Shows / CFO THOUGHT LEADER
CFO THOUGHT LEADER
CFO THOUGHT LEADER is a podcast featuring firsthand accounts of finance leaders who are driving change within their organizations. We share the career journey of our spotlighted CFO guest: What do they struggle with? How do they persevere? What makes them successful CFOs? CFO THOUGHT LEADER is all about inspiring finance professionals to take a leadership leap. We know that by hearing about the successes — (and yes, also the failures) — of others, today’s CFOs can more confidently chart their…
Episodes
CFO THOUGHT LEADER899: Democratizing Workforce Opportunities | Simone Nardi, CFO, Globalization Partners
Gray-haired late-night fans may remember when David Letterman sought to ingratiate himself with his network’s new owner, General Electric Corp., by…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER898: Making Finance Proactively Persuasive | Russell Lester, CFO, Versapay
By the time Russell Lester landed inside Intuit’s department of analysis in 2009, the unremarkable career path on which he had first set out nearly 10 years…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERON LOCATION Perform 23 with Planful CEO Grant Halloran
For business leaders these days, a thoughtful response to customer queries concerning AI is indispensable. As CEO Planful Grant Halloran demonstrated this week…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER897: Satisfying a Growth Appetite | Bobby Leibrock, CFO, Red Hat Software
Last October, when it was announced that Bobby Leibrock would become the next CFO of IBM subsidiary Red Hat, finance team members no doubt understood that the…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER896: When Context Trumps Playbooks | Aneal Vallurupalli, CFO, Airbase
Back in 2010, when the flow of hiring by investment banks had been reduced to a meager trickle of new faces in the wake of the economic downturn, Aneal…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER895: Learning to Manage Upward | Paul Sheriff, CFO, NewDay
Back in 2006, when Paul Sheriff had only recently been named group financial director for a midsize banking business based in the United Kingdom, his team…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER894: The Opportunity That Everyone Must See | Julie Swinney, CFO, Zendesk
By the time the general manager of Intel’s data center chipset business parted ways with the company, Julie Swinney had already advanced into one of their…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER893: Smart Mobility’s Fast Lane | Craig Conti, CFO, Verra Mobility
Among the keepsakes that Craig Conti collected during the more than two decades of his finance career, the item to which he refers simply as “the list” remains…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER892: Understanding Your Customer From the Inside Out | Jason Quinn, CFO, Vendr
When Jason Quinn landed in Europe back in 2008, he was the youngest of five American expats being deployed by digital disrupter SMB printer Vistaprint of…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERThe Power of GPT in Planning - A Planning Aces Episode
Planning Aces Guest Host Brett Knowles, an expert in FP&A and planning realm, suggests that GPT can be used as an extra member at the planning table, providing…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER891: Climbing the Multi-Product Ladder | Jim Cox, CFO, Clearwater Analytics
Back in 2008, when Jim Cox was controller for investment management software company Advent Software, he was invited by that firm's founder and CEO, Stephanie…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER890: Driving the Internet Sharetaker | Christopher Halpin, CFO, IAC
In 2011, after Chris Halpin had rejoined his colleagues back at Providence Equity Partners’ New York offices at the completion of a 3-year stint in Hong Kong…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER889: Whetting Wall Street’s Tech Appetite | Ben Chrnelich, CFO, Symphony
When Ben Chrnelich tells us that the banking sector’s recent unrest is the third period of disruption that he’s “cycled through” during his finance career, we…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER888: Accelerating Inside the Controlled Growth Lane | Paolo Poma, CFO, Lamborghini
Paolo Poma is uncertain how many times he met with bankers and investors during the first 6 months of 2009. The steady string of phone calls and conference…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER887: Enjoying Today's Journey | Galit Yaakobovitz, CFO, AmyriAD
After Galit Yaakobovitz relocated from Israel to the United States back in the mid-2000s, there was little question that the move had given her career a boost…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER886: When SaaS Became the Destination | Alka Tandan, CFO, Gainsight
One key takeaway from Gainsight CFO Alka Tandan’s career journey is the importance of being open to new opportunities and pivoting when necessary. Tandan…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERWhen Sales is at the Table - A Planning Aces Episode
In this Planning Aces episode, host Jack Sweeney and guest host Ben Murray discuss the collaborative organizational effort behind generating business…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER885: Landing Your Career’s “Pivot Position” | Robert Mitchell, CFO, Zepz
Robert Mitchell had been sizing up new venture opportunities for PayPal for roughly 3 years when the door to an operations role swung open. Impressed by his…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER884: Understanding Your Business Thesis | Betsy Ward, CFO, MassMutual
