CFO THOUGHT LEADER

On her first day as CFO at Greenphire, Sue Vestri sat in a conference room “learning all of the acronyms” of the clinical trial industry, she tells us. There were “many, many, many,” she recalls, and she listened to the sales team outside her door to understand how the product was positioned and why it mattered.

That willingness to learn from the ground up defines her career. Earlier, a mentor warned her she would stagnate if she stayed in the safety of a large company. “You’ve got to go to grow,” he told her. She left for a 100-empl...

In his early 30s, Guillermo Lopez walked into finance as an outsider. “Nobody was giving me a chance in finance because I was an engineer,” he tells us. Then a boss took “a risk” and moved him into a finance role—partly because he was “good with numbers,” and partly because his consulting background meant he could be put “in front of…external parties,” Lopez tells us.

That entry point set the tone for how he builds a career: intentionally and with breadth. At American Express, he moved across businesses and finance roles on purpose, because “it’s important to get breat...

An employee is on vacation in the mountains when it happens: “I left my laptop at home.” Instead of scrambling, the employee logs into a virtual desktop from another device, pulling up what looks and feels like their own PC, delivered through the cloud. That simple moment captures how Steve Shimizu describes Omnissa’s mission—helping companies enable a digital employee experience that allows people to work from anywhere, on any device, he tells us.

For Shimizu, this practical use case reflects a broader evolution in end-user computing. What began with desktop computers moved to laptops and mobile d...

As he nears the end of his first 100 days at Nintex, Burt Chao is doing something many new CFOs resist: listening more than talking. Understanding the business, its people, and its real growth potential comes before dashboards or directives, he tells us.

Chao describes Nintex as a company with a “long and rich history” of helping organizations automate mission-critical work, but one now entering a new season. That evolution centers on orchestration—whether AI-enabled, agent-based, or rooted in RPA—while remaining clear-eyed about identity. Nintex, he explains, will not “become an AI company.” Instead, it aims to help custome...

The lesson arrived abruptly in a boardroom in Battle Creek. After months of analysis, charts, and market data, the president of Kellogg’s cereal division looked up and said, “That’s all interesting. I just don’t know what to do with it,” Dean Neese tells us. The comment landed hard. It forced him to confront a blind spot early in his consulting career: insight without action is inert.

Neese and his team went back, rebuilt the presentation, and returned a week later with clear recommendations tied directly to decisions, he tells us. That moment rewired how he communi...

This special episode of CFO Thought Leader explores how finance leaders develop not through authority or technical brilliance, but through moments that reveal emotional intelligence. Drawing on recent conversations with Kevin Rubin, Toby Driver, and Bruce Schuman, the episode highlights a consistent pattern: leadership is forged through judgment, empathy, and self-awareness when stakes are high and answers unclear. Structured in two parts, the episode first examines formative moments that reshaped how CFOs think, featuring Shelagh Glaser, John McCauley, and Joe Euteneuer. It then shows how those lessons are applied in practice—through difficult decisions, organizational change, and trust-based leadership un...

The accounting team at Looker showed up every day knowing their jobs might disappear within a year. The company was in limbo—acquired by Google but still waiting on European approval—so the deal hadn’t closed, integration hadn’t begun, and uncertainty hung over the office. Yet the team continued to deliver “absolutely excellent work,” taking pride in their craft even when the upside had faded, Razzak Jallow tells us.

That moment stayed with him. For Jallow, now CFO of FloQast, it crystallized a belief that professionalism and pride are not situational—they’re intrinsic. “We get to choose what...

At 18, while many of his peers were heading off to university, Toby Driver made a different choice. He joined an accounting practice through an apprenticeship, a decision driven by his desire for a “quick learning curve” and real exposure to business, he tells us. From the outset, he was less interested in credentials than in understanding how organizations actually work.

That instinct carried him through years in audit and into transaction services, where he learned to dissect businesses at speed. In deal advisory, Driver was tasked with getting “under the nuts and bolts” of companies, performing financial health c...

