Cfo Thought Leader

This Episode is CFOTL Special Supplement.  Franklin Templeton Chief Accounting Officer Lindsey Oshita expains how challenges faced during an ERP integration following a merger and the massive IT commitment it entailed. She highlights the significance of a chart of accounts and their potential adaptations, along with her team’s successful implementation of Workday at the start of the fiscal year. Lindsey Oshita is the Chief Accounting Officer, Americas at Franklin Templeton. She’s spent 14 years at Franklin Templeton in various financial leadership positions, and was at Deloitte prior to that. Lindsey graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and a minor in Accounting.

CFO Michael Perica’s career journey began with an opportunity to work as a junior analyst for a national capital markets firm, where he would find a billionaire mentor. According to Perica, his association with the billionaire would ultimately offer him access to influential networks and unique opportunities. From his early days onward, Perica tells us, he became skilled at building connections with successful individuals—an expertise that would open the door to a diverse range of opportunities.Perica’s entry into the CFO role during the COVID-19 pandemic—which occurred remotely, meaning that he didn’t meet his colleagues in person until several months later—perhaps highlighting his adaptability. Successfully leading a team without in-person interactions speaks to his ability to navigate challenges and maintain effective leadership—as so many of our finance leader guests have pointed out. –Jack Sweeney

For Emma Brown, it was as though she had just removed the sword from the fabled stone, a moment that would challenge the inclination to persistently question her own judgment when it came to business.As is often the case, Brown’s moment of insight occurred in a high-pressure situation. Faced with poor financial visibility and the need to prevent a liquidity crisis, she championed the notion that her company’s finance team take a radical approach. Stripping everything back to basics, she delved into the fundamental aspects of cash flow, bank statements, and working capital.This back-to-basics exercise revealed that the complexity of the business—large ERP systems, convoluted reporting, and complicated forecasting structures—was hindering understanding as well as impeding effective decision-making.Brown’s strategic approach of simplifying complexity significantly boosted her confidence in navigating challenging situations within her career. The realization that complexity might indicate inherent issues within p

Four years ago, when Luigi Testa first joined LinkSquares as CFO, the Boston-area tech firm employed roughly 40 people. Today, with nearly 400 employees, the company is concerned less with growth and more about achieving a balance between growth and efficiency. To achieve this, LinkSquares management has made automation and AI adoption a priority.According to Testa, the goal was to first identify repetitive and manual tasks that could be automated to reduce the need for hiring additional personnel. This is an approach that makes financial processes more sustainable in the long run, he points out, while also helping to control expenses.Testa also notes that within the finance function, various routine tasks like billing, payment collection, and payroll processing were ripe for automation and AI implementation. Yet, while these new approaches could handle approximately 75% of these tasks, he emphasized the ongoing importance of human oversight to ensure accuracy and relevance.

It's no secret that Moderna's R&D efforts have expanded well beyond the realm of COVID-19. CFO Jamey Mock tells us that today the company has more than 40 drugs in its pipeline, with targets such as respiratory, latent, and rare diseases. As he explains, this diversity means that the biotech innovator is reliant not solely on one product or therapeutic area, which makes for less risk than would be the case if the company had only a single product focus.Meanwhile, Mock leaves little doubt that the finance function is included in the firm's appetite for innovation when he details how Moderna's innovative use of mRNA technology has been a key factor in de-risking its R&D investments. Mock emphasizes that mRNA is the body's information molecule, which Moderna can quickly reprogram to target different diseases. This adaptability and flexibility make it easier for the company to adjust its approach if initial trials or results are suboptimal. 

More than any other human quality or characteristic, Brandon Nussey is known for his calm demeanor—or so Coveo’s finance leader tells us near the end of our discussion.It’s an observation that we’re not about to refute. After having spent 40 minutes in trying to identify just what it is that sets Nussey apart from his CFO peers, we had found his composure a trait to flag, even if he hadn’t ended up doing so himself.This, of course, is an enviable quality always in demand in C-suites, yet at times it’s one that is easy to overlook.In the case of serial CFO Nussey, the attribute perhaps first became evident during the earliest days of his career. Turning back the calendar to the early 2000s, when he received his first CFO appointment amidst the dot-com bubble burst, Nussey recalls a tour of duty that required him to always stay calm and composed in high-pressure, high-stakes environments.Indeed, even to this day, he finds the circumstances much the same: “At the office, people use the word ‘calm’ to describe me

Planning Aces Hosts Brett Knowles and Jack Sweeney discuss how AI's integration into FP&A is still in early stages, with many teams 'dabbling' in AI rather than regularly employing it. However, its use has been significant, inspiring creativity and improving team performance. This episode's conversation emphasizes how FP&A is not just about financial numbers but involves drawing in non-FP&A players into the process. This approach fosters a more comprehensive and collaborative financial planning culture within organizations. They underscored that every member of an organization should consider themselves a 'capital allocator', responsible for contributing to the company's financial health.

