Cfo Thought Leader

When asked about his arrival at Dermira, CFO Andrew Guggenhime explains: "I was the 22nd employee, and today we have over 300." Along the way, the company executed an IPO, reached a market value of $1 billion, received FDA approval for its first medication (last June), and brought the offering to market (last October). Not bad for a five-year CFO sprint into the land of leading-edge medical dermatology. Looking back, Guggenhime says: "When I joined Dermira, we had one other person on the finance team. We had no employees on our legal team. We had no employees on our IT team. And those were functions for which I was responsible. So we had to build those teams and begin by bringing in the leaders and building those capabilities so that we could not only serve the growing needs of the company internally, but also satisfy our obligations as a public company." Today, with his finance team in place, Guggenhime prefers to look forward as he and his team awaits the "readouts" from different clinical evaluations. "Pre

There was a time when Glynis Bryan imagined herself someday retiring from Ryder System, Inc.—a company she entered as an intern and would later exit as a senior vice president. Along the way, she credits the transportation logistics giant with having exposed her to complex M&A transactions and innovative capital structures—two areas that she believes have made a hefty contribution to her post-Ryder success as a CFO. However, the Ryder experience she recalls most fondly was inside the FP&A function at what was her first destination on a finance career journey and one that has served her well at Insight Enterprises, Inc. There, shortly after being appointed CFO in 2007, she energized her team's FP&A ambitions and set a course that would forever transform the technology services company's notion of strategic finance. "I think of the FP&A function as being the road map within the finance function that helps each one of the senior leaders across the organization by supplying them with tools and act

Near the end of our discussion with CFO Wilco Groenhuysen, he recommends a book while confiding:  "It's not a great book—but it has a big lesson." "Opportunities exist for only for a short time. So when you see an opportunity, grab it and make the best of it," says Groenhuysen, revealing the big lesson and adding perhaps a surprise ending to a talk that up until his book recommendation appeared to chart the career path of yet another graduate from the CFO school of strict discipline and resolve. But wait! There were other clues along the way that Groenhuysen was more a CFO of his own making than a familiar reproduction. Certainly, the fact that his professional life spans three continents should have tipped us off. Also, how many finance leaders would ascend to the top of a manufacturing behemoth (Philips NA) only to forfeit the comfort of hard-earned industry knowledge to land fleet of foot inside the always-changing realm of biotech? Asked to explain how he addresses the difference between the two realms, G

Of all the finance milestones that CFO Mike Myshrall uses to illustrate Cyren's appetite for success, perhaps few are more enlightening than the one involving private equity titan Warburg Pincus. Two years ago, Warburg Pincus offered to buy out Cyren shareholders at a 35 percent premium over the current price of their shares. However, unwilling to have the firm forfeit its publicly owned shares entirely, Cyren management structured the deal so that Warburg would be eligible to acquire only up to 75 percent of Cyren's outstanding shares. Surprisingly, Warburg found itself battling to capture half of the available shares despite the hefty premium. In the end, the PE firm ended up with only 52 percent of outstanding shares. "Many shareholders chose to stay in the company and ride it with Warburg so that they could potentially get an even bigger return down the road if the company were to go fully private or if we were to sell to a larger company through an acquisition," explains Myshrall, who describes the trans

Sometime in the next three to six months, Syngenta AG, a Swiss-based agribusiness company, is expecting to welcome a clan of ambitious offspring. Months, even years in the making, these fruit from a forward-looking group are born from a cross-functional team—one tasked with helping the $13.5 billion enterprise correctly measure its expansive sustainability initiatives. To be clear, the aforementioned "offspring" are new metrics, the output of an ambitious metrics "refresh" triggered in part by the firm's determination to routinely evaluate the numbers intended to provide Syngenta management as well stakeholders with a clear-eyed view of its sustainability efforts. "It's all good and well establishing a new metric, but if you can't measure and monitor it, then it has no value in any shape or form," explains Syngenta CFO Mark Patrick, who first mentioned the sustainability "refresh" when asked about metrics that had become increasingly top-of-mind for finance—but were clearly "nonfinancial" or beyond the realm

Among the many flights that CFO Stefan Schulz has taken between Minneapolis and Houston over the years, few are etched in his memory better than a certain return flight to Minneapolis—during which he created an ambitious list of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) action items. The list that Schultz created in the air that day was long and detailed, and while he may not have ever used it as such, the list was the muscle behind an ultimatum. "I was thinking about all that I would need in order to get things fixed. Basically, I was thinking, 'If I don't get these, then you need to find somebody else,'" explains Schulz, who at the time had not yet been a month into a new job with Lawson Software when he determined that it was time to alert Lawson's board and upper management to its snowballing SOX compliance challenge. "To my surprise, they told me, 'We want you to do exactly what you said' and 'We've got your back.' This really changed how I approached problems and how I would recommend solutions going forward," explains Schu

