Cfo Thought Leader

Jakson Peters's journey from humble beginnings to becoming a global CFO is a tale adaptability, and continuous learning. Born in Brazil, he had initial career expectations far removed from the finance world that had their roots in the start of his working life as part of the family's milk delivery business. This early experience, so remote from his eventual home in the c-suite, laid the foundation for his future success, he explains.. From 1998 to 2002, Peters worked for DaimlerChrysler in São Paulo, a stint that marked the beginning of a corporate finance trajectory that would eventually lead the young financial planner to embark on a journey of self-improvement that would include mastering English and pursuing an MBA from Wharton in United States. With the latter in hand, Peters returned to Brazil to serve as a member of Mondelēz International's FP&A team before stepping into a number of CFO roles with midsize firms. Transitioning from his established Brazilian CFO credentials, Peters next embraced the

On this episode of Controllers Classified, host Eric Zhou welcomes Sean Soper, the Head of Financial Operations and Accounting at Alchemy, to shed light on the disruptive technologies shaping the trajectory of accounting and finance. Alchemy provides the leading blockchain development platform and as such, much of the conversation narrows in on the possible applications of blockchain in accounting. Sean begins the discussion highlighting his experience working across companies that have revolutionized whole industries with new technology. He notes that a large part of his success at these companies has been from remaining curious and developing deep industry knowledge that guides how he approaches his accounting processes and procedures. Sean then outlines his priorities in his current role at Alchemy, which include optimizing the financial close process, fine tuning reporting and analytics, and managing cash.

Perhaps no single experience better reveals the breadth of challenges that regularly test even the most stoic of finance career-builders than that which confronted Eric Bouchard a little more than a decade ago at Bombardier, Inc.Tasked by management with negotiating the establishment of a new aerospace facility, Bouchard navigated through complex discussions with the Moroccan government, balancing the interests of Bombardier and the aspirations of a nation. His role extended beyond mere finance: He became a diplomat, a strategist, and, most important, a bridge between diverse cultures and economic ambitions.The culmination of his efforts was a groundbreaking agreement for Bombardier that led to the opening of a state-of-the-art facility. This venture, we learn, solidified Bombardier’s global footprint and at the same time contributed significantly to Morocco’s industrial development. Bouchard’s remarkable record of being a mild-mannered technical accountant who transcended the bounds of traditional roles to b

At the very beginning of our talk with CFO Chermaine Hu, she revealed an irony about the CFO title that we rarely get to expose.To wit: The very title toward which any executive has invested so many illustrious career years conveys ownership of what might seem to be a less than illustrious role—or at least one requiring little future endeavor.“I have always struggled with the CFO title,” explains Hu, who notes that the moniker captures only a fraction of what most CFOs actually do.Hu’s unexpected comments seemed to be appropriate openers for an executive who doesn’t mind—and in fact prefers—being different from the rest of the pack. Or at least this is just one of several takeaways that we garner from Hu’s early career years.In fact, it turns out that Hu had an independent streak even before she entered the world of finance. Back in 1998, as she was approaching graduation from the University of Cambridge—job offer from Morgan Stanley already in hand—she decided to take job during Easter break serving ice crea

Looking back at his 26 years at Intel Corp., Jeff Woolard has more than a few moments of important discernment from which to choose when we ask for a single finance strategic moment.Nevertheless, without hesitation, he takes us back in time to when the giant chipmaker was experiencing a recurring mismatch between the products that it was developing and the market’s purchasing trends—specifically in the PC sector.“If you were to map both what people wanted to buy and what we were building, you would see this kind of disconnect,” recalls Woolard, who upon closer observation realized that while consumer buying behaviors had remained consistent, Intel’s product designs and manufacturing processes had evolved without alignment.Woolard would propose a novel approach: redesigning Intel’s product road map to focus on four specific cost points that matched consumer demand and the company’s margin goals. This strategic insight led to a shift in how Intel approached product development, ensuring that new products were d