Jim Moylan is perhaps our first CFO guest to list the leasing of oil rigs as one of the experiences that best prepared him for a CFO role. Of course, he makes it clear that the experience is worthy of mention not so much because of what he was selling but because he was selling at all. “The best way to learn what a company does and understand its value proposition is to be a salesperson, and I have told this to people everywhere that I’ve been,” comments Moylan, whose stint as a salesman helped to kick off a 22-year career climb inside the ever-evolving world of energy company Sonat, Inc. Sonat would provide Moylan with an expansive and varied career narrative. Having become known inside the company for his FP&A savvy, Moylan had a tenure that spanned a variety of leadership roles and included overseeing corporate strategy during a period of time when the company executed four acquisitions and two divestitures. He would also serve as president of one of the company’s largest subsidiaries. Today, while Son

When Jason Quinn landed in Europe back in 2008, he was the youngest of five American expats being deployed by digital disrupter SMB printer Vistaprint of Boston, Mass. For the next 5 years, Quinn would be involved in a string of business acquisitions that would grow the digital printer’s European revenues from nothing to more than $500 million annually. Based in Barcelona, Quinn spent roughly 3 weeks of every month traveling to other parts of Europe to evaluate the operations of different businesses as he and other executives sought to determine whether there was a solid business case for acquiring a company. “I had the luxury of seeing into firms at both the executive and middle management levels, so I was able to acquire an understanding of how the executive team was operating and how the decisions that they would make would trickle down within the operation,” explains Quinn, who adds that as deal activity grew, Vistaprint ended up deploying a corporate development team from Paris to complete some of the in

Greg Robbins began his career inside the realm of Big Six accounting houses, an experience that he tells us laid the foundation for a career in financial operations and strategy. However, he credits much of his leadership style to his time at Red Bull, where he learned that real development comes from hands-on experiences, insightful feedback, and formal training, a philosophy that he has carried forward throughout his career.At Red Bull, Greg participated in several leadership development programs—including the "Scott Spooner Experience"—that profoundly influenced his professional approach. Spooner, a former special forces operative turned consultant, brought with him a unique perspective on leadership and resilience, emphasizing the importance of mental and physical endurance in challenging environments. This experience broadened Robbins's understanding of the qualities of leadership beyond the conventional corporate framework.

Our discussion with Christine Chambers has been going on for only a little more than 5 minutes when she tells us that she remembers sitting on the steps of a London flat years ago while contemplating life’s many twists and turns.  It seems that the accommodation—which she had only recently acquired and unquestionably counted as a milestone in life—had with little warning come to present a dilemma.At that time back in 2007, when Chambers was working as a financial analyst inside the UK operations of Seattle, Washington–based RealNetworks, the company suddenly offered her a promotion to work within its US operations.The treasured flat became toast.“Six weeks later, I was on a plane headed to the U.S.—and I think that this speaks at least a little to my nature of being adaptable and open in terms of welcoming opportunities that have arisen,” comments Chambers, who would first join RealNetworks stateside in its Washington, D.C.–area outpost before receiving an invitation from the company’s CFO in 2010 to rel

If Mark Seidel had told us that he had spent many of his high school evenings peering through a telescope at the stars, we would have likely believed him. However, Seidel—CFO of space security start-up True Anomaly—swiftly short circuits the familiar narrative of a space-loving youth.Instead, he draws our attention to his early entrepreneurial endeavors on eBay (he achieved power selling status while in high school), and, as for his finance career, he tells us that he has long preferred not to narrow his lens but to widen it.Indeed, such was the case at Goldman Sachs, where he spent 7 career years as an investment banker.“At Goldman, I was a generalist, so I got to cover all different types of industries and transactions—which means that the breadth and scope of the types of topics were incredibly wide,” recalls Seidel, who notes that it was this same preference for a wide lens that drew him to the CFO role.Observes Seidel: “The CFO role is a cross-functional one. While strategy can mean different things to d

Among the industries on which the pandemic was most known to have afflicted an extra helping of earnings chaos, most business analysts agree that the home fitness market is perhaps most deserving of special mention.Indeed, few sectors logged steeper gains and more precipitous losses during COVID’s comings and goings than home fitness—and perhaps few demanded more reflexive, in-the-moment, decision-making inside the management cockpit.At BowFlex (formerly Nautilus), that cockpit has been “manned” by CEO Jim Barr and CFO Aina Konold, both of whom entered the C-suite during the latter half of 2019—only to have COVID immediately upend their ensuing 2020 flight plan.Over the past 4 years, Barr and Konold have remained buckled in together as they have educated investors in anticipation of completing a long-awaited turnaround that they predict will arrive in the near future.Along the way, CEO Barr has demonstrated a willingness to address tough questions—just as has Konold, whose facility for disarming unwelcome new