When Kevin Rubin arrived at Zscaler in May 2025, he joined an established organization following the retirement of the company’s longtime CFO, taking responsibility for continuing the work of a finance leader who had already built a strong foundation. Rubin describes stepping into a business with scale, experienced leadership, and a customer base that included some of the world’s largest enterprises, he tells us.

In explaining what Zscaler does, Rubin walks through the company’s core idea: zero trust. Traditional cybersecurity, he says, relied on network-centric “castles and moats,” requiring large amounts of equipment to connect people, ap...

At Intel, Bruce Schuman remembers walking into a meeting as a controller, proud of a product change his team had worked on “for months.” Then CFO Andy Bryant asked one question—one that reframed the proposal around customer impact. “Nobody had thought about (it),” Schuman tells us, and that question “completely changed the entire conversation,” leading to a “10 times better” outcome.

That moment captures why Schuman spent “two decades plus 27 years” at Intel, he tells us. Rotational roles pushed him into new challenges every few years, while leaders modeled what influence and partnership looked like in practice. Intel even had a term...

When Drew Laxton looks back on the past year at Outreach, one moment stands out—not a transaction, but a plan. The company set its annual targets, executed against them, and then exceeded expectations. “When you see green numbers at every quarterly all-hands,” Laxton tells us, “it’s amazing how that little bit of momentum just builds the company.” What surprised him most was the cultural impact: morale rose, confidence compounded, and belief followed performance.

That belief didn’t happen by accident. Laxton’s career has consistently positioned him at the intersection of numbers and narrative. He began in investm...

In this Planning Aces special episode, CFO Thought Leader brings together three finance executives operating in very different industries—but facing remarkably similar planning challenges. David Lee of WEBTOON, Cristina Kim of Octaura, and Zane Rowe of Workday share how FP&A has evolved from a periodic planning function into a continuous decision system. Across global consumer platforms, fintech infrastructure, and enterprise software, each CFO explains how they use leading indicators, forecasting discipline, and real-time data to guide resource allocation. The conversation highlights how modern FP&A enables faster learning, sharper prioritization, and disciplined adaptability in an environment defined by...

In his late 20s, Jorge Pliego found himself financing a major expansion in Mexico—not by calling corporate for cash, but by rethinking the entire structure. At Procter & Gamble, he was given the chance to fund a new paper products facility locally, navigating tax and financing incentives until the deal carried “zero” interest cost, Pliego tells us. Convincing senior leaders in Mexico and at headquarters required clarity, confidence, and an understanding of the business beyond finance alone.

That moment reflects a career shaped by early responsibility and proximity to decision-makers. From ERP implementation work—where he adapted U.S. cos...

In his first “60 to 90 days” as CFO of Presidio, Manny Korakis learned that preparation doesn’t cancel pressure, he tells us. “Now the buck stops here,” he tells us, and he “didn’t really appreciate the pace” required until he was living it daily, he tells us.

Korakis traces his move into enterprise thinking back to the McGraw Hill companies. Early on, he was “very technical” and “pretty close” to a singular controllership focus, he tells us. Then a mentor CFO pulled him into what they called the “growth and value plan,” he tells us. He worked on the “system landscape” an...

As one year closes and another begins, most of us are wired to look forward—to new goals, fresh plans, and the next chapter. But this special episode of CFO Thought Leader invites you to do something slightly different: look back. Not to financial milestones or career titles, but to the moments that quietly shape who we become long before anyone hands us a business card.

In this episode, three CFOs take us back to the earliest chapters of their lives—stories of family, displacement, discipline, sacrifice, and unexpected kindness. You’ll hear how a father’s insisten...

When it came time to pick our holiday bonus episodes, Tim Arndt quickly came to mind. Few companies sit at the crossroads of as many 2025 storylines—tariffs, data centers, and AI—as Prologis. In our February conversation, Tim walked us through a “merger of equals” that reset leadership, the capital-markets discipline that followed, and why logistics is about “atoms, not electrons.” He tells us Prologis oversees roughly 1.3 billion square feet across 20 countries, with nearly 3% of global GDP touching its facilities. From post-GFC balance-sheet rigor to new rooftop energy and mobility plays, this one captured listeners’ attention—and still feels timely. Enjoy th...