Joining Intel Corp. in 1999 as a recent college graduate, David Freeman began his finance career as part of the tech giant’s plus-size finance team that supported various business groups. Looking back, Freeman finds that few aspects of the tech giant’s business were more influential in shaping his early career years than the company’s direct and “confrontational” culture.“They expected excellence,” he recalls. “They expected details, and they expected you to know your business.”Along the way, despite the many opportunities that Intel regularly offered him, Freeman came to realize that he wanted to open his next career door somewhere else.“I didn’t really love being at a large company, so—after 7 years there—I decided that it was time to move on,” continues Freeman, who opted to join a pioneering cloud company known as NetSuite.At fewer than 500 employees, NetSuite was aiming to be among the first SaaS companies to go public, and Freeman tells us that he ultimately had a hand in drafting the company’s S-1—a ha

Planning Aces co-hosts Brett Knowles and Jack Sweeney discuss the strategic efforts of two CFOs leading organizational turnarounds, and a third CFO, who offers key organizational insights from an earlier career chapter. Emphasizing simplification, strategic focus, and leveraging both human insight and technology, Marc Suidan of Beachbody, Emma Brown of Medius and David Freeman of Starburst share their experiences in cutting costs, enhancing digital experiences, and repositioning product offerings as key strategies for revival and expansion. They underscore the importance of a deep understanding of business operations and the potential of AI in supporting decision-making processes. Their narratives reflect a common theme of distilling operations to impactful actions, demonstrating the critical role of CFOs in navigating companies through challenging transformations towards sustainable growth.

Lessons from Craig Wert’s finance career reveal the power of adaptability, problem-solving skills, and the ability to seize opportunities in unexpected places.Having started his career without a clear road map to the future, Wert later found that his liberal arts background and early experiences in investment banking had laid a good foundation for a career that might have led in any number of directions.What began to set Wert apart, however, was his innate ability to troubleshoot. Throughout his career, he was frequently called upon to solve complex problems, whether operational challenges at RCN or financial crises at Vonage. This knack for troubleshooting didn’t just resolve immediate issues, though: It also began to reveal to upper management his maturing strategic acumen and resilience. Every challenge overcome was a stepping-stone that led to increasing trust and the opening of doors to new opportunities.Today, Wert’s evolution from troubleshooter to CFO of Jobber has proven to be a journey that has endo

When PwC partner and relentless champion of shareholder value Marc Suidan stepped into the CFO office at The Beachbody Company in April 2022, intrigue was bound to follow.Certainly, a struggling fitness and health company may not be viewed by many as the optimal door-of-entry to the operations side of things. However, for Suidan—a 17-year PwC veteran—Beachbody was without a doubt an enticing challenge. As a seasoned advisor to management, Suidan had contributed shareholder insights to the turnarounds and restructurings of dozens of businesses. However, at Beachbody, he would be executing from inside the organization, where the levers for strategic as well as operational improvement would be within his reach.“Interestingly enough, half of Beachbody’s business is digital subscriptions, while the other half is the nutritional supplements that people who work out consume,” he reports. “People take energy drinks before working out and protein supplements afterward, so these are all part of part of the health suppl

On this episode of Controllers Classified, Brex’s CAO Erik Zhou is joined by Sowmya Ranganathan, OpenAI’s Controller. The conversation begins with a discussion on Sowmya’s career and her diverse experiences as an auditor and as a finance leader at both public and private tech companies, including Square and Rippling prior to OpenAI. Specifically, she highlights some of her insights for accounting during periods of business hypergrowth (i.e. when OpenAI launched ChatGPT) and the increasing need for technical savviness even as a finance professional (ex: Sowmya learned SQL as a way to manage the processing and analysis of a large data set of transactions at Square). She concludes her career overview with this advice: accounting leaders need to consider where their processes would break down if they were to grow quickly and focus their time and effort on making sure those processes are as scalable and automated as possible (hint: it requires building relationships with engineering).

