for board literacy, disclosure, and formal control frameworks.Three Key Takeaways1. AI becomes a board issue when it impacts enterprise risk and capital allocationThe transition point is not technical maturity—it's strategic exposure. Once AI influences risk posture, investment decisions, or long-term strategy, it moves beyond IT into board-level oversight.2. Governance must evolve alongside AI adoptionBoards can no longer treat AI as a siloed innovation effort. It requires structured governance frameworks that address accountability, transparency, and cross-functional implications.3. Legal and finance leaders play a critical translation roleGeneral Counsels and CFOs are essential in helping boards understand AI's implications—bridging technical capabilities with risk, compliance, and strategic decision-making.

Marc Mehlman still recalls the moment a senior leader pulled him aside and told him he was “in such a rush” and needed to “enjoy the journey,” he tells us. At the time, Mehlman was part of a leadership program filled with high achievers eager to move quickly into senior roles. Instead, he took a different path—spending nearly a decade moving laterally across FP&A, corporate development, strategy, and operational roles.That deliberate detour became the foundation of his leadership philosophy. By working across divisions and even geographies, Mehlman built a broad understanding of how businesses actually function. Later, when he stepped into operating roles—including leading a roughly $1 billion revenue segment—he began to see a gap. Many finance leaders could explain results, but not the decisions behind them. “They're just numbers,” he tells us, emphasizing that financial outcomes are simply the result of actions taken across the business.Another pivotal moment came when he initially declined an investor relations role. After multiple conversations with senior leadership, he accepted—and discovered the power of communication. There, he learned to tell a consistent story, build credibility, and deliver on expectations quarter after quarter.Today, as CFO, those experiences converge. His early focus on exploration, combined with operational insight and storytelling discipline, shapes how he evaluates decisions, partners across functions, and defines the modern CFO—not as a reporter of results, but as an architect of them.

Michael Perica had been discussing the implications of AI with investors for more than a year, but the market didn't fully react—until one particular moment. In late January and early February, a wave of announcements around enterprise-focused AI models and workflow plugins triggered what Perica refers to as the “SaaS-pocalypse.” In a single day, roughly $258 billion in SaaS market value disappeared, he tells us.For Perica, the episode confirmed something he had already been sensing in conversations with investors and clients. The traditional path to enterprise modernization—committing to large, monolithic software platforms—was no longer the only option. AI, particularly emerging agentic AI technologies, was beginning to offer organizations a new route: modernizing workflows and processes without necessarily replacing entire systems.The sudden market reaction accelerated those conversations. Investors and executives began reaching out to Rimini Street asking whether this moment validated the alternative technology path the company had been discussing. For Perica, the answer was clear. The event underscored that organizations now had the ability to tailor AI models directly to specific business processes rather than conforming their operations to a rigid software roadmap.That shift has shaped how Perica thinks about strategy going forward. Instead of viewing AI purely as a tool for efficiency, he sees it as a catalyst for enterprise-wide transformation. Finance leaders, he argues, now have an opportunity to work closely with CIOs to rethink workflows, eliminate operational bottlenecks, and deploy targeted AI solutions that create quick wins across the organization.In Perica's view, the SaaS-pocalypse wasn't just a market correction. It was a signal that a new technology paradigm had arrived—and that forward-looking CFOs must be ready to lead the change.

Andrew Bender still remembers a moment from high school football practice when a coach challenged him with a simple question: “Do you want to be all conference or all state?” The comment surprised him. At the time, Bender tells us he wasn't even sure he had the potential to reach the lower bar. Yet the moment stayed with him because it revealed something important—that sometimes others see possibilities before we do.That lesson about recognizing potential shaped how Bender approached his career decisions. Early on, while working at William Blair, he faced a choice common among his peers: continue toward private equity or pursue a different path. Instead of following the typical investment track, he realized he preferred working inside organizations rather than advising them from the outside. The parts of investment banking he enjoyed most involved “diving into the organizations” he represented, Bender tells us.Over time, that realization led him toward roles blending strategy and finance. Consulting and business school helped him develop structured problem-solving skills and the ability to learn new industries quickly. Later, at Snyder's-Lance, he worked across corporate strategy and business-unit finance, gaining operational perspective that would prepare him for future CFO roles.That blend of strategy and finance thinking surfaced again after Bender joined BNI Global. Preparing board materials, he realized the company tracked numerous KPIs but struggled to explain performance drivers. If the metrics didn't link to financial outcomes, he recalls thinking, “what are we doing here?”The solution was simplification. Bender helped refocus leadership on five core business drivers—member renewals, visitor activity, conversion rates, chapter launches, and pricing—while teaching operational leaders how those metrics translate into financial performance.

