Synopsis
CFO THOUGHT LEADER is a ground-breaking business podcast, hosted by Jack Sweeney that brings you first hand accounts of CFOs who are driving change within their organizations.Our interviews capture their actions so that you can learn what might work for your organization. In addition to their company history we share the career journey of our spotlighted guest: What do they struggle with? How do they persevere? What makes them successful?
Episodes
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749: Scouting the Perimeter of Predictability | Daniel O'Shaughnessy, CFO, Formlabs
07/11/2021 Duration: 48minDan O’Shaughnessy may be the only finance leader with whom we’ve ever spoken who credits hard work and financial acumen with having helped to keep him out of business school. Or at least this seems to be what unfolded at Gymboree back in early 2015, when he accepted a job offer from the CFO of the children’s apparel retailer. Explains O’Shaughnessy: “At the time, Gymboree had been taken private and was managing a significant amount of debt. I told myself that if we could turn around the business quickly, it would be a great opportunity, and if we couldn’t, then business school was always a good option.” As it turned out, the retailer’s successful turnaround would require a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as part of a larger process that expanded O’Shaughnessy’s role into comptrollership, tax, treasury, and even supply chain planning and store operations. Along the way, the finance executive was frequently tasked with dealing with the company’s creditors and investors. “The creditors across the table with whom I
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Making Salary a Competitive Advantage | A Workplace Champions Episode
05/11/2021 Duration: 53minBrett and Jack discuss the move by Amazon and other companies to pay employees daily are likely to trigger new approaches in salary administration. Plus, more developments in the age of the "great resignation." Featuring the commentary and insights of workplace champions CEO Craig O'Neill of Versapay, CFO Michael Rosen of Digital Power Marketing, CFO Kurt Shintaffer of Apptio.
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748: Keeping the Bees Busy | Shana Rowlette, CFO, Mann Lake
03/11/2021 Duration: 30minMinnesota-based Mann Lake Ltd. is a leader in the beekeeping industry, serving commercial beekeeping businesses and backyard hobbyists alike. The company specializes in quality manufacturing, innovation, customer service, and global ESG (environmental, social, governance) matters. “Bees pollinate one in every three bites of food that humans consume,” Mann Lake CFO Shana Rowlette explains. “Colony collapse is a real thing, and we’re very involved in helping our industry to address this risk.” Her company’s unique realm and rapid growth quickly nudged Rowlette beyond the traditional bounds of the staff accounting role that she filled when she joined the company. “I started with payables, receivables, and inventory but steadily took on more responsibilities that showed me how everything functioned as our company grew,” she notes. “It’s been 11 years, and I haven’t had a boring day yet.” Read More As controller, Rowlette helped to shepherd the company’s purchase by a private equity (PE) firm. She educated her PE
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747: Exposing Your Growth Drivers | Jim Morgan, CFO, CallRail
31/10/2021 Duration: 46minIt sounds counterintuitive, but the best big men in basketball succeed less on size than they do on finesse and footwork. NBA Hall of Famer Tim Duncan’s right-foot jab created the space that he needed to sink his patented bank shot or fire a pass to an open teammate. The same holds true for data-driven CFOs who partner with founder CEOs in technology start-ups. CallRail CFO Jim Morgan began his professional career by pivoting from Goldman Sachs to a 100-employee, venture-backed start-up in early 2000. Once there, he immediately helped to pivot the marketing-technology company’s business model in response to the looming dotcom crash. Since then, Morgan—a former center who co-captained Stanford University’s hoops team in the early ’90s—has served as CFO at a succession of venture- and private-equity backed high-growth companies. “I love working with the entrepreneurs,” Morgan notes, “and I’ve learned that the CFO has a highly unique value prop to offer by facilitating the processes and scale needed to build a c
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When FP&A Becomes a Business Function | A Planning Aces Episode
29/10/2021 Duration: 34minSteve & Jack discuss planning’s crunch time in the 4th quarter and the operationalization of FP&A inside different business functions. Featuring FP&A Insights & Commentary from Planning Aces: Sameer Ralhan, CFO, The Chemours Company, Chris Kuehn, CFO, Trane Technologies, Laurence Capone, CFO, Pipedrive. Akash Palkhiwala, CFO Qualcomm.