It was late for a workday (perhaps after 9:00 p.m.) when Seb Martel shared his team's candid findings with a collection of top managers tasked with assessing the economic downturn's likely impact on BRP's business. As a manufacturer of popular vehicles for snow and water, BRP had a management that was naturally concerned that the downturn could wallop BRP's recreation-minded customers, depressing sales and raising doubts about whether BRP would meet its debt covenants. Still, the question that remained top-of-mind for Martel was a question that the downturn posed to industry at large: "Is management prepared to listen?" Today, Martel believes that his forthrightness served him well that night—along with an unflinching confidence in the numbers. BRP's management listened and responded to Martel's clear-eyed message by taking steps to better manage all areas of business, while battening down any unnecessary risk-taking. It's no secret that CFO careers are built on decades of experience that every so often yield

A brief summary of this episode

TrainingPros CFO Jill Vogin describes her early-career public accounting experience as a “virtual master’s degree” in corporate finance and accounting. It was also something of a good omen, given that Vogin now leads the finance function of a highly specialized staffing company with virtual offices throughout the country and (more recently) around the world. It’s also fitting that Vogin oversaw the implementation of a cloud-based ERP system. Vogin discusses how she’s adapted her leadership style to suit the virtual environment while resetting her team’s expectations concerning performance and collaboration.

G1 Therapeutics CFO Barclay “Buck” Phillips set his sights on the CFO position on day one of his very first job back in high school. After he hustled home to share the great news about landing the part-time gig, Phillips’s father, a stock broker, shared some prescient advice: Son, always make sure you’re the guy whose hand is closest to the cash register or the cash flow—that way, you’ll always have the opportunity to add the most value. The advice struck a chord. Today, with close to three decades of capital markets, financial strategy, and business development experience in life sciences and venture capital under his belt, Phillips remains as close to the cash flow as possible. He owns responsibility for all finance operations, including treasury, as well as for investor relations, business development, and strategic transactions at the clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops therapeutics to treat cancer. Phillips discusses the value that he’s contributed via innovative projects during his ca

A Chief Story Officer’s Legacy Given that finance executives are the top number-crunchers in the organization, it’s fascinating to hear Traction on Demand CFO Corinne Hua describe people, conversations, and narratives as crucial factors in her strategic calculations at her consulting and software development firm. Hua views her function’s primary role as crafting a compelling story around the company’s financial results. Her team’s success in doing so has resulted in some interesting assignments, such as leading an effort to assess and rebalance the pace of hiring within an industry where new hires—consultants who produce billable hours—help to drive top-line revenue. The finance group's data-driven detective work produced three metrics that the business now monitors to ensure that the pace of hiring supports revenue growth objectives without negatively affecting organizational collaborations or workplace culture. The work marked a “great moment for us to act strategically” outside of traditional corporate fi

Guidance for your C-Suite Ascent A global finance executive with a passion for healthcare, Constellation Pharmaceuticals CFO Emma Reeve offers straightforward advice to aspiring finance chiefs: continually add new experiences to your backpack and take them with you to your next role. She’s certainly demonstrated that her approach works. Reeve’s 20-plus years of industry experiences extends across pharmaceutical, medical device and bio-pharma companies including big-name corporations (like Novartis, Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb) as well as development-stage biotech companies (Inotek Pharmaceuticals and Aton Pharma). While she methodically sought out experience in FP&A, accounting, investor relations and just about every other corporate finance function, Reeve credits her work outside the  finance and accounting realm – interacting with patient advocacy groups, partnering with business leaders and collaborating with the marketing function – with helping her reach the CFO office for the first time in 2002.

Chanticleer Holdings CFO Patrick Harkleroad knows how to distinguish between signals and noise. That’s evident when he’s helping colleagues mine an expanding trove of data for customer insights to improve customer experience at the company’s fast, casual, and full-service restaurant brands. It’s also the case when Harkleroad assesses his varied career experiences in investment banking (both capital markets ad mergers & acquisitions), the restaurant industry and while guiding struggling companies through turnarounds as a consultant to CFOs. He’s learned to pair his dogged determination and true-north focus with larger dose of empathy to better understand the unique perspectives of all stakeholders involved in difficult decisions and tough deals. Harkleroad also discusses the value that finance executives can derive by dedicating themselves to the “day-top-day grind” required to perform as an elite CFO.

From a career development standpoint, one of the best things William Acheson did to reach the CFO office was stepping away from corporate finance and accounting for 15 years. After coming up on the public acconting track, the GWG Holdings finance chief immersed himself in investment banking, the residential mortgage industry, capital markets, risk management, credit management and more while taking on a variety of operational roles. He also accepted long-term international assignments for Merrill Lynch and GMAC-RESCAP.  Acheson credits his accounting training and skills for helping him add value in his many operations positions. “As I got older and my career progressed, I found myself perfectly suited for the CFO job because I [had gained] that breadth of experience.” Now as the 30-year veteran mentors rising finance and accounting talent at GWG Holdings, a leader in the fast-growing secondary life insurance market, he advises those interested in the CFO track to “leave accounting, but always keep in touch wi