Early in Lucanet's expansion, two Chinese employees working in Germany noticed something unusual. The consolidation software they worked with functioned so well that they believed it could succeed in their home market. Acting on that conviction, they traveled from Berlin back to China and built what would become Lucanet's Chinese business. The story illustrates how a tool designed for global complexity could travel easily across borders, Gurney tells us.Lucanet's origins are firmly rooted in Germany, where the company first built its reputation with a consolidation platform designed for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. That design decision proved foundational. Because customers often consolidate entities across countries, the platform had to integrate financial data from different jurisdictions and support multiple accounting frameworks, Gurney tells us. The system can report under German GAAP, IFRS, or different management accounting rules and allows users to toggle between those views efficiently, he tells us.Today, the company's geographic reach reflects that original cross-border orientation. While Germany remains Lucanet's strongest market, the company now operates across Europe and Asia, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, and Singapore, Gurney tells us. Increasingly, a majority of new customer bookings come from outside Lucanet's historical DACH and Netherlands markets, he tells us.Growth has also been shaped by capital structure changes. After roughly eighteen years as a founder-run business, HG Capital made a majority investment in 2022, accelerating both product development and geographic expansion, Gurney tells us.For Gurney, who joined Lucanet at the start of May last year, the company's focus remains clear: build tools that make the Office of the CFO more effective across borders and systems, he tells us.

Ashley Still, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intuit's mid-market business, discusses how the expectations of finance leaders are shifting as AI reshapes the finance function. She explains how Intuit is expanding beyond its small-business roots with Intuit Enterprise Suite, designed to serve growing mid-market organizations seeking faster implementation and lower total cost than traditional ERP systems. Still highlights how AI-powered agents are helping finance teams reduce manual work, accelerate month-end insights, and focus more on strategic decision-making. As the CFO role evolves from scorekeeper to growth driver, she believes technology will increasingly enable finance leaders to connect data, manage risk, and guide business growth.

Early in his career, Intekhab Nazeer found himself sitting in go-to-market meetings rather than finance reviews. A CFO mentor had pushed him beyond traditional accounting responsibilities, exposing him to pipeline discussions and sales forecasting. That experience changed how he viewed finance leadership. Instead of simply reporting financial results, he began understanding “how pipeline is generated, how deal flow is measured, how the forecasting really works,” Nazeer tells us. The exposure reshaped his perspective, shifting his mindset from reporting outcomes to influencing them.The shift became even more real when he stepped into an interim CFO role after his mentor moved on. Responsibility changed overnight. “I was no longer supporting decisions. I was making decisions,” Nazeer tells us, describing board meetings, capital allocation choices, and the balancing act between growth and risk.Throughout his career, he continued to place finance alongside operations rather than apart from them. At one venture-backed company, that mindset proved critical. Revenue targets were being met, yet something felt wrong. When Nazeer overlaid unit economics—customer acquisition cost, payback period, and expansion revenue—he discovered the company was optimizing growth while quietly locking in unprofitable customer behavior, he tells us.The response required collaboration rather than spreadsheets alone. He worked with sales and product leaders to redefine the ideal customer profile, adjust pricing discipline, and elevate metrics like payback period and the “magic number” into core operating indicators, he tells us.The experience reinforced a lesson he carries today: the CFO role is “far less about spreadsheets and more about psychology,” Nazeer tells us. Precision creates accuracy, but influence creates outcomes.

Fiber is “a lot of investment up front for that stream of cash flow in the future,” Derek Doyle tells us. At C Spire, that reality defines nearly every strategic decision.The advanced technology and communications company has been reinventing itself for more than 70 years, Doyle tells us. Today, it is the largest privately held wireless carrier in the U.S. and operates 22,000 miles of fiber, placing it among the top 20 fiber internet providers in the country by premise passings, he tells us. The company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars expanding beyond Mississippi into Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida, Doyle tells us—moves that require disciplined capital judgment.For Doyle, capital allocation is not just about near-term profit. It is about equity value. Public companies may emphasize shareholder return metrics, but as a private company, C Spire centers on equity value growth, he tells us. “I'm a big intrinsic value person,” Doyle explains, grounding decisions in discounted cash flow and intrinsic value models, he tells us.That approach requires looking beyond projected profit to the full funding equation—how much must be borrowed, how much capital deployed up front, and what long-term cash flows justify the investment, Doyle tells us.Ultimately, the objective is clear: invest resources in what “drives that needle the most,” he tells us—ensuring that growth in connectivity translates into sustainable enterprise value.

