Cfo Thought Leader

When Ben Luety first arrived inside the CFO office at the Seattle Indian Health Board, he would frequently rely on his smartphone’s roaming service to search the Web rather than depend on the organization’s Internet connection. “The Internet for the entire organization had less bandwidth than I did,” explains Luety, who describes the IT infrastructure serving the organization’s 200 staff members as being minted in the pre-Internet days of the early 1990s.  For Luety, it was apparent that the SIHB was the type of organization that cloud technologies often serve best by allowing them to leapfrog certain technologies and approaches that haven’t passed the test of time. What’s more, Luety was in lockstep with his CEO, Esther Lucero, whose vision for the organization could be realized only through greater transparency and visibility into its numbers. “We needed a system that would allow us to quickly and easily produce reports, and it all came down to our ability to manage data and produce a workflow that allows e

When Judy Bjornaas first arrived at ManTech International eight years ago, the company relied on a variety of processes and policies that were widely accepted across its various parts—not because they were efficient or cost-effective, but because they were widely accepted. Not unlike many companies that have enjoyed a steady diet of success, ManTech had, over its decades (the firm celebrated 50 years in 2018), adopted the old mantra “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” as part of its list of cultural dictums. However, shortly after her arrival, Bjornaas began advancing her own watchwords: “Always question everything—and don’t assume that we have to do something the same way that we’ve done it in the past.”  This new mantra was no doubt a neck-snapper for executives who found comfort in the status quo, and it simultaneously solidified Bjornaas’s credentials as not just a finance leader but also a change agent. “I realized that I could add a lot of value to the company by sort of pushing things along,” says Bjorna

iTunes DownloadSpotify There are finance leaders that boast of having always been entrepreneurs in their hearts, who can quickly serve up a story or two about a startup they at one time became involved with, and then there’s CFO Marty Meyer. Of the ten startups where Meyer has served as CFO six of the companies achieved positive exits – an enviable number according to startup pundits. Interestingly, Meyer tell us that the label “operational CFO” is perhaps just as fitting as entrepreneurial CFO when one considers his frequent day-to-day activities as a finance leader. Asked to reveal the types of decisions finance leaders often face in startups Meyer asks us to consider the choice between investing in an innovative new software function or investing in a customer onboarding process that could potentially cut implementation times in half.  “The implementation process is really the first interaction we are having with the customer – we want to start that relationship off with a lot of trust and success,” he ex

Marc Schegerin’s arrival inside the CFO office at ArQule is either a fortunate accident or a feat of singular career building precision. For there is little question that ArQule has entered a unique place in time along the arc of its existence and it’s this place in time that Schegerin has been seeking to reach for more than two decades. It’s a place where opportunities are quickly realized or lost depending on management’s ability to correctly answer some daunting questions. “We have to kind of tease out how much money may be required. When do we spend it? What is the end game where we can we have the biggest impact for the most patients?” says Schegerin, while exposing the coordinates of the intersection of medicine and finance. Suddenly, Schegerin’s arduous career-building path makes perfect sense. ArQule is the destination where his breadth of experience (From Harvard to Goldman Sachs to Biogen) appears uniquely suited to answer those questions and perhaps many more. – Jack Sweeney

Up until about three years ago Kevin Lind would likely have been identified as yet another gifted private equity executive – capable of issuing business remedies from the tip of his tongue. At least in the minds of his CFO peers, who are accustomed to listening to PE pundits routinely hand down such remedies for ailing businesses. For Lind the CFO office at Arena Pharmaceuticals is a game changer, where he no longer hands down remedies but serves as a finance leader – an individual tasked with summoning others forward and building trust across an organization even as he or she sometimes completes necessary layoffs. “Good drugs can succeed in spite of bad management and bad management can fail despite good drugs,” explains Lind, who says the frequent mismatch led him to want to get “one step closer” to management decision making.  Lind would take that one step after receiving a call from Amit Munshi, CEO of Arena Pharmaceuticals. At first, Lind was less than interested. Arena’s past struggles were not unknown

“You want to be a CFO.” The second the words reached his ears, Bernard Huger experienced a moment of clarity that ultimately lifted a stubborn fog from the future path of his finance career.  While this was not the first occasion when such a thought had entered his head, this time the words were delivered by a professionally accomplished friend, who wielded an air of objectivity. Like many investment bankers, Huger had found the doorway to corporate development positions less illuminated than those to other corporate roles, while at the same time C-suite doors-of-entry were especially hard to find.   “It wasn’t so obvious to me, but as I explained more about the types of things that I wanted to do, I realized that he was right,” says Huger, who left investment banking after 12 years to become CFO of MuleSoft, a fast-growing San Francisco software firm. “Let’s just say that I caught a tiger by the tail,” recalls Huger, who today derives from the experience a lesson for others: “It was painful, but biting off m