Finance leader Betsy Ward wants you to know that she doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger—but she does have an inner trigger and knows when it’s been set off…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERWhy Hiring Could Be GPT's Sweet Spot - Workplace Champions Episode
A brief summary of this episode
CFO THOUGHT LEADER883: The Confidence That Only Experience Brings | Javier Echave, CFO, Heathrow
When Heathrow CFO Javier Echave tells us that one of his greatest career lessons was learned from being passed over for the airport’s CFO position, we wonder…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER882: A Search for Answers | Brianna Gerber, CFO, ChromaDex
When Brianna Gerber tells us that during earnings season at Mattel, Inc., she was once known as the investor relations person most likely to be “knocking on…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER881: One CFO's Career of Plenty | Keith Taylor, CFO, Equinix
As our finance leader guests well know, we seldom hesitate to ask where they spent their career-building years. Moreover, if we learn that a CFO spent more…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER880: When Success & Risk Are One | Teodora Gouneva, CFO, NEXT Insurance
Teodora Gouneva was enjoying one of the more satisfying chapters of a 25-year finance career when she began hearing voices again. She tells us that although…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER879: Where SaaS Roots Run Deep | Bas Brukx, CFO, Allego
With regard to finance leaders who are counted among the ranks of today’s SaaS CFOs, it goes without saying that 20 years ago, most were somewhere other than…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER878: When the Path Rises to Meet You | Don Bassell, CFO, ARKO Corp. —
As we have been interviewing CFOs from different industries, many finance leaders have told us that they had bracketed the CFO office as their preferred career…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER877: One Career’s Transaction Milestones | Gary Zyla, CFO, AssetMark
It was the type of CFO position that Gary Zyla probably would not have been able to find outside of Genworth Financial, a financial services company that he…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER876: Exposing Where Business Value Resides | Jim Young, CFO, Coalition
Looking back on their career-building years, few finance leaders ever forget the first time that they presented to a board of directors. For many, the stares…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERPlanning's New Math: PLG + Product Usage - A Planning Aces Episode
Featuring Special Guest Co Host Ben Murray As more businesses track customer product usage ever more closely, finance leaders are busy fine tuning the…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER875: Connecting People and Processes | Eliran Glazer, CFO, Monday.com
Eliran Glazer’s finance career journey began in the late 1990s at the Tel Aviv office of KPMG, where as a 20-something he spent 3 years auditing a portfolio of…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER874: Completing Your Visibility to Predictability Framework | Wailun Chan, CFO, Grafana Labs
No matter how many chapters Wailun Chan’s finance career ultimately spans, the decade that he spent at LinkedIn will always stand out. It perhaps goes without…
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The Year of HR Slogans - A Workplace Champions Episode
A brief summary of this episode
CFO THOUGHT LEADER873: Pages from a Silver Linings Playbook | Michael Kopelman, CFO, Meow Wolf
Back in 2022, having decided to leave the entertainment business only 3 years after closing on its acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T announced plans to…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER872: Opportunities Along the xP&A Frontier | Dan Fletcher, CFO, Planful
During the early years of his finance career, Dan Fletcher was accustomed to being the executive from somewhere else. When he first joined the asset management…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER871: Keeping in Stride in a High-Pressure Economy | Jared Poff, CFO, Designer Brands
One of the unspoken truths about interim CFO roles is that they sometimes don’t lead to an actual CFO role—a fact that has turned more than a few seasoned…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER870: Amped Up at the Deep End | John McCauley, CFO, Calendly
John McCauley is the first finance leader to tell us that his path to the CFO office began in a pool. Back in high school, McCauley relates, he was a…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER869: Sharpening the Customer Focus | Ravi Narula, CFO, FinancialForce
Looking back, CFO Ravi Narula tells us that he wishes that he had become a “servant leader” sooner, as he references the familiar leadership tag signaling a…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER868: Armed and Sheltered From the Storm | Tom Fennimore, CFO, Luminar Technologies
The Goldman Sachs “anti-raid” team was between conference calls with an embattled client company when word came that a senior member of the target company’s…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERWhy FP&A Designs the Questions - A Planning Aces Episode
It’s no secret, professionals from various departments must work together to correctly calculate Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Customer acquisition cost (CAC)…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER867: Energizing Your Data Relations | Donald Alvarez, CFO, Cyngn
