Cfo Thought Leader

The executives and staffers profiled on Possible’s web site are described by the non-profit integrated healthcare provider as “possibilists” – “people with the perspective to embrace extraordinary challenge and the grit to get remarkable results anyway.” The term suits Possible CFO Pavan Makhija, a former investment banker who possesses dual undergraduate degrees in math and religion, a master’s in financial engineering from Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, and a passion for social issues. The former Lehman Brothers and Barclays controller is also an avid story-teller. Here, he narrates his anything-is-possible career trajectory while sharing how the Lehman bankruptcy – and his use the firm’s balance sheet as a powerful narrative device at an arduous time – educated him on his CFO path. Makhija also describes the challenge of applying all of his financial engineering and management skills to guiding a mission-driven organization that provides affordable (and often free) high-q

Whenever he’s faced a difficult crossroads in life or business, Varnonis CFO Guy Melamed focused squarely on goals – sticking to them and scoring them. Despite playing for Israel’s under-21 national soccer team and fielding alluring offers to continue his playing career there, Melamed chose to leave his home country. He attended Boston College where he simultaneously played soccer, studied accounting and business, and learned English. His stick-to-itiveness helped him earn a B.A and an M.S.A. while becoming the first Israeli to get drafted by a Major League Soccer (MLS) team. After a year with the Colorado Rapids in the U.S. and a stint in the U.K.’s Championship League, Melamed decided to focus exclusively on his business career, joining KPMG as a CPA. Despite lucrative offers from private industry, Melamed opted to remain at KPMG and, later, EY, because, at those points in his career, he says “knowledge and experience were more important to me than making more money.” The pursuit of those goals also paid of

Before joining Tableau four years ago and taking over the CFO seat last July, Damon Fletcher worked through a progression of experiences that could serve as a career roadmap for up-and-coming finance chiefs. After earning his Master of Accounting degree, Fletcher joined PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he worked closely with one of the fastest-growing companies in the world during the early 2000s. His early-career work included M&A valuations and integrations, extensive travel, valuable guidance from savvy mentors and risk management expertise earned during the depths of the global financial crisis. He has straightforward advice for aspiring finance leaders: Get out of your comfort zone. That means seeking out assignments in new areas of corporate finance and the business, gaining exposure to new industries, and accepting roles that require moves to new regions. Here, he discusses his role with the leading visual analytics company – including a valuable collaboration with the sales team—and the unique pa

Cloud ERP + Time = Strategic Influence When Kote Lomidze became World Learning’s CFO four years ago, he immediately began enhancing the functionality of a cloud-based ERP platform the global educational non-profit had implemented six months earlier. The work, which Lomidze oversaw in a very hands-on way, generated valuable returns as measured in dollars, time and influence. Thanks to his technological savvy, Lomidze and his team spearheaded the adoption of applications that streamlined timesheets and improved the collection of vendors' banking information among numerous other benefits. In all, Lomidze and his team spearheaded the adoption of 10 applications, which greatly reduced the time the function spends chasing data and closing the books. “We spend more time analyzing the data and translating that data into actionable outcomes,” he says. Less time on reconciliations also translates to more time supporting decision-making that “influences how the organization is run,” adds Lomidze, who discusses all of th

After starting his career in a Big 4 accounting firm and then steadily ascending through numerous (and varied) corporate finance roles over nearly two decades, Michael Hug possessed a clear vision for his CFO tenure at the world’s largest publicly traded timeshare company. “I didn’t want my team to just be the people who come in, count the money and deposit it in the bank,” he notes. “Rather, I want us to be embedded in the business – to have a great relationship with our business leaders … while helping the organization to achieve its goals.” Hug assumed his finance chief role as Wyndham Destinations was spinning off its sister company. That timing gave him the unique opportunity to build a senior corporate finance leadership team – including the heads of investor relations, treasury and internal audit as well as a chief accounting officer – from scratch

Prior to joining Sysmex, a medical diagnostic testing equipment and information systems technology company, five years ago, spent his formative years in Siemens where his varied experience covered every aspect of corporate finance in addition to stints as the head of strategic projects for one of the conglomerate’s companies. One Garini’s guiding principles as a finance executive is to get as far away from his desk as possible and deeply engage with broad and diverse group of stakeholders. Over the course of a career that includes leadership positions throughout Latin America, Europe and North America, the Brazil native has embraced that principle to its extreme. Garini, who speaks four languages, exhorts his rising managers and executives to “train themselves to be global” by seeking roles in new regions to gain exposure to new cultures, languages, market environments and business perspectives. Guest:   Alex Garini Company:  Sysmex America Headquartered: Chicago, IL Connect: www.sysmex.com

