Cfo Thought Leader

When finance leader Carolyn Koehn looks back on her career to identify the experiences that she feels best prepared her for a CFO role, she shares a candid observation: “I went to places no one else wanted to go.” Such was the case in the late 1990s, when she moved to Bogotá, Colombia, for Nortel Networks, after having helped the company’s finance leadership understand why she was a good match for a sudden job opening. “I was the only interested candidate who wanted to go,” recalls Koehn, who says that her initiative and willingness to relocate helped her to become short-listed for other roles in Nortel’s Latin American finance operations. When a more senior role opened up in Mexico, Koehn’s Bogotá experience helped trump that of a second interested job candidate. “When I look at those two opportunities in hindsight, they honestly were like mini-CFO roles, where you are pulled into everything from facilities and supplier relations to local communications, customer meetings, and more,” says Koehn, who in 2003