In this episode of Planning Aces, CFO Kevin Rubin of Zscaler, CFO Bruce Schuman of Universal Technical Institute, and CFO Razzak Jallow of FloQast share how disciplined FP&A leadership is shaping AI adoption. Rubin frames AI as a capital allocation exercise governed centrally to prevent tool sprawl. Schuman stresses foundational readiness—data governance, ERP consolidation, and process redesign—before deploying AI-driven forecasting. Jallow cautions against fragmented “spaghetti AI,” advocating for platform coherence and skill development. Together, they reveal that AI success in FP&A depends less on speed and more on governance, architecture, and trust in the planning process.

Nearly 90% of Americans suffer from metabolic disease, Manu Diwakar tells us, citing a recent McKinsey & Company study. For Diwakar, CFO of Virta Health, that statistic defines both the scale of the challenge and the clarity of the mission.Metabolic disease, he explains, includes type 2 diabetes, obesity, liver disease, kidney disease, heart disease, and high blood pressure—“branches of a tree,” he tells us, all sharing the same root cause: poor nutrition. Virta's model blends medical professionals and technology to reverse those conditions, partnering with insurers, employers, and government entities in a B2B2C framework.From a finance perspective, the impact is measurable. Diwakar tells us Virta uses pharmacy and medical claims data to compare enrolled members with non-enrolled employees who share the same conditions—creating what he describes as a “really clean A/B test.” For type 2 diabetes, the company delivers a “two-to-one ROI,” he tells us, making the value proposition tangible.In a market captivated by GLP-1 drugs, the numbers sharpen further. Virta charges about $150 per month, Diwakar tells us, compared with roughly $1,000 per month list price for GLP-1s—about $500 after rebates. More important, he notes that when patients stop GLP-1s, weight often returns. By targeting the root cause—nutrition habits—Virta aims to make results sustainable and long-lasting, he tells us.For Diwakar, disciplined measurement and root-cause thinking align strategy with impact—improving health while lowering cost.

Before his first cup of coffee, Alex Melamud opens Slack—not to scan revenue charts first, but to read customer feedback. “The first one that may surprise you as a CFO that I look at is actually NPS,” he tells us. At Engine, every survey drops into a shared channel so “every executive can see” what customers said, he tells us.That habit fits a finance leader who didn't grow up in the CFO seat. Melamud started in investment banking and then spent 16 years in private equity, learning to build theses, chase signal, and “sell… the product of private equity,” he tells us. Sitting on boards, he watched the CFO role evolve from “corporate governance accounting” into “executive first and maybe CFO second,” he tells us—someone who can talk like product, sales, or operations and earn board trust.Engine became the moment he stepped inside. After leading the company's round “18 months ago,” joining the board, and helping with a CFO search, he looked at founder “Eli” and asked, “what if I joined you as CFO?” he tells us. The draw was a focused mission: serving SMB travel, where customers book “like a consumer” and lose corporate rates and visibility, he tells us.Now his investor lens shows up in the unglamorous work. During annual planning, he dug into the “top 50 costs” outside headcount and pushed leaders to treat each contract “as a brand new relationship,” he tells us—an inspection that produced “10, 15%” savings and “tens of millions of dollars,” he tells us.

On her first day as CFO at Greenphire, Sue Vestri sat in a conference room “learning all of the acronyms” of the clinical trial industry, she tells us. There were “many, many, many,” she recalls, and she listened to the sales team outside her door to understand how the product was positioned and why it mattered.That willingness to learn from the ground up defines her career. Earlier, a mentor warned her she would stagnate if she stayed in the safety of a large company. “You've got to go to grow,” he told her. She left for a 100-employee cloud software firm, a decision that launched a string of growth-company chapters, transactions, and ultimately multiple CFO seats.At Greenphire, she joined when the company had roughly 72 employees and “very low double digit revenue,” she tells us. Under private equity ownership, it expanded globally, shifted from clinical sites to big pharma customers, and supported the Pfizer clinical trial during COVID. Sue and her CEO conducted “20 or 30 presentations” during a remote exit process, she tells us.Today, as CFO of CRIO, she describes finance as embedded in the business—not “sitting behind a desk… producing financial statements.” Her filter for AI is deliberate: avoid the “shiny object” and invest in what is “truly transformational,” she explains. Whether evaluating predictive revenue indicators or AI tools, Sue's throughline remains the same—grow, but with discipline.