Eagle-eyed vision may be Mphasis Executive Vice President and CFO V. Suryanarayanan’s most valuable leadership skill. His ability to zero in on crucial but obscured factors – market conditions affecting the timing of an IPO or the surprisingly high cost of indirect materials used in the motorcycle manufacturing process, for example – has helped him add substantial value to the companies he’s worked for while earning him impressive recognition. Honored as one of India’s 100 Best CFOs for 2017-18, Suryanarayanan also received CFO India’s First Annual CFONEXT100 honor in 2012 (and was a repeat winner the following year). That said he would rather talk about how he and his finance team’s analysis of market forecasts spurred them to accelerate the timetable for taking a company public – a move that “resulted in a fantastic valuation” and a successful listing completed weeks before a major market swoon. Suryanarayanan views those types of accomplishments as part of the strategic CFO’s core role. “Ideally, the CFO s

Wasabi CFO Michael Bayer’s career ah-ha moment struck early. He was a college math whiz in the early days of PCs when a professor enlisted Bayer to move all of his paper-based finance and accounting records to a computerized system. “He took me under his wing and taught me a lot,” recalls Bayer, whose 25-plus year professional career includes various finance, operations, technology and business development roles primarily for venture-backed technology companies. “Only recently have I realized the magnitude of the risk that he undertook … He allowed some college kid to build out his business systems [and] he trusted the trading of his fairly sizable investment portfolio to computer models that I built around my emerging understanding of options.” The experience has served as a leadership beacon for Bayer throughout his career as he managed IPOs, co-founded a mobile social network and served as a CFO in a number of companies: “I really think the most powerful thing you can do as a CFO and a business leader is t

When he started his career, Western Union CFO Raj Argawal never expected to wind up leading a global finance function. That seems appropriate today considering he defines his role – first and foremost – as “driving and executing the strategy of the company.” Trained as an electrical engineer at General Motors, Argawal also earned an MBA and then set out in pursuit of a variety of job roles (in the treasury function at General Mills, running one of Western Union’s business units) and diverse experiences (managing foreign exchange risks, taking overseas assignments). Those activities ultimately helped groom him as a finance chief with a broad perspective and a highly strategic lens. “I really look at myself as being a strategic CFO because I’ve had so many experiences in the field interacting with our customers, our agents, our business partners and our employees,” he says. “I’ve always brought the business perspective to my thinking and my decision-making.”

Tim Saunders seems like the kind of leader you’d absolutely follow into battle. He thrives in high-pressure situations, remains cool under pressure and truly values his troops’ expertise. Saunders also fully commits to taking on new -- and seemingly overwhelming – challenges, like the one that greeted him in his first finance executive role following his time in public accounting. During his first week on that job, Saunders discovered his telecommunications company had lost $25 million the previous year, received news that the New York Stock Exchange was threatening delisting, and received a letter that had been languishing on his CEO’s desk for days. The note, from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, contained more than three dozen comments requiring prompt remediation. “Dealing with 44 SEC comments is a good way to learn about the company during your first week on the job,” Saunders deadpans. But he’s not entirely kidding. That unflappable demeanor has served Saunders well while pursuing a varied p

Circle CFO Naeem Ishaq’s Forrest Gumpian career trajectory has given him extraordinary exposure to most of Silicon Valley’s touchstone technologies – the semiconductor, cloud computing, mobile payments and, most recently, cryptocurrency. After a stint as a dot.com-era entrepreneur he launched as an undergraduate, Ishaq has invested the past 18 years accumulating a trove of experience within some of the technology industry’s most iconic companies, including Intel, Salesforce, Square, Box and Circle. Along the way, he learned crucial leadership lessons from a remarkable collection of CEOs and CFOs, including former Intel finance chief and current Intel chairman Andy Bryant. Ishaq says Bryant demonstrated what it takes to cultivate a thriving “strategic finance culture.” Today, as head of Circle’s finance team, Ishaq views the ability to quickly “shift context” as key to nurturing his team. He honed that agility at Salesforce when its market capitalization (now $100 billion) was a plucky $3 billion. As head of f

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

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NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).