It’s the type of story that we can’t resist repeating, and one that without question underscores Eric Jenny’s entrepreneurial spirit. Still, the entertainment value of his tale of zapping wasp nests with a homemade rubber band gun for a dollar a pop was at risk of eclipsing the more traditional milestones that populate a career path otherwise defined by strategic decision-making and an innate ability to identify and capitalize on opportunities.During his stints in public accounting and the tech industry, Jenny tells us, he enjoyed immersing himself in the dynamics of fast-paced technological advancements and entrepreneurial business growth strategies.At SOCi, CFO Jenny’s data-driven approach has led to pivotal decisions, such as focusing on enterprise clients, that have showcased his adeptness at steering the company through the complexities of the digital marketing landscape. Asked about his finance mind-set, Jenny recounts his commitment to curiosity and unwavering quest for greater efficiency. However, we’

It was during a 9-year tenure at food giant ConAgra Brands that Alejandro Castro became involved in a companywide initiative that would forever alter his approach to leadership and strategic thinking. Born and raised in Mexico, Castro had begun his professional voyage at Price Waterhouse, where he launched a public accounting career from the accounting house's Mexico City office. After ConAgra came knocking several years later, he accepted a position within its Mexico operations that eventually led to a promotion involving relocation to the U.S. and the firm's Omaha headquarters. Castro tells us that this move was pivotal, offering him exposure to the food giant's global operations and strategic involvement at a high level that included participation on a board of directors in Asia. Still, Castro's path took somewhat of an unexpected turn when ConAgra's CEO approached him to help spearhead an initiative designed in part to boost efficient decision-making across the company. In short, ConAgra management had sa

Not unlike that of many of her CFO peers, Rachel Stack's journey toward becoming a CFO has been punctuated by pivotal transactions.No single example of this turns out to have been more complicated or rich with lessons than what Stack refers to simply as "the take-private of Zayo."However, before the path forward for Zayo was made clear, there had been a moment of strategic recalibration that would test her resolve and shape her approach to future challenges.Reflecting on this period, Stack shares: "One big strategic moment has to have been when the attempted split of Zayo into two separate entities was being considered. We thought about splitting it into a fiber company and an enterprise firm."The plan, aimed at unlocking value and sharpening strategic focus, did not go as planned. "The market's response was immediate and clear," Stack recalls. "The stock was down, I want to say, by 20%."This moment of adversity, however, was far from a setback in Stack's eyes. Instead, it became a defining moment that refine

Looking back on his days with GoDaddy, Sam Kemp recalls a pivotal page in the domain registry giant’s strategic M&A playbook.As he prepared to present to the executive team his analysis of a recent acquisition, he included a simple slide to convey data that would challenge the company’s conventional thinking around acquisitions and how—free from the limitations of this thinking—GoDaddy’s newest acquisition could serve as a strategic lever for the company at large.This driver, Kemp tells us, would challenge the high regard in which GoDaddy’s management team held new “profit pools” and the transactions that triggered them.Recalls Kemp: “We decided to do a very counterintuitive thing: to not have a profit pool for the latest acquisition—in order to achieve faster adoption vis-à-vis price competition—and instead to use it to establish profit pools inside other categories that were related to it. This turned out to be a very successful strategy, and something that scaled really nicely.”As the somewhat revoluti

On this episode of Controllers Classified, Brex’s CAO Erik Zhou is joined by Angelina Hendraka, the CAO at Redis. The conversation begins with a recap of Angelina’s diverse experiences across financial services, biotech, and SaaS companies. Angelina notes that while KPIs shift based on business strategy & industry, the transition from one industry to another in her career has felt seamless given finance is the universal language of business. Erik and Angelina also discuss the transition from big 4 accounting firms to controllership, and the evolution of one’s approach with that transition (i.e. from being deep in technical accounting to thinking more broadly and operationally). The conversation then turns to recapping a recent panel discussion that Angelina participated in related to women in the workplace and fostering inclusive work environments. She shares her perspective on what it means to be an inclusive leader, and what more leaders can be doing to ensure diverse representation in finance and acco