In his early 30s, Guillermo Lopez walked into finance as an outsider. “Nobody was giving me a chance in finance because I was an engineer,” he tells us. Then a boss took “a risk” and moved him into a finance role—partly because he was “good with numbers,” and partly because his consulting background meant he could be put “in front of…external parties,” Lopez tells us.That entry point set the tone for how he builds a career: intentionally and with breadth. At American Express, he moved across businesses and finance roles on purpose, because “it's important to get breath, especially if you're thinking about a CFO,” he tells us. Over time, he came to describe himself as “very data driven”—the “non emotional part of the decision making,” he tells us—while also learning to make decisions with “imperfect information” in global roles, he tells us.A later inflection arrived after Visa acquired Tink. Lopez became “the grown up” Visa sent to Stockholm, commuting from London each week, he tells us. The environment was smaller, faster, and short on big-company support. It was “daunting,” he tells us, but it taught him to move quickly, focus on priorities, and take bigger career risks.That same blend—speed and discipline—shows up in his definition of finance's strategic role: being embedded in investment and capital-allocation decisions with data in hand, Lopez tells us.His proof point comes from an earlier chapter. In an international CFO role, he helped reframe how a business allocated “close to $700 million a year,” building ROI insights that pointed to “$30 million more of revenue every year,” he tells us.

An employee is on vacation in the mountains when it happens: “I left my laptop at home.” Instead of scrambling, the employee logs into a virtual desktop from another device, pulling up what looks and feels like their own PC, delivered through the cloud. That simple moment captures how Steve Shimizu describes Omnissa's mission—helping companies enable a digital employee experience that allows people to work from anywhere, on any device, he tells us.For Shimizu, this practical use case reflects a broader evolution in end-user computing. What began with desktop computers moved to laptops and mobile devices, and now extends to “everything” that consumes data—from retail scanners to cars, Shimizu tells us. Omnissa operates at that expanding edge, supporting both physical and virtual endpoints while helping employees stay productive regardless of location.That same blend of flexibility and discipline shapes how Shimizu thinks about the company's growth. Although Omnissa emerged from a carve-out, he resists the startup label. Running a multi-billion-dollar organization with thousands of employees is more like earning a pilot license and being handed a “747” as your first plane, he tells us. Growth matters, but only when paired with financial stability—what he calls “profitable growth.”Finance plays a central role in that balance. Shimizu explains that real partnership comes from moving beyond surface-level metrics and “double-clicking” into the data until it becomes actionable. Just as importantly, finance must revisit those decisions, measuring what worked and what didn't, to guide the company through its next phase of transformation, he tells us.

As he nears the end of his first 100 days at Nintex, Burt Chao is doing something many new CFOs resist: listening more than talking. Understanding the business, its people, and its real growth potential comes before dashboards or directives, he tells us.Chao describes Nintex as a company with a “long and rich history” of helping organizations automate mission-critical work, but one now entering a new season. That evolution centers on orchestration—whether AI-enabled, agent-based, or rooted in RPA—while remaining clear-eyed about identity. Nintex, he explains, will not “become an AI company.” Instead, it aims to help customers leverage AI deliberately, embedding it where it strengthens the foundation of their operations, he tells us.That emphasis on fundamentals shows up quickly in how Chao evaluates performance. In today's environment, “there's no more important number than growth,” he tells us. Margins, profitability, and even rule-of-40 metrics only make sense once leadership understands what growth is possible and how it can be accelerated. Benchmarks matter, but only as tools; every business must be understood on its own terms, he tells us.That discipline has shaped some of the most challenging moments of his career. Chao recalls “shrink to grow” decisions—walking away from investments that still produced revenue but no longer delivered the best return. Those moments are rarely spreadsheet problems alone. They are emotional, cultural, and deeply human, requiring influence rather than authority, he tells us. For Chao, that balance—grounding strategy in numbers while leading people through change—defines the modern CFO role.

The lesson arrived abruptly in a boardroom in Battle Creek. After months of analysis, charts, and market data, the president of Kellogg's cereal division looked up and said, “That's all interesting. I just don't know what to do with it,” Dean Neese tells us. The comment landed hard. It forced him to confront a blind spot early in his consulting career: insight without action is inert.Neese and his team went back, rebuilt the presentation, and returned a week later with clear recommendations tied directly to decisions, he tells us. That moment rewired how he communicates to this day. Every deck now starts with the message and earns credibility with data, not the other way around.That discipline carried forward as Neese moved from consulting into operating roles. At DocuSign, he chose to run both corporate development and integration so there would be no ambiguity about outcomes, he tells us. Strategy, in his view, only becomes real when someone owns the consequences. Living and working overseas reinforced that belief, teaching him that even the best analysis fails if it ignores cultural context, he tells us.Today, as CFO of Placer.ai, Neese applies those lessons through capital allocation. He often asks to see the budget before the strategy document because “where you're spending the money” reveals true priorities, he tells us. Drawing on research involving 400 executives, he points out that top performers make roughly twice as many major decisions each year as underperformers, he tells us.From a single uncomfortable moment at Kellogg's to scaling a data-driven company, Neese's career reflects a consistent principle: finance creates value when it accelerates decisions, clarifies tradeoffs, and turns insight into action.