Back in 1993, Don Alvarez was an auditor with Deloitte’s San Francisco office when specialty retailer and coveted client company West Marine went public. For…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER866: Metrics for the Masses | Jeremy Klaperman, CFO, Rho
Not unlike many of his CFO peers, Jeremy Klaperman spent the early years of his finance career in trying to rectify the damage brought on by the irrational…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERThe Chatbot Chill: Why Business Will Be Anything But Usual - A Workplace Champions Episode
Our resident thought leader Brett Knowles explains how artificial intelligence is already being used to predict employee turnover, job satisfaction, and other…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER865: Achieving a Strategic Alignment | Anup Singh, CFO, Illumio
It’s perhaps no surprise that the late 1990s came to mind for Anup Singh when we recently asked him to share with us a finance career lesson or insight from…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER864: Advancing Beyond Your Comfort Zone | Steven Mitchell, CFO, Redgate Software
Steve Mitchell had not been working for Irish telecom giant Eircom for even half a year before he decided that it was time to explore other opportunities. For…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER863: A Continental Career Span | Keith Stauffer, CFO, TerrAscend
When Keith Stauffer’s youngest son learned in grade school that his family would be moving to Singapore, he likely breathed a sigh of relief. After all, his…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER862: The Numbers Don't Lie | Patrick McClymont, CFO, Hagerty
August might be Patrick McClymont’s preferred month when it comes to entering the CFO office. “September is great, but you may want to show up a little before…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER861: Putting Your Plan in Motion | David Quinn, CFO, Bluevine
Things were going downhill for David Quinn when he met his future wife—or such might be the obvious punchline to punctuate Quinn’s disclosure that he met his…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERHoliday Replay: The Return to Earth | Tom Fitzgerald, CFO, Planet Fitness
Back in the mid-1990s, before email became widely used across corporate America, the executives of Frito-Lay’s northern California region suddenly found their…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERDragon Slayer of the Budgeting World - A Planning Ace's Tribute to Steve Player
When consultant Steve Player died last month at the age of 64, the business function that he had tormented, ridiculed, and war-hammered for more than two…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERHoliday Replay: The Levers of Long-Term Value | Brandon Maultasch, CFO, MOLOCO
The following is a Holiday Replay of a popular 2022 episode. Last October, shortly after being named CFO of machine learning start-up MOLOCO, Brandon Maultasch…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERHoliday Replay: Beyond the Boardroom with Herald Chen, CFO, AppLovin
The following is a bonus replay of one of 2022's popular episodes. When Herald Chen was growing up in a town not far from Pittsburg, he dreamed of someday…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERManagers admit to “quiet firing” - A Workplace Champions Episode
Brett & Jack discuss what might be a popular response to employees "quiet quitting" or what among managers has been dubbed "quiet firing" - the withdrawal of…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER860: Opportunities From Life's Cauldron | Kevin Rubin, CFO, Alteryx
Back in the year 2000, as Arthur Andersen saw a stream of young accountants exit the firm to join dotcom start-ups, Kevin Rubin’s workload continued to…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER859: The Everyday, Conscious Effort to Add Value | Rajat Bahri, CFO, Icertis
It was nearly 18 years ago that Icertis CFO Rajat Bahri stepped into the CFO office for the first time. Thus began a stretch of time that Bahri, not unlike…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER858: Finding the Middle Ground | Brian Gladden, CFO, Zelis
If you had told Brian Gladden in 2006 that he would shortly be working for a Saudi crown prince, the 14-year GE finance veteran may have replied using a…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER857: The Other Tech Stack | Razzak Jallow, CFO FloQast
Back in 2009, as businesses navigated the repercussions of Wall Street’s collapse, Razzak Jallow found himself standing at a departure gate with a boarding…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER856: Understanding What's In Your Control and What's Not | Céline Dufétel, CFO, Checkout.com
When Checkout.com CFO Céline Dufétel tells us that her career decision-making has been driven not so much by titles or status but by an inner push to acquire…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER855: Your Company’s Value Proposition | James Moylan, CFO, Ciena
Jim Moylan is perhaps our first CFO guest to list the leasing of oil rigs as one of the experiences that best prepared him for a CFO role. Of course, he makes…
CFO THOUGHT LEADERLegibility & Levers - A Planning Aces Episode
To grow efficiently businesses must have legibility across the organization, explains Airtable CFO Ambereen Toubassy, who tells us legibility can only be…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER854: Expecting the Unexpected | Shana Veale, CFO, PharmChem
Shana Veale had been working in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, office of Arthur Andersen for only about 8 months when the 88-year-old stalwart accounting house…