David Den Boer traces the origins of the EPM Summit to a pattern he kept seeing across projects. “Sometimes the error is not necessarily beginning in the project,” he tells us, “but in the way they selected the product.” Too often, he observed, finance teams were locked into technology decisions before fully understanding their requirements—or their alternatives.

That realization reshaped how he thought about impact. While Den Boer says he enjoys solving customer problems through implementations, he began to focus on “slower, moving bigger problems,” including gaps in thought leadership and how organizations evaluate EPM solutions in the first p...

As the year comes to a close, we’re revisiting a conversation that feels newly relevant. This week, we’re re-releasing our CFO Thought Leader episode with Jonathan Carr, recorded three years ago—long before any exit was in view, but rich with insight into how he thinks about leadership, growth, and decision-making under uncertainty.

That mindset was shaped early. Just 18 months after finishing college, Carr was placed in charge of a major Oracle implementation at a Stryker manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico. He had never led systems work before. The advice from his division controller was simple...

As we re-release this conversation with CFO Karen Williams during the holiday week, we’re opening the episode with a short preface drawn from something she shared recently on LinkedIn. In a post about books that shaped her as a leader, Williams reflected on culture, bias, and the importance of staying open to different perspectives—ideas that echo throughout this episode and frame how she’s built her career.

Those themes weren’t always obvious early on.

Williams traces a formative lesson back to her move from a 20-person startup into Mars, where she says she “bom...

Roy Hefer expected a quick coffee. Instead, a “30 minutes” introduction with a newly appointed Lumenis CEO stretched “more than three hours,” he tells us, as they talked through her plan to transform a flat-growth, cash-bleeding medical device company and “ultimately take it public,” he tells us.

That conversation marked a shift from theory to ownership. After five years at McKinsey—based out of Tel Aviv, but spending “most of my time abroad,” he tells us—Hefer realized he was “a doer,” he tells us. He loved delivering “an amazing model” and “a very sophisticated framework,” he tells us, but not walking away before...

Matthew Novick traces one of his earliest business lessons not to a boardroom, but to a furniture store in Portland, Maine. Growing up in his family’s business, he learned how to read credit reports, price products, and assess who was “credit worthy,” skills that showed him how decisions affect a business long before he ever closed a set of books, Novick tells us.

That operational grounding followed him into finance. Early roles at IBM and AOL put him on both the expense and revenue sides of the P&L, including sales operations and compensation design. Those experi...

At 19, working part-time in a bank branch while attending college, Ed Hagan made a simple recommendation: expand the branch. The idea was taken seriously enough that he was transferred to the bank holding company’s finance and accounting department, where he suddenly found himself helping with acquisitions, preparing board materials, and contributing to an IPO. The exposure was far greater than he expected at that age, Hagan tells us, and it sparked a curiosity that would shape his entire career.

That early experience with real-world complexity led him to KPMG—then Pete Marwick—because the firm audited the ba...

At first, we wondered why Zane Rowe was once again leading us back to Continental Airlines. With notable CFO tenures at VMware and EMC—chapters rich with transformation—surely there were fresh stories to surface.

But as Rowe began tracing the logic behind flight profitability, route modeling, and data-rich decision making, the relevance snapped into focus. His Continental experience isn’t just a recurring anecdote; it’s the lens through which he still interprets complex systems today. That early foundation made this discussion every bit as insightful as our last—especially as he connected those lessons to Workday’s...

In her second week as CFO, Cristina Kim sat with Octaura’s leadership team reviewing a three-year strategy and ambitious 2026 targets, she tells us. As the numbers appeared on the screen, her instinct was to do what she had done for nearly two decades: probe what might go wrong, stress-test assumptions, and look for what could break, she tells us. Mid-meeting, she experienced what she calls an “aha moment”—realizing she was no longer outside the story but inside it, responsible for helping the team achieve those goals, she tells us.

That shift caps a career built on bread...