This special episode of CFO Thought Leader explores how finance leaders develop not through authority or technical brilliance, but through moments that reveal emotional intelligence. Drawing on recent conversations with Kevin Rubin, Toby Driver, and Bruce Schuman, the episode highlights a consistent pattern: leadership is forged through judgment, empathy, and self-awareness when stakes are high and answers unclear. Structured in two parts, the episode first examines formative moments that reshaped how CFOs think, featuring Shelagh Glaser, John McCauley, and Joe Euteneuer. It then shows how those lessons are applied in practice—through difficult decisions, organizational change, and trust-based leadership under real pressure.

The accounting team at Looker showed up every day knowing their jobs might disappear within a year. The company was in limbo—acquired by Google but still waiting on European approval—so the deal hadn't closed, integration hadn't begun, and uncertainty hung over the office. Yet the team continued to deliver “absolutely excellent work,” taking pride in their craft even when the upside had faded, Razzak Jallow tells us.That moment stayed with him. For Jallow, now CFO of FloQast, it crystallized a belief that professionalism and pride are not situational—they're intrinsic. “We get to choose what we do,” he says, reflecting on how the team's attitude revealed character when incentives were stripped away. It's a lesson that echoes throughout his career, from Adobe's subscription transition to Apple's sales finance organization and into his first CFO role.At FloQast, that mindset shows up in how he approaches scale. Early on, the work was about fixing what was directly controllable—the “low-hanging fruit,” as he puts it. Over time, the challenge shifted. As teams and systems matured, the hardest problems required multiple functions to change together, Jallow tells us. Speed gave way to coordination; individual fixes gave way to shared ownership.The same discipline shapes how he thinks about growth. Efficient growth, in his view, starts with customer value, not the P&L. If teams are investing in the highest-ROI initiatives for customers, the financial results will follow—“maybe not in three months… but certainly long term,” he tells us.Whether navigating acquisition limbo or platform expansion, Jallow's throughline is clear: strategy is built on judgment, culture, and pride in the work—especially when no one is watching.

At 18, while many of his peers were heading off to university, Toby Driver made a different choice. He joined an accounting practice through an apprenticeship, a decision driven by his desire for a “quick learning curve” and real exposure to business, he tells us. From the outset, he was less interested in credentials than in understanding how organizations actually work.That instinct carried him through years in audit and into transaction services, where he learned to dissect businesses at speed. In deal advisory, Driver was tasked with getting “under the nuts and bolts” of companies, performing financial health checks with significant value at stake, he tells us. The work sharpened his ability to spot value drivers—but it also revealed a blind spot he wouldn't fully appreciate until later.That realization came after he moved into operations at Ideagen. Leading M&A integrations end-to-end meant sitting with the CEO and C-suite to align sales, product, technology, and culture. Bringing two organizations together was far more complex than it ever appeared from the advisory side, Driver tells us. The experience reshaped his mindset, pushing him to think “business first, rather than necessarily finance first.”As Ideagen scaled from roughly £50 million in ARR to five times that size, Driver faced another inflection point. The company reorganized into regional operating units to restore accountability and clarity, a change finance helped design, he tells us. Today, he carries those lessons forward as CFO—focused on structure, transparency, and creating an environment where people surface issues early. “Bad news never gets better with time,” he says, a principle that now defines both his leadership style and his approach to scale.

When Kevin Rubin arrived at Zscaler in May 2025, he joined an established organization following the retirement of the company's longtime CFO, taking responsibility for continuing the work of a finance leader who had already built a strong foundation. Rubin describes stepping into a business with scale, experienced leadership, and a customer base that included some of the world's largest enterprises, he tells us.In explaining what Zscaler does, Rubin walks through the company's core idea: zero trust. Traditional cybersecurity, he says, relied on network-centric “castles and moats,” requiring large amounts of equipment to connect people, applications, and data. Zscaler challenged that model by treating the internet as a “superhighway” and applying a principle of minimal access. If an employee wants to use Salesforce or email, Rubin explains, the system first authenticates the user and then limits access to only what that person is authorized to see, he tells us.Zscaler was founded in 2007 and went public in 2018, Rubin tells us. Today, roughly 40 percent of the Global 2000 and about 45 percent of the Fortune 500 use the company's platform. Rubin attributes that adoption to a model that delivers security with less overhead and infrastructure than traditional approaches, he tells us. At its core, he says, cybersecurity comes down to two problems: stopping malicious activity from entering the network and preventing sensitive data from leaving it.Reflecting on his first 100 days, Rubin says the transition was shaped by continuity and people. He describes a welcoming executive team and an organization already positioned for growth. Cybersecurity, he notes, remains a dynamic market, with new vulnerabilities constantly emerging, and staying ahead of those threats continues to define the work ahead, Rubin tells us.