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746: Growing With People & Purpose | Robert Alvarez, CFO, BigCommerce
27/10/2021 Duration: 53minWhen Robert Alvarez first joined the finance team of one venture-backed start-up, he was thinking that one day he might like to be a CFO. However, upon further reflection, the young finance analyst realized that he had little idea what a CFO did. Being part of a start-up team afforded him the opportunity to have one-on-one meetings with different senior leaders, including the company’s CFO, Alvarez recalls. Of course, access to leadership has little value unless you are willing and able to undertake the responsibility of shepherding a future deliverable. For Alvarez, the task of identifying such a deliverable was best left to its intended recipient. “We were together going down the list of items that I was working on, and I stopped and asked the CFO, ‘So, what’s on your list?’” remembers Alvarez, who says that the CFO subsequently began listing one item after another. Alvarez says that he asked if he could “take a stab” at tackling one of the items and told the CFO that he would have it for him by the next da
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745: Origins of a Come Back Therapy | Troy Ignelzi, CFO, Karuna Therapeutics
24/10/2021 Duration: 46minTroy Ignelzi’s CFO career is rooted in an unlikely place. In fact, some might describe it as the least likely of all places, for the environs of his early vocational path were not those of a growing company but instead a place where businesses had stopped growing. So it was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the late 1990s when Ignelzi—part of a local economic development team—became tasked with creating jobs in the wake of Pfizer’s decision to remove a number of business operations from the region, including a large plant. “They moved all of the R&D jobs and everything business-related out of Kalamazoo and Portage, Michigan, and all they left was a very large manufacturing plant,” explains Ignelzi, who notes that the move by Pfizer began putting the area’s larger biotech sector at risk. “What happened was that this big vacuum got created, so what we said was, ‘Let’s keep these other smart guys in town,’” continues Ignelzi, who adds that preserving the region’s biotech jobs became part of a bigger project known a
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744: Democratizing Phone Services | Evan Fein, CFO, TextNow
20/10/2021 Duration: 35minWhen Evan Fein accepted his first CFO position more than a decade ago - his focus as a finance leader was too narrow according to the CFO, who in a moment of self-reflection can’t conceal his exacerbation. "Ashamed is not the right word, but I'm such a better CFO now than I was then,” remarks Fein, who gives his younger self some kudos for having helped to champion the company’s business model as well as extending the organization’s lines of sight into the future. Still, there’s little question Fein finds the notion of time travel appealing. “What I would now tell my younger self is that the CFO role is about the ability to partner and build relationships and grow other people. That is the special sauce that I bring to my job now,” Fein comments. Asked to better expose his former CFO mindset Fein says: “At the time, I decided if everybody stayed in their swim lanes and we each ran our trains on time, that things would come together. It’s just not that simple.” – Jack Sweeney
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743: Winning With Employee Success | Michael Rosen, CFO, Power Digital Marketing
17/10/2021 Duration: 46minMichael Rosen’s finance career began inside the loan department of middle market lender Union Bank (now MUFG Union), when—after completing an 18-month training program—the 23 -year-old was provided with a stack of business cards bearing the title “Loan Officer.” “At the time, being a loan officer meant a great many things. You would be responsible for most of your clients’ needs, as well as bringing in new business for the bank,” remembers Rosen, who today credits the program’s scope with allowing him to quickly find his footing inside the bank’s apparel sector—a realm made up largely of midsize businesses ranging in size from $15 million to $100 million. “It was a significant program that provided some broad-based training in things like financial analysis, collateral analysis, and financial accounting, as well as the legal and ethical issues that come up when running a bank,” continues Rosen, who adds that for the next 7 years he responded to the unique needs and growing pains of his midsize customers. Nex
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HR by the Numbers | A Workplace Champions episode
16/10/2021 Duration: 52minBrett and Jack discuss the marriage of fintech and human capital management, and the of the growing mandate for employee success. Featuring the commentary and insights of workplace champions CFO Sameer Ralhan of the Chemours Company, CFO Robert Alvarez of Big Commerce, CFO Laurence Capone of Pipedrive.