The morning after Airbase’s sale closed, Aneal Vallurupalli woke up to a very different org chart. Before the deal, roughly a third to almost half of the company reported to him, including onboarding, professional services, account management, customer success, and financial services revenue, he tells us. The day after, those teams rolled into the acquirer and “I have my EA reporting to me. And that was it,” he tells us. It left him thinking, “wait a minute… I’m not making any decisions anymore,” he tells us.

That jolt became a pivot point. Rather than chase another title...

Stuart Leung had occupied the CFO office at Flexport for only a few months when he realized the supply chain management company’s growing margin pressures stemmed not from a single root cause but from many. From pricing misalignment to invoice errors, Leung had compiled a lengthy list of snags. Along the way, he began empowering the people closest to each issue to drive the necessary improvements. By implementing more than 15 “big rock” initiatives—tracked through monthly reviews—Flexport rapidly identified, tested, and refined solutions. This cross-functional, data-centric effort not only began restoring margins but also created a replicable model of c...

In this special retrospective episode, we revisit three standout conversations from our archives to explore how automotive CFOs have long shaped strategy inside some of the industry’s most complex business models. From auctions to dealerships to early-stage EV manufacturing, these finance leaders reveal how they navigated scale, technology shifts, and operational risk. KAR Auction Services CFO Eric Loughmiller discusses turning massive transaction data into intelligence. Warren Henry Automotive CFO Erik Day explains the realities of margin compression and liquidity pressure. And former Electra Meccanica CFO Bal Bhullar shares how finance guides a young manufacturer from prototypes to production. To...

The email with the term sheet arrived first, then the bottle of champagne from the CEO, Jayme Brooks tells us. The lender had agreed to a nontraditional structure that allowed Capstone to borrow against intangible assets, creating a lifeline at a moment when revenue had dropped about 40% and market cap had fallen from roughly 400 million to 25 million, she tells us. Cost reductions, including a 25% reduction in force and ultimately a 50% cut in the cost structure, followed, she tells us. But the bridge financing meant the company could still fund payroll, buy supplies, and keep shipping microturbines.

That...

Jack Welch’s binder hit the floor before Michael Bourque had time to react. At just 23, he sat in a Honeywell acquisition review meeting as the “keeper of the numbers,” rifling through a binder he knew didn’t contain the EPS detail Welch demanded. When the answer didn’t come, Welch “swept his binder off the table, threw it across the room, and got up and left,” Bourque tells us. The moment stayed with him—not only the need to anticipate every question, but the feeling of “how I was treated,” a lesson he carried forward.

That early scene captures...

In this episode of Planning Aces, we spotlight FP&A insights from three CFOs leading innovation with discipline: Chris Sands (InvoiceCloud), Steve Sutter (Celigo), and Niels Boon (Cint). Each shares how finance is shaping AI, go-to-market models, and data-driven transformation without losing rigor. From building an “AI Ops” function and embedding finance in sales strategy, to piloting AI tools in small, staged experiments, these leaders treat innovation as a managed process. Our resident thought leader joins to connect the dots, emphasizing structure, clear metrics, and portfolio thinking as the new essentials of FP&A.

Chris Sands leans into orga...

When Troy Anderson accepted the CFO seat at Kelly Services in 2024, he stepped into an organization that, as he tells us, “had done a number of acquisitions … and really invested in the business.” The legacy staffing firm had spent nearly $1 billion to expand its reach but had yet to fully integrate those pieces. Anderson’s mission: align a global operation that had grown faster than its systems.

It was a familiar challenge. Across three decades and multiple industries, Anderson has made a career of steering companies through transformation. At Universal Technical Institute, he led a finance overhaul that sup...

When David Lee joined PG&E in San Francisco, the company was collapsing under the weight of California’s first energy crisis. “These utility veterans kind of got us into this,” the new CFO told him, handing him an unusual assignment: act as an “anti-CFO.” Lee spent his days testing every forecast and financing plan, proposing contrarian options like a preferred-equity line from KKR. The exercise, he tells us, forced him to “think independently” and learn how to guide a public company in deep trouble.

That moment crystallized a pattern in Lee’s career—a willingness to enter complex situ...