At Intel, Bruce Schuman remembers walking into a meeting as a controller, proud of a product change his team had worked on “for months.” Then CFO Andy Bryant asked one question—one that reframed the proposal around customer impact. “Nobody had thought about (it),” Schuman tells us, and that question “completely changed the entire conversation,” leading to a “10 times better” outcome.That moment captures why Schuman spent “two decades plus 27 years” at Intel, he tells us. Rotational roles pushed him into new challenges every few years, while leaders modeled what influence and partnership looked like in practice. Intel even had a term for it—“constructive confrontation,” Schuman tells us—encouraging finance leaders to put difficult issues on the table in service of better decisions.When Schuman later moved into CFO roles outside Intel, he carried that mindset with him. FP&A, he says, should not simply “report the score of the game,” but act like “people on the field literally changing the outcome of the game,” Schuman tells us. That expectation shaped how he built finance teams and approached decision-making in smaller, faster-moving organizations.Today, as CFO of Universal Technical Institute, Schuman applies those lessons to a mission-driven business focused on workforce development. UTI works with “about 35 OEM partners” and “about 6000 employer partners,” Schuman tells us, and measures success through “70% graduation rates” and “about 85% placement rates,” Schuman tells us. Growth remains disciplined: “We'll never sacrifice student outcomes,” he tells us, even as the company plans to build “anywhere from two to five campuses a year for the next five years,” Schuman tells us.

When Drew Laxton looks back on the past year at Outreach, one moment stands out—not a transaction, but a plan. The company set its annual targets, executed against them, and then exceeded expectations. “When you see green numbers at every quarterly all-hands,” Laxton tells us, “it's amazing how that little bit of momentum just builds the company.” What surprised him most was the cultural impact: morale rose, confidence compounded, and belief followed performance.That belief didn't happen by accident. Laxton's career has consistently positioned him at the intersection of numbers and narrative. He began in investment banking, where he learned early that finance only matters if people can retain the story behind it. “If you can't tell the story, it just stays there,” he tells us. That mindset carried him from banking into operating roles, and later to Apptio, where he experienced nearly the full corporate lifecycle—from IPO preparation to public markets and eventually a private-equity take-private.Serving as Chief of Staff during Apptio's Vista ownership pushed him beyond traditional finance. The role, he explains, was about making sure the CEO “didn't run into a locked door,” anticipating decisions and asking the questions leadership would need answered. That experience sharpened his instinct for alignment.Today, as CFO of Outreach, Laxton applies those lessons through planning discipline, FP&A embedded in the business, and storytelling that connects strategy to execution. Finance, in his view, is not a back-office function—it is the force that helps people understand why the company is moving where it is going.

In this Planning Aces special episode, CFO Thought Leader brings together three finance executives operating in very different industries—but facing remarkably similar planning challenges. David Lee of WEBTOON, Cristina Kim of Octaura, and Zane Rowe of Workday share how FP&A has evolved from a periodic planning function into a continuous decision system. Across global consumer platforms, fintech infrastructure, and enterprise software, each CFO explains how they use leading indicators, forecasting discipline, and real-time data to guide resource allocation. The conversation highlights how modern FP&A enables faster learning, sharper prioritization, and disciplined adaptability in an environment defined by rapid growth and accelerating change.

In his late 20s, Jorge Pliego found himself financing a major expansion in Mexico—not by calling corporate for cash, but by rethinking the entire structure. At Procter & Gamble, he was given the chance to fund a new paper products facility locally, navigating tax and financing incentives until the deal carried “zero” interest cost, Pliego tells us. Convincing senior leaders in Mexico and at headquarters required clarity, confidence, and an understanding of the business beyond finance alone.That moment reflects a career shaped by early responsibility and proximity to decision-makers. From ERP implementation work—where he adapted U.S. costing systems to Mexico's 100% inflation environment—to treasury leadership, Pliego learned how finance decisions land inside real operating constraints, he tells us. Those lessons were tested again when he left P&G for Sara Lee, joining as the second employee in Mexico. Suddenly, he was learning how to import product, choose systems, hire teams, and manage risk without the safety net of a mature organization.At Diageo, that operational grounding met strategy. As CFO of Mexico, Pliego helped lead a six-month effort to craft a plan to triple the business in three years, he tells us. Finance worked alongside marketing, sales, and operations to define investments, risks, and measurements, while leaders focused on inspiring people and course-correcting quickly.Today, as CFO of Improving, Pliego carries those lessons into a faster, private-equity-backed environment. Speed matters, but discipline matters more. He's shortened the close, sharpened data visibility, and applies the same lens to AI—calling it “a very hungry monster” that only delivers value when fed consistent, high-quality data, Pliego tells us.