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742: When a SPAC Unlocks Quantum Possibilities | Thomas Kramer, CFO, IonQ
13/10/2021 Duration: 37minWhen Thomas Kramer recalls his decision to leave his job with a prestigious consulting firm to start up a tech firm in the final hours of the dotcom boom, he doesn’t hesitate to underscore his decision’s questionable timing. “This was when I realized that I would be getting out of consulting at what potentially would have been the worst possible point in time. Everyone could see that the Internet boom was closing, and smart people do what smart people do: They run in the other direction,” recalls Kramer, now some 20 years later. Whether it’s quantum bits, IPOs, or even SPACs, the exciting developments surrounding IonQ are no match for CFO Kramer’s insightful personal advice and often biting self-reflection. “Travel is something that you do when you can,” explains Kramer, who tells us that during those times when his career has dispatched him to different parts of the world, he has frequently combined work and leisure trips. At one point back in the early 2000s, when he discovered that he was not required to
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741: One Step Ahead | Kurt Shintaffer, CFO, Apptio
10/10/2021 Duration: 42minIn the wake of an economic downturn, a company’s door of opportunity swings open to a finance up-and-comer. This is a familiar early career chapter for many finance leaders, and few have revealed to us the uncertainty surrounding the moment better than Apptio CFO Kurt Shintaffer “The CEO came to me and said, ‘Do you think that you have what it takes?’ I said, ‘Well, sure!,’ without really knowing what I was signing up for,” explains Shintaffer, who back in 2002 was a senior finance executive for Pacific Edge Software when the company’s then-CFO exited. Until this moment, Shintaffer’s resume arguably had resembled those of thousands of other finance career builders stationed along the different rungs of finance’s corporate ladder, and like Shintaffer, may have completed a stint in public accounting. (Shintaffer spent three years with Ernst & Young). Still, at 28 years of age, Shintaffer was already aware that his technical knowledge was not what would make the difference in the days ahead. “I had to re
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740: Illuminating the Home of the Future with a Brand from the Past | Roy Simmons, CFO, GE Lighting, a Savant company
06/10/2021 Duration: 54minTwenty years ago, when Roy Simmons first joined General Electric Company as a rookie financial analyst, it likely would have been difficult to imagine that he would someday occupy the CFO office of GE Lighting. Of course, occupying the CFO office of “GE Lighting, a Savant company” would have required the young analyst to be endowed with not just imagination – but a crystal ball. This being said, in 2019, when a more seasoned Simmons joined the former GE business (now owned by Savant Systems, Inc.) as CFO, he had little trouble imagining a list of finance leader priorities for the coming year. Read More “We’ve been together for the last 14 months and we together have a vision to bring that brighter life to the people,” explains Simmons, who spent a combined 18 years at GE, a span of time during which he served in a number of senior FP&A roles including one with GE Lighting. “Back in the lighting days, we realized that our customers who bought lights for their businesses were also finance professionals a
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739: The Rules of Play | Craig Abrahams, CFO, Playtika
03/10/2021 Duration: 42minIt was after he had worked 3 years as an investment analyst with Bear Stearns and spent more than 2 years inside the corporate strategy bullpen of The Walt Disney Company that Craig Abrahams decided to head to business school. However, Abrahams says that unlike many of his future classmates, he had made up his mind that hedge funds, investment banks, and strategy consulting firms would not be on his preferred menu of postgraduation career opportunities. “I wanted an opportunity to work really hard and stand out but also to go somewhere a little bit different, where I wasn’t competing with 10 versions of myself,” explains Abrahams, whose earlier experiences at Bear Stearns and Disney had left the MBA student searching for a less traditional route to career success. Observes Abrahams: “I was looking for a place where I personally could have an impact.” That place became Las Vegas, where upon graduation Abrahams joined Caesars Entertainment as a director of broadcasting and new media. “This was about putting my
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738: Using Digital Insight to Unlock Business Value | Sameer Ralhan, CFO, The Chemours Company
29/09/2021 Duration: 49minUnlike many of the up-and-comers who populate the corridors of The Chemours Company, CFO Sameer Ralhan spent the balance of his career building years with the company inside its manufacturing plants. It was there where Ralhan says that he observed everyday executives making decisions that routinely impacted the business, and it was there where his M&A activities allowed him to imagine new avenues for value creation. Says Ralhan: “The heart of this company beats at the plants.” Still, the many hours that Chemours’s future CFO spent there made him aware of a growing disconnect between finance and the plant’s decision-makers. According to Ralhan, Chemours, not unlike many U.S. manufacturers, had undergone decades of reorganizations designed to streamline and centralize its operations. However, one consequence of this was that the bond between the plants and the Chemours finance team had become weakened. “It was really limiting the finance support at the site and undermining decision support that could reall