Pete Tantillo recalls being somewhat surprised when he discovered that his career path could be leading to the CFO office. “I’m sort of an accidental CFO,” explains Tantillo, who first arrived inside the finance function in the mid-1990s, when his employer tasked him with making a promising new ERP application meet the needs of finance. The successful implementation led to a job offer from then little-known SAP–which was busy launching the next great technology wave, known as the client server. Tantillo loved the work (he stayed at SAP for 13 years) and eventually ran SAP’s services–the role that would ultimately become his career game changer. Having helped to grow a profitable services business alongside SAP’s software juggernaut, Tantillo was hired away from SAP by a former mentor who believed that Tantillo’s services smarts could help her to turn around a struggling software unit. However, Tantillo’s responsibilities went well beyond services, as he became tasked with organizing, monetizing, and supportin

When Pete D’Arrigo is asked to identify the business growth milestones that punctuate his 13-year CFO tenure at Envestnet, he pays passing homage to the company’s 2010 IPO–before drawing our attention to a convertible debt offering made in late 2014: “This was an offering that put us in a different swim lane. It was the first time that we issued debt, and it was a well-received, oversubscribed offering that then allowed us to lay the groundwork for 2015 and beyond to build out the capabilities to drive revenue.” Whereas the IPO appears to have whetted the company’s M&A appetite  (Envestnet acquired seven companies within the next four years), the debt offering was designed to help with the heavy lifting that often follows a hardy M&A diet. To achieve greater visibility across Envestnet’s expanded operations, Envestnet’s finance team became focused on building out the infrastructure and systems required to integrate the acquired companies, explains D’Arrigo, who believes that it’s the operational aspe

“It’s the economics, the finance,” says CFO Usama Malik, who quickly adds the words “and the accounting” to his short list of finance leader action items. Malik begins where most CFOs end–with the economics behind the business model. Everything else follows, he explains.   “This role is about applying a broader lens to an entire industry and figuring out a competitive advantage,” adds Malik, who, while bullish on the science behind Immunomedics’ future offerings, makes clear his contention that it’s the economics that will ultimately determine the company’s fate. “Historically, there have been fund-raising CFOs, operational CFOs, and strategic CFOs. … I’ve now started to combine these disciplines, and the culmination of these is really advancing the role,” explains Malik. –Jack Sweeney   

A little more than 13 years ago, when Nathan Feather joined PrimeRevenue–an upstart supplier of supply chain financial services–the 20-member enterprise was just signing up its first direct customers. “We were a complete finance function spanning a person and a half,” explains Feather, who says that despite its sparse resources, finance was from time to time drawn into addressing legal, HR, and IT-related matters. This was what any C-suite executive might expect inside a start-up enterprise, but Feather is not your typical start-up CFO. Put another way: He’s not a serial CFO–the singular species that frequently arrives in the start-up’s C-suite already eyeing a transaction. For Feather, PrimeRevenue was an opportunity to perform an act of creation–one in which the company’s business functions, still in their infancy (or yet to be established), would rely in part on his judgment and ability to see into the company’s future. “We built out the accounting and controllership side of the house first and then built

As CFO Perry Wiggins recounts the different door-opening opportunities that allowed him to advance to the CFO office, APQC’s finance leader doesn’t hesitate to expose the seldom-mentioned sensation that frequently accompanies new responsibility–the feeling of being overwhelmed. According to Wiggins, the sense of being overwhelmed by new responsibilities is an experience that finance career-builders should at times relish because it signals they are being given “room to grow.” “There’s an expression–‘Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet.’ I was prepared when an opportunity came along inside a healthcare company, and that opportunity just opened so many others for me,” says Wiggins, who credits an early mentor for sharpening his career focus and directing him down an accounting track that he routinely widened as he took on different finance roles. –Jack Sweeney

A little more than 18 months ago, when CFO Kelly Steckelberg joined Zoom Video Communications, there were a number of key hires that needed to be made if the company was going to achieve its goal of selling shares to the public in the not-too-distant future. Three months after Zoom’s IPO and one month after its first earnings call, those hires are still top-of-mind for Steckelberg, who, while working alongside CEO Eric Yuan, filled the positions of general counsel, head of investor relations, and head of FP&A. Next, Steckelberg says, she wanted to make certain that finance and sales “had a great cadence” as far as how the teams interacted went and established a level of visibility into the sales pipeline that would allow Zoom to forecast on a weekly basis. Looking back, Steckelberg says that visibility into sales and spending was good when she stepped into the CFO role–but not where it needed to be. “When I arrived here, there was one FP&A analyst. She was doing a great job of holding it altogether wh

As Ronen Faier recalls the career-building ups-and-downs of being entrepreneurial CFO, few memories appear to be more vivid than a meeting with Guy Sella, a seasoned Israeli entrepreneur, who invites Faier to lead the finance team of his solar startup. Not yet a midsize firm, SolarEdge Technologies was only about $9 million in annual sales with roughly 100 employees when Faier receives Sella’s invitation. Having already experienced firsthand the heartache and financial repercussions of climbing onboard a struggling startup, Faier says he was confident this time things would be different. “I saw this amazing entrepreneur with a very deep technological understanding of the field as well as a deep understanding of business and I knew you seldom find these in one (individual),” explains Faier, who accepted Sella’s invitation in 2011. Eight years later, SolarEdge has close to 2,000 employees and last year reported sales of $937 million. Faier says, the company’s impressive growth is perhaps most visible today insi