In his first “60 to 90 days” as CFO of Presidio, Manny Korakis learned that preparation doesn't cancel pressure, he tells us. “Now the buck stops here,” he tells us, and he “didn't really appreciate the pace” required until he was living it daily, he tells us.Korakis traces his move into enterprise thinking back to the McGraw Hill companies. Early on, he was “very technical” and “pretty close” to a singular controllership focus, he tells us. Then a mentor CFO pulled him into what they called the “growth and value plan,” he tells us. He worked on the “system landscape” and “data flow,” and on portfolio decisions about which assets were core and which were “distracting,” he tells us. That work drove the separation of McGraw Hill Education from the rest of McGraw Hill and a rebranding to “S&P Global,” he tells us. It also surfaced “hidden gems of value,” he tells us. Seeing theory turn “real life” became his “aha moment,” he tells us.In a later chapter, Korakis served as CFO of S&P Dow Jones Indices, where partners were aligned “in many cases,” but “not always aligned,” he tells us, requiring balance of “different needs and expectations,” he tells us.That arc shapes how he defines finance: not just “counting the beans,” but “highlighting the key things” so others decide better, he tells us. Today, he says finance “own[s] the model” for where Presidio wants to go, he tells us, and AI starts with “bite sized pieces,” he explains.

As one year closes and another begins, most of us are wired to look forward—to new goals, fresh plans, and the next chapter. But this special episode of CFO Thought Leader invites you to do something slightly different: look back. Not to financial milestones or career titles, but to the moments that quietly shape who we become long before anyone hands us a business card.In this episode, three CFOs take us back to the earliest chapters of their lives—stories of family, displacement, discipline, sacrifice, and unexpected kindness. You'll hear how a father's insistence on “trying,” a mother's balancing act between career and family, and a landlord's life-altering act of generosity became the invisible architecture behind leadership, resilience, and purpose. None of these moments appear on a résumé. Yet each one echoes through boardrooms, decision-making, and how these leaders show up for others.As we release this episode on New Year's Eve, it feels like the right reminder: progress isn't only measured by what we build next, but by what shaped us along the way. Before the spreadsheets, before the titles, before the outcomes—there were people, moments, and values that set everything in motion.We hope these stories give you pause, perspective, and perhaps a renewed appreciation for the beginnings that make all the difference.

When it came time to pick our holiday bonus episodes, Tim Arndt quickly came to mind. Few companies sit at the crossroads of as many 2025 storylines—tariffs, data centers, and AI—as Prologis. In our February conversation, Tim walked us through a “merger of equals” that reset leadership, the capital-markets discipline that followed, and why logistics is about “atoms, not electrons.” He tells us Prologis oversees roughly 1.3 billion square feet across 20 countries, with nearly 3% of global GDP touching its facilities. From post-GFC balance-sheet rigor to new rooftop energy and mobility plays, this one captured listeners' attention—and still feels timely. Enjoy this rerelease of one of our most-played episodes of the year.

David Den Boer traces the origins of the EPM Summit to a pattern he kept seeing across projects. “Sometimes the error is not necessarily beginning in the project,” he tells us, “but in the way they selected the product.” Too often, he observed, finance teams were locked into technology decisions before fully understanding their requirements—or their alternatives.That realization reshaped how he thought about impact. While Den Boer says he enjoys solving customer problems through implementations, he began to focus on “slower, moving bigger problems,” including gaps in thought leadership and how organizations evaluate EPM solutions in the first place. The Summit, he tells us, was designed to address that upstream decision-making moment.He draws on experience hosting EPM-focused events beginning in 2009, after SAP acquired OutlookSoft. At large vendor conferences with “hundreds of products,” he explains, it was difficult for EPM practitioners to get focused answers, connect with peers, or evaluate options objectively. As legacy platforms declined, customers increasingly asked him where to go next—and how to choose wisely.That question has only intensified with AI. Den Boer tells us finance teams are now being asked to rethink processes “from a first principles perspective.” Without that reset, he warns, organizations risk “just bolting on AI” to workflows that haven't fundamentally changed in decades.The EPM Summit reflects that conviction. Den Boer says he personally curates content to avoid “glossy marketing stuff,” relying instead on practitioners who have delivered dozens—or hundreds—of projects. Panels, hands-on product access, and difficult vendor questions are all designed to give finance leaders what they rarely get: clarity before commitment. In an era of expanding choice, the Summit is built around a simple idea—better decisions start earlier.