It’s an all-too-familiar tale among the ranks of senior finance executives: A private equity firm acquires a company, reshuffles the finance team, and reserves the top finance spot for one of its own portfolio CFOs.At Qlik, though, this story had a less familiar ending—or at least one that did not include a portfolio CFO. Instead, back in 2016, when Thoma Bravo acquired King of Prussia, Pennsylvania’s Qlik, a seasoned veteran of the latter’s own finance team—Dennis Johnson—entered the CFO office.For Johnson, there’s little question that his appointment validated the 8 career years that he had already invested with the company, a period during which he had sought to routinely contribute to the company’s growth and ongoing strategic transformation. It turns out that his senior finance roles—and in particular his involvement in the transition to a subscription-based model—had demonstrated his strategic vision and capacity for managing change effectively and thus opened a new door.CFOTL: Tell us about Qlik …

Elizabeth Mann began her career as a mathematician in academia, spending a decade in the field. Her initial plan had been to become a professor, on a path that would start with a Ph.D. and a postdoc.However, something was missing. Eager to engage more directly with the world at large, she pivoted her career toward finance.Mann found a door of entry at Goldman Sachs, where after initially filling a quantitative role involving complex financing structures she subsequently transitioned to investment banking and a new focus on M&A and corporate finance in the tech and media sectors.After more than decade with Goldman Sachs, she moved to S&P Global. Here, after first handling such corporate finance areas as treasury, tax, and capital allocation, she eventually stepped into a divisional CFO role. This was her first experience on a leadership team, which offered her a broader view of running a business and deepened her operational expertise.Mann’s journey led her to become CFO of Verisk, a provider of data,

This episode of Planning Aces sheds light on the critical role financial leadership and strategic planning plays in guiding companies through turbulent times and the importance of balancing short-term opportunities with long-term strategic planning. Each of the featured finance chiefs faced unique challenges related to the pandemic’s impact on their businesses, and their responses offer valuable insights into effective financial leadership during times of crisis and change. In each case, the CFOs demonstrated strategic foresight and adaptability in their planning, ensuring their companies could navigate through and beyond the pandemic’s challenges. Resident thought leader Brett Knowles provide insights throughout the discussion, emphasizing the role of CFOs as the “voice of reason” in navigating short-term gains and long-term strategies. He highlighted the need for agility and adaptability in financial planning, acknowledging the complexity and unpredictability of market conditions.  

It was the type of introduction that any MBA student would envy, and one at which David Snyder, 35 years later, still marvels.Back in the late 1980s, a business school classmate introduced him to notable investor and billionaire tycoon Sam Zell, who subsequently offered Snyder a job.Without hesitation, Snyder accepted Zell’s offer and in short order began working for him in Chicago, where he joined a group of recent young graduates whom Zell had recruited to help inside the realm of corporate acquisitions.More than any one deal or acquisition target, Snyder recalls, the greatest lessons from his days with Zell came from the sideline conversations.“Just by my proximity to Sam, I learned a lot—he had sort of a Socratic approach, whereby we would have a dialogue with him in which he would begin sharing the investor’s point of view and how an investor thinks about the operating prospects of a given investment,” remembers Snyder, who adds that from those days onward he has always “come to the table” thinking like

Like many of her CFO peers, Karen Walker had an early career that was guided by abundant opportunities surrounding finance-driven decision-making within organizations.It was a path that often led Walker to engage more closely with sales and operations, as was the case at CNET Networks, where she tells us that she recognized the limitations of embracing a strictly “rules-based” approach in finance.It was at CNET that she embraced a more transformative perspective—prioritizing the customer’s objectives and challenges. This shift in thinking, emphasizing a customer mind-set, would continue as she advanced in her career.At PagerDuty, the philosophy became instrumental in addressing the company’s rapid growth challenges. Now, as CFO at Sysdig, Walker tell us that it’s this commitment to understanding customer needs that guides the company’s approach to cloud security. Her journey reflects a progressive integration of customer-centricity into financial leadership, showcasing its adaptability and efficacy in diverse