Arvinas CFO Sean Cassidy caught the high-growth bug early in his career. Shortly into his stint with Deloitte, Cassidy transitioned from a massive global financial services company to work with middle-market clients. He felt he could make a more tangible difference for those companies by supporting them as they raised capital and made acquisitions. His passion led him to the life sciences industry where Cassidy has served as the finance chief of a number of high-growth biotech and biopharma companies. In a previous stint, Cassidy helped CuraGen subsidiary 454 Life Sciences get its back office in order for a potential IPO. During his two years guiding that effort, the business grew from 20 people to 150 employees and from zero to $70 million in revenue.  “It was a very exciting time,” Cassidy asserts. “The company almost went public, but in the end it made more sense to do a strategic transaction.” The experience helped elevate him to CuraGen’s CFO office and, more recently, to Arvinas, a biopharmaceutical com

When Whirlpool CFO Jim Peters joined the company at the director level 15 years ago, he was thrust into the thick of a pivotal M&A deal that also wound up generating extraordinary value from a career development standpoint. Originally assigned to help manage the accounting facets of the proposed Maytag acquisition, Peters swiftly expanded his assignment to include tax, post-deal integration planning and other dimensions. His ability to take on additional responsibilities “gave me exposure to senior leaders within whirlpool,” Peters recalls. “In a very short period of time, I went from being someone who stepped in at the director-level to interacting with our CEO … on a daily basis.” The intense work, learning and exposure subsequently propelled Peters, a former EY consultant who also worked for Limited Brands prior to joining Whirlpool, into a series of increasingly senior corporate finance positions. His previous roles include serving as the CFO of Whirlpool EMEA and as chief accounting officer for Whirl

A Cross-Functional Black Belt Vocera Communications CFO Justin Spencer’s strategic-finance breakthrough had little to do with corporate finance and everything to do with the drivers of strategic success. In an earlier CFO role, the tech executive heard just about every ERP horror story there is – sordid scope creep, sketchy implementation firms, unending projects, the organization's brutal rejection of IT-driven initiatives, and more – as he prepared to lead a massive Oracle upgrade. To side-step those nightmarish outcomes, he designed a unique approach. Spencer enlisted the company’s best project manager as the full-time project leader, invested in a rigorous screening process to hire an elite implementation partner, set aside ample budget for unexpected contingencies, seeded the project team with A-players (priming them with performance incentives), and sucessfully branded the endeavor as a C-level mandate. The painstaking upfront work paid off handsomely as the project was completed on time and within budg

Choose Your Words Carefully Zendesk CFO Elena Gomez followed up a top-notch education (a degree from UC-Berkley’s Haas School of Business) with a series of finance executive positions within some highly impressive companies – Charles Schwab, Visa, Salesforce and, since April 2016, Zendesk, a customer experience and help desk platform company that's posted remarkable, largely organic, growth in recent years. Despite the elite credentials, Gomez asserts the importance of forging genuine connections with her bosses, colleagues and direct reports. She shares the inspirational speech her boss gave to her when her confidence wavered as a 29-year-old, newly minted VP. Gomez also delivers a candid account of how a near mutiny by her team taught her the underrated value of authentic expressions of gratitude. “One of my direct reports told me that everyone on my team was going to quit,” she recalls. “I was a brand new VP of finance … he said: You know, you haven’t said ‘thank you.’ It just stopped me in my tracks.”  

An Early Dose of Pharma Start-Up Experience When Global Blood Therapeutics CFO Jeffrey Farrow says he took the corporate-finance career path less traveled, he really means it. As an undergraduate biology major, Farrow and a couple of entrepreneurial-minded postdocs hit upon a way to identify a protein thought to cause Alzheimer’s. The group licensed the technology from the University of California system and launched their own company, “which we naively thought we maybe could take public,” Farrow recounts. He and his co-founders instead wound up selling their venture to a larger neuroscience company. The experience helped Farrow, who managed the startup’s business side, shed his naiveté via a potent dose of real-world experience. After a stint in public accounting, Farrow returned to the pharmaceutical industry where he’s subsequently taken on numerous CFO and finance executive positions while leading IPOs, shepherding high-growth companies toward (and through) acquisitions, and guiding early-stage pharma com

A Humble Take on a Hall-of-Fame Career Yext CFO Steve Cakebread’s resume is extraordinary given the preeminent companies he’s worked for (HP, Silicon Graphics, Autodesk, Salesforce.com, Pandora and Yext), the new technology categories he’s helped bring to market, and the staggering growth those organizations posted under his corporate-finance leadership. Cakebread joined Salesforce as employee #67 when the $10 billion company was eking out a quaint $20 million annually. Despite these Lebron-esque achievements, Cakebread humbly peppers his discussion with plenty of phrases like “I was fortunate to…” Luckily for us, he also runs through a compelling set of career-building keys, including: taking promotions to difficult roles that had remained unfilled for months “because everyone else thought they would fail" at the job; amassing international experience (a decade in China and India); and learning how to explain innovative business models and entirely new product categories to analysts and other stakeholders. H