When Erik Wissig recalls his early years as a founder, one moment still stands out. The team had met its growth goals and earned their bonuses—but the company’s cash flow hadn’t caught up. “You need the cash to make those payments,” he tells us. That hard-won lesson reshaped how Wissig approached finance from that day forward: plan ahead, balance ambition with liquidity, and bring the wider leadership team into that awareness.

Before that turning point, Wissig had spent a decade in investment banking, advising hundreds of middle-market companies on transactions. Eventually, the advisor wanted to build...

The moment that stayed with him began at a marketplace where sales dashboards showed 40% gross margin—yet finance closed the books at 20%, Boon tells us. The gap, he discovered, lived in the shadows: rebates, discounts, and “free” services that never touched operational metrics. He manually traced economics to the client level and found margins many considered healthy were thin—or nonexistent. One customer representing roughly 30% of revenue delivered 0% gross margin, Boon tells us.

That scene explains his broader path. He started in London investment banking “working on deals 24/7,” then spent five years at McKinsey across Europe on corporate finance a...

In this special episode of CFO Thought Leader—the first of three produced in collaboration with The Suite, Shaun Sethna (General Counsel and GM for the L Suite) maps where CFOs and GCs misjudge contract risk and how to collaborate effectively. He spotlights “locked-in” deals that still enable termination via vague clauses or missing notice-and-cure. Start with strategy alignment, then cross-train—mini finance for lawyers, mini legal for CFOs—and empower teams to escalate wisely. He urges adopting AI to summarize agreements, surface obligations, and route risks. Looking ahead, he flags AI agents as SaaS “users,” which could upend seat-based pri...

When Procter & Gamble asked Atsushi Kitamura to move from finance analysis into running a manufacturing plant, he didn’t hesitate. “They always give me next challenge to stretch me,” he tells us. Managing one of P&G’s large diaper plants in Japan forced him to apply finance in real-time operations—a proving ground that shaped his comfort with change and appetite for transformation.

That readiness carried him from consumer goods to logistics, restaurants, and electronics before arriving at Astellas Pharma, where the stakes are now measured in science and strategy. When he joined in 2023, Astellas had just compl...

On a quiet afternoon in Punta Cana, Michael Levine sat alone on a stretch of white sand. The turquoise water and silence offered the perfect scene for rest—until he realized what was missing. “I didn’t have my phone and I didn’t have my laptop,” he tells us. “That’s what makes me happy… I love doing work from the beach.” It was there, after stepping down as Payoneer’s CFO, that Levine accepted a truth about himself: he wasn’t ready to retire.

Levine had spent 11 and a half years helping Payoneer scale from about 100 employees to...

She starts with tape from the field, not the spreadsheet. Listening to enterprise sales calls, Amy Foo heard customers whose usage rose and fell with seasons. Fixed per-seat pricing “wasn’t quite hitting the mark,” she tells us, so she piloted a pooled-seat model that flexed monthly within an annual commitment—turning smaller clips into “one to five million” deals and lifting revenue “six to seven times per customer,” she tells us.

That instinct—to meet the customer where they are—threads through her journey. Early at Zendesk, she was “employee number one in the region,” handling FP&A, accounting, taxes...

When Joe Custer describes Intrado’s purpose, he begins with a story that traces back almost half a century. The company, he tells us, was born inside the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department when someone asked whether there might be a better way to connect a caller in distress with a first responder. “Turns out they were on to something,” he adds. Today that idea has scaled into a mission-critical network touching roughly 90 percent of all 911 requests for assistance.

Custer explains that Intrado “has to operate like a utility … we cannot fail.” Reliability is not a metric to be met but...

On his first day in investment banking, Clayton Kossl was “thrown right into the cauldron.” With few senior professionals in the small aerospace and defense group, junior bankers like him were expected to face company owners directly. “You had to understand the businesses inside and out,” he tells us. The experience forced him to blend analytical depth with the interpersonal agility needed to earn trust in every room.

That mix of skills—numbers and nuance—became a through line in Kossl’s career. At ZocDoc, he joined a Strategic Finance team that partnered closely with the CEO and CFO, takin...