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737: The Future Before Us | Chris Kuehn, CFO, Trane Technologies
26/09/2021 Duration: 42minIt was a complicated transaction that Ingersoll Rand’s then-CEO Mike Lamach challenged his finance and operations people to address by “turning over every rock in the company” to nullify the possibility of unforeseen snags. Recalls Chris Kuehn, who at the time served as Ingersoll Rand’s chief accounting officer: “I remember Mike coming back and telling us that he had never been through an IPO in his career, but this transaction was likely going to be the closest he ever got to one.” Today, Kuehn is CFO of Trane Technologies, the spinoff and resulting offspring of the transaction that involved the merger of Ingersoll Rand’s industrial business, Milwaukee-based Gardner Denver. “Mike didn’t want us to accept the status quo. He wanted us to review every one of the 600 cost centers and every organizational chart and function,” continues Kuehn, who adds that the exhaustive process spanned between six and nine months. Part of engineering the spinoff’s early success, Kuehn explains, involved proactively moving proces
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736: Inside the Growth Cauldron | Pramod Iyengar, CFO, Veem
22/09/2021 Duration: 50minWhen Pramod Iyengar returned to school after working for several years as a manufacturing engineer with United Technologies, he was ready to change careers. The young engineer headed back to the University of Michigan, where as an undergraduate he had earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering. However, this time he had a business degree in mind Post graduation with an MBA in hand, Iyengar landed at Intel Corp., where he had the opportunity to join a “very efficient and very well-structured finance team,” he explains. For his part, Iyengar says Intel gave him the opportunity to learn not only the discipline of finance, but also how to use financial data and analysis to influence and improve operations across the company. Intel also offered the opportunity to move into a variety of other areas. "Employees just had to take the initiative and take advantage of them," comments Iyengar. At Intel, Iyengar began as a finance manager with the distribution channel and soon became a senior financial analyst with the micro
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735: Recognizing Windows of Opportunity | Akash Palkhiwala, CFO, Qualcomm
19/09/2021 Duration: 39minBack in 2014, when Akash Palkhiwala was first approached to serve as treasurer of wireless technology company Qualcomm, the company’s future CFO was uncertain as to what the role of a treasurer might actually entail. “I’m not making this up: I did a Google search on what a treasurer does,” explains Palkhiwala, who recalls that the approaching retirement of the firm’s incumbent treasurer had led then-CFO George Davis to gauge Palkhiwala’s interest in the role. Palkhiwala had first joined Qualcomm in 2001, and during his early years with the firm had been involved in the wireless firm’s M&A activity. Eventually, he graduated from a succession of financial planning and analysis roles through which he had rendered a steady flow of strategic insights for Qualcomm management as the company climbed from 3G to 4G to 5G along the wireless continuum. “Although I’ve been here for 20 years, I feel like I have changed companies multiple times,” comments Palkhiwala, who notes that the treasurer role ultimately proved t
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Making Your Next FP&A Hire | A Planning Aces Episode
17/09/2021 Duration: 39minFeaturing FP&A Insights & Commentary from Planning Aces: Ian Charles, CFO, Flexe, Beth Clymer, CFO, Job Case, Mark Shifke, CFO, Billtrust, Mike Rasic, CFO, Synapse.
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734: The X Factor: Being Approachable | Geoff Brannon, CFO, Oversight Systems
15/09/2021 Duration: 44minBack in 2011, when Radiant Systems was acquired by NCR Corporation, a door swung open for Radiant Systems controller Geoff Brannon, who received an invitation to join NCR’s plus-size FP&A function as a finance director. The appointment had been made possible by a former Radiant boss who had stepped into a divisional CFO role shortly after the acquisition’s completion. “He took a bet on me,” recalls Brannon, who says that the former boss knew his skillset well and had witnessed firsthand “a willingness to learn.” However, up until his NCR appointment, Brannon had resided mostly in the accounting side of the house. Looking back, the one-time controller tells us that he was also known as a collaborator and problem-solver who had distinguished himself through an easy manner when it came to working with others—a trait coveted by many FP&A leaders. A few years later, when the divisional CFO was recruited elsewhere, Brannon was tapped to be the division’s new CFO. As a new leader, he has come to appreciate t