Cfo Thought Leader

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 gam

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 Chi

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

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, whe

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

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 object

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

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 c

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

Matthew Novick traces one of his earliest business lessons not to a boardroom, but to a furniture store in Portland, Maine. Growing up in his family’s business, he learned how to read credit reports, price products, and assess who was “credit worthy,” skills that showed him how decisions affect a business long before he ever closed a set of books, Novick tells us.That operational grounding followed him into finance. Early roles at IBM and AOL put him on both the expense and revenue sides of the P&L, including sales operations and compensation design. Those experiences shaped his belief that finance is not just about counting dollars, but understanding what the numbers actually mean, he tells us. “If you don’t understand what goes into closing those books… you’re never actually going to understand your business,” he says.Read MoreHis path accelerated quickly. After leaving AOL, Novick joined Magnetic, where he became VP of Finance and then the company’s first CFO in his early 30s. Since then, he has moved

At 19, working part-time in a bank branch while attending college, Ed Hagan made a simple recommendation: expand the branch. The idea was taken seriously enough that he was transferred to the bank holding company’s finance and accounting department, where he suddenly found himself helping with acquisitions, preparing board materials, and contributing to an IPO. The exposure was far greater than he expected at that age, Hagan tells us, and it sparked a curiosity that would shape his entire career.That early experience with real-world complexity led him to KPMG—then Pete Marwick—because the firm audited the bank. There, he spent roughly 20 years, including a decade as partner, learning “every day” and taking on global finance transformation work. When the consulting arm later separated into BearingPoint, Hagan continued building capabilities, eventually moving to London to grow a financial services practice from just a few people to a couple hundred.After 21 years in consulting, he felt ready for a different ki

At first, we wondered why Zane Rowe was once again leading us back to Continental Airlines. With notable CFO tenures at VMware and EMC—chapters rich with transformation—surely there were fresh stories to surface.But as Rowe began tracing the logic behind flight profitability, route modeling, and data-rich decision making, the relevance snapped into focus. His Continental experience isn’t just a recurring anecdote; it’s the lens through which he still interprets complex systems today. That early foundation made this discussion every bit as insightful as our last—especially as he connected those lessons to Workday’s AI trajectory and the accelerating pace of strategic decision making.“I spent a lot of time in the airlines in what we called flight profitability,” Rowe tells us. At Continental, he helped build systems to understand which routes truly created value when full planes were still losing money, he tells us. That work, grounded in heavy telemetry and EMC technology, showed him how finance could move fro

In her second week as CFO, Cristina Kim sat with Octaura’s leadership team reviewing a three-year strategy and ambitious 2026 targets, she tells us. As the numbers appeared on the screen, her instinct was to do what she had done for nearly two decades: probe what might go wrong, stress-test assumptions, and look for what could break, she tells us. Mid-meeting, she experienced what she calls an “aha moment”—realizing she was no longer outside the story but inside it, responsible for helping the team achieve those goals, she tells us.That shift caps a career built on breadth rather than a linear ladder. Cristina began in investment banking in Hong Kong before spending 17 years in JP Morgan’s strategic investments group across London and the United States, she tells us. There, she learned to sit at the center of technology innovation, translating between business needs, risk, and upside, and working closely with management teams and CFOs, she tells us. Over time, investing in Octaura and partnering with its lead

The morning after Airbase’s sale closed, Aneal Vallurupalli woke up to a very different org chart. Before the deal, roughly a third to almost half of the company reported to him, including onboarding, professional services, account management, customer success, and financial services revenue, he tells us. The day after, those teams rolled into the acquirer and “I have my EA reporting to me. And that was it,” he tells us. It left him thinking, “wait a minute… I’m not making any decisions anymore,” he tells us.That jolt became a pivot point. Rather than chase another title, he went looking for roles where finance could architect the whole engine—customer journey included. It’s the same instinct that once led him to peel back Airbase’s retention problem: starting with GRR by segment, then listening to Gong calls and mapping every step from contract signature to renewal, he tells us. Retention, he concluded, is almost never a single-issue story.Today, four weeks into his CFO role at Drata, it already feels like “

Stuart Leung had occupied the CFO office at Flexport for only a few months when he realized the supply chain management company’s growing margin pressures stemmed not from a single root cause but from many. From pricing misalignment to invoice errors, Leung had compiled a lengthy list of snags. Along the way, he began empowering the people closest to each issue to drive the necessary improvements. By implementing more than 15 “big rock” initiatives—tracked through monthly reviews—Flexport rapidly identified, tested, and refined solutions. This cross-functional, data-centric effort not only began restoring margins but also created a replicable model of continuous improvement.That turnaround effort, Leung tells us, echoed lessons he learned earlier in his career. As a young analyst at an investment bank, he quickly discovered how fundamental analysis and modeling could uncover hidden risks. Later, private equity taught him the vital link between operational decisions and financial outcomes—a perspective he soli

In this special retrospective episode, we revisit three standout conversations from our archives to explore how automotive CFOs have long shaped strategy inside some of the industry’s most complex business models. From auctions to dealerships to early-stage EV manufacturing, these finance leaders reveal how they navigated scale, technology shifts, and operational risk. KAR Auction Services CFO Eric Loughmiller discusses turning massive transaction data into intelligence. Warren Henry Automotive CFO Erik Day explains the realities of margin compression and liquidity pressure. And former Electra Meccanica CFO Bal Bhullar shares how finance guides a young manufacturer from prototypes to production. Together, their insights form a timeless lesson in CFO leadership at high speed.

The email with the term sheet arrived first, then the bottle of champagne from the CEO, Jayme Brooks tells us. The lender had agreed to a nontraditional structure that allowed Capstone to borrow against intangible assets, creating a lifeline at a moment when revenue had dropped about 40% and market cap had fallen from roughly 400 million to 25 million, she tells us. Cost reductions, including a 25% reduction in force and ultimately a 50% cut in the cost structure, followed, she tells us. But the bridge financing meant the company could still fund payroll, buy supplies, and keep shipping microturbines.That moment caps years of learning “in the room.” Brooks began in engineering before shifting into accounting and public practice, she tells us. Controller roles in aerospace and a UK-owned division exposed her to debt, private equity, and board dynamics. She later accepted what looked like a step back—a director of financial reporting role at an unprofitable public company—because she wanted capital-markets expe

Jack Welch’s binder hit the floor before Michael Bourque had time to react. At just 23, he sat in a Honeywell acquisition review meeting as the “keeper of the numbers,” rifling through a binder he knew didn’t contain the EPS detail Welch demanded. When the answer didn’t come, Welch “swept his binder off the table, threw it across the room, and got up and left,” Bourque tells us. The moment stayed with him—not only the need to anticipate every question, but the feeling of “how I was treated,” a lesson he carried forward.That early scene captures the intensity of Bourque’s 15 years at GE, where he rotated every four months on the corporate audit staff, learned to understand a business model quickly, and moved across countries from Mexico to Italy to Canada. He tells us those experiences became “a massive accelerator” but also showed him what he did not want: senior lives “lived 90 days at a time.”Leaving GE led him into Ocwen, where regulatory pressure mounted immediately. Advisers warned him to “run for the hi