Back in the early 1990s, while a senior manager at Ernst & Young, Elizabeth Salomon was selected to be an “Accounting Fellow” at the OCC – the nation’s primary regulator of banks. Nominated by E&Y for the prestigious post, Salomon moved to Washington DC and was soon writing policy statements that would provide guidance to bank examiners across the country. Reporting directly to the OCC’s chief accountant, she quickly became a “go-between” with other banking regulatory agencies as she coordinated policy development. “This was something I never expected to do and the big learning for me was that it was okay to get out of my comfort zone.” Up to that point, Salomon says her career was about helping clients apply accounting rules, whereas at the OCC she was developing the rules – an exercise she credits with extending her thought process. Explains Salomon: “It was just a very different way of thinking.” Following her OCC posting, Salomon joined Bank of America where she became controller of the bank’s IT

A brief summary of this episode

If CFO Joe Aho’s career DNA were uploaded to Ancestry.com, he would likely discover a family tree populated with no less than five financial planning analysts and 17 senior sales representatives. Needless to say, his career roots are multifunctional, with numerous titles and different tours of duty inside both finance and sales operations. Having joined Compuware nearly 20 years ago, Aho has served as CFO for the last four – his longest occupancy of any one position at Compuware  — which says a lot about his past appetite for job migration. Asked about his priorities as Compuware’s finance leader, Aho leaves little doubt that acquisitions are top of mind for the mainframe technology company that appears eager to open a new chapter of growth one that opens new doors for Compuware while discovering fruitful synergies with its past. NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (25 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

It was the type of introduction that finance executives will invest decades of thoughtful career-building to receive. After dwelling nearly 20 years inside the capital markets and investment research corridors that scrutinize and energize the activities of publicly held real estate companies, Michael Knott was perhaps better prepared than most to receive an introduction to the search executive or team of search executives that had begun extensive outreach. Certainly, Knott’s robust professional network was rich with introductions to different executive searches, but unlike others, this was a CFO search and therefore more worthy of his attention. For many of the ambitious professionals Knott had worked alongside over the years, CFO search had long been a preferred doorway to the C-suite, a familiar path for opening a new leadership career chapter. Meanwhile, it was no secret that the search team was working on behalf of The Blackstone Group–the largest owner of commercial real estate in the world. Twelve month

Like many CFOs, one company more than others dominates James Denena’s finance career building years. Denena spent more than ten years at Applied Materials of Santa Clara, California where an executive development program encouraged him to move around inside the chip maker’s sprawling finance organization. While Denena filled traditional FP&A and treasury roles, he also actively sought out different operational roles that could provide him with a more wide-eyed view of the manufacturing side of the business. However, it was his involvement in the expansion of a corporate development function that Denena today singles out as having perhaps made the greatest contribution to his CFO mind set. “I was one of the early team members that actually built the function out,” recalls Denena, who says the newly minted team quickly became involved in M&A activities and was soon being sought out as an adviser on different strategic decisions across the company.  NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic In

Asked to supply us with a finance Strategic moment, CFO Sean Sobers recalls an acquisition completed during an earlier chapter of his career. Convinced the the acquired company was only capable of yielding a meager profit, Sobers and the finance team set out to expose the company’s shortcomings only to discover the opposite. “It was probably the most profitable business unit we had,” explains Sobers, who says the discovery came as part of a broader effort on the part of finance to require management to apply R.O.I. measures to their investments across the company. Meanwhile, certain opportunities that had garnered steady investment over the years would lose their luster as finance fine tuned its R.O.I. lens and began tracking returns more closely. “As we went forward, if you were going to ask for funding you had to supply an R.O.I. measurement that was approved by finance,” explains Sobers, who says the R.O.I. performance of investments would be tracked annually and frequently quarterly. NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Qu

The young man’s smile is broad and welcoming. It’s the type of photo that colleges and universities frequently use to attract young applicants. However, when featured on the home page for Tri-County Mental Health Services, Inc., the image’s message seems less manufactured and perhaps more ambitious as it seeks to signal hope to families seeking mental health and substance abuse services. As the primary safety-net provider of behavioral health services to a community of more than 346,000 people, Tri-County, of Kansas City, Missouri, keeps hope in large supply, along with treatments, therapies, and professional guidance. Just what role finance leadership plays in delivering Tri-County’s services may not have been entirely evident if not for the untimely death of the organization’s CFO. New leaders are often tasked with driving change, and there was little question that newly hired CFO Michelle Naus was well prepared to drive it. Still, Naus would first need to address a number of nagging obstacles, including a