As the year comes to a close, we're revisiting a conversation that feels newly relevant. This week, we're re-releasing our CFO Thought Leader episode with Jonathan Carr, recorded three years ago—long before any exit was in view, but rich with insight into how he thinks about leadership, growth, and decision-making under uncertainty.That mindset was shaped early. Just 18 months after finishing college, Carr was placed in charge of a major Oracle implementation at a Stryker manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico. He had never led systems work before. The advice from his division controller was simple and direct: “find the opportunities that either get you promoted or fired,” Carr tells us.The six-month project forced him to work across manufacturing, IT, and finance to understand how transactions actually flowed through the plant. Carr describes the learning process as peeling back layers “like an onion,” where each answer revealed more complexity, he tells us. It was an early lesson in getting out of one's comfort zone and doing work before feeling fully prepared.That approach carried forward as Carr moved through FP&A, accounts receivable, and customer-facing roles, and later joined SurveyMonkey when the company was generating less than $100 million in revenue. There, he helped build finance capabilities, supported acquisitions, and participated in capital raises totaling nearly $1 billion, with less than $100 million in primary capital, Carr tells us.Later, at Atlassian, Carr was part of the finance leadership team during the company's transition from on-premise software to the cloud. The shift required conviction, transparency, and clear communication with employees and investors, even as near-term economics changed, Carr tells us.In the episode we're re-releasing today, you'll hear Carr reflect on growth, influence, and adaptability. “I reserve the right to get smarter,” he tells us—a line that neatly captures how he has approached each chapter of his career, long before the outcomes were known.

As we re-release this conversation with CFO Karen Williams during the holiday week, we're opening the episode with a short preface drawn from something she shared recently on LinkedIn. In a post about books that shaped her as a leader, Williams reflected on culture, bias, and the importance of staying open to different perspectives—ideas that echo throughout this episode and frame how she's built her career.Those themes weren't always obvious early on.Williams traces a formative lesson back to her move from a 20-person startup into Mars, where she says she “bombed at networking.” Accustomed to a small, family-style environment, she kept what she describes as a “head down, get on with it” mentality. She didn't yet understand the importance of relationships and networks, she tells us, and after a couple of years, she left.That experience reshaped how she approached her next chapter at American Express. The culture there was “very people focused, very relationship driven,” Williams tells us, but progress still came slowly at first. It took time to move from analyst to manager as she built credibility and learned how influence actually works inside large organizations. Once she reached that level, things accelerated quickly.A structural gap gave her direct exposure to a divisional CFO, who became her sponsor and helped unlock three to four subsequent roles, Williams tells us. Over fifteen years, she held roughly nine roles at American Express—calling the experience her “Harvard School of training years.”In the episode, listeners will also hear how Williams continued to stretch herself by moving out of finance into business leadership, leading strategy through disruption, and later stepping into CFO roles where unexpected challenges—like cleaning up a balance sheet—tested her early credibility.It's a conversation about learning, reflection, and how experience—especially the uncomfortable kind—shapes leadership over time.

Roy Hefer expected a quick coffee. Instead, a “30 minutes” introduction with a newly appointed Lumenis CEO stretched “more than three hours,” he tells us, as they talked through her plan to transform a flat-growth, cash-bleeding medical device company and “ultimately take it public,” he tells us.That conversation marked a shift from theory to ownership. After five years at McKinsey—based out of Tel Aviv, but spending “most of my time abroad,” he tells us—Hefer realized he was “a doer,” he tells us. He loved delivering “an amazing model” and “a very sophisticated framework,” he tells us, but not walking away before execution.At Lumenis, execution became the point. A supply-chain initiative aimed to cut costs by 30%, he tells us; the team “managed to shave, save more than 40% cost,” he tells us. As the company prepared for a NASDAQ IPO in 2014, he tells us, his CFO pulled him closer—and Hefer had what he calls an “aha moment” where he “fell in love with finance,” he tells us, seeing how finance shapes decisions across fundraising, M&A, and expansion, he tells us.Years later, after a second IPO chapter at Hippo Insurance in 2021, he tells us, Hefer chose the CFO path at Perk. There, late 2022 fundraising forced a fork: accept “highly dilutive” capital or pivot toward profitability to become “default alive,” he tells us. For Hefer, that's the job: frame options early, build trust “brick by brick,” he tells us, and let the best decision make itself.