When Michael Kennedy first stepped into the CFO office at the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) in 2018, he was surprised to learn that the association was spending $8 million annually on office space across the country.“Why were we in these offices?,” asks Kennedy, voicing the question that helped to kick off the first of what he now characterizes as a multichapter digital transformation.As it turned out, the 93 offices occupied by the MDA were a legacy of the organization’s historic Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, a once-massive annual fundraising event for that had lost its mojo in the Age of the Internet.“MDA wanted to have an office near every local television station that was participating in the Telethon broadcast,” explains Kennedy, who notes that the MDA offices needed to compete with local Girl Scout troops and firefighters to secure fundraising airtime on the local affiliates.   “But the fact is that we had stopped doing the Telethon 8 years before I arrived,” reports Kennedy, who adds

CFO Zhi Li's Career Background: Zhi Li's professional life begin at Bell Canada, where he was involved in operational finance within the Wireless Division. The division, Zhi tells us served as the growth engine for the company at the time. During his time at Bell Canada he worked on a subscription business model, dealing with wireless units and the basics of a subscription business, which later proved helpful in his work within the SaaS space. Li entered the investment banking realm during the economic downturn, then pivoted to tech; highlights operational finance experience at Bell Canada and investment banking tenure at Credit Suisse's tech group in New York. Transition to CFO Role: Discusses the pivotal moments in transitioning from banking to tech in Seattle, eventually landing the CFO role at Customer.io. Customer.io Overview: A startup providing customer communication platform services to various businesses, emphasizing personalized engagement and scalability. Role and Responsibilities as CFO: Focuses o

Insights from Planning Aces: CFO Lauren StClair talks about leveraging AI for faster analysis, transparency in reporting, and the challenge of maintaining clean, adaptable data. CFO Doug Lindroth emphasizes the shift from closed data structures to open-book management, enabling deeper discussions on profitability and investments. CFO Charly Kevers underscores AI's impact on manual tasks, reshaping organizational charts to prioritize higher-level thinking. AI's Role in FP&A and Security Concerns: Discussion on AI's learning mechanisms, potential security risks, and the importance of Microsoft's approach with co-pilot in maintaining security. Insights on how AI-driven tools adapt and evolve based on user interactions, driving advancements in decision-making processes.

It was back in 2016 when Lauren St. Clair realized that it was time to raise her hand.Online marketplace giant eBay had just completed a deal to acquire the Spanish online ticket platform Ticketbis, and St. Clair, a 9-year eBay veteran, was itching to get overseas.eBay had entered the online ticket business in 2007 with its acquisition of StubHub, and the addition of Ticketbis now promised to fatten StubHub’s international revenues, a development that St. Clair realized would likely require eBay’s finance function to beef up its leadership overseas.“People knew that I wanted to live overseas, and it was just good timing with regard to me leaving the group to which I had been assigned,” explains St. Clair, who arrived in Bilbao, Spain, in early 2017 eager to open a career chapter as CFO of StubHub International.  Of course, St. Clair had already spent some time overseas as a student and a finance adjunct on various international FP&A assignments. However, an overseas appointment was different, and in

When Peter Benevides joined Olo back in 2015, the provider of restaurant technology's CFO office was vacant—as it would remain for the next 4 years, until he ultimately got the position thanks to a nod from the firm's CEO and perhaps a sprinkling of magic dust from Olo board members and investors. Of course, things may have gone very differently for Benevides, as they so frequently do for many senior finance hires who, like Benevides, join fast-growing firms while knowing full well that there are no guarantees when it comes to C-suite appointments. Thus, when given the opportunity to have Benevides reflect on his career, we thought it perhaps appropriate on our part to query Olo’s finance leader regarding what he feels that he got right along the way—especially with regard to any attributes or actions that may have made a difference in the career trajectory that for him has led to Olo. According to Benevides, his success comes down to not having been afraid to ask others for help—a trait that he was to find i

The Goldman Sachs “anti-raid” team was between conference calls with an embattled client company when word came that a senior member of the target company’s management team had unexpectedly died. Looking back, Tom Fennimore says that the next few months of his early career years at Goldman then became a transition point—or period of accelerated learning. “It was a very sad situation—they were in the process of being raided,” explains Fennimore, who lists the anti-raid transaction as one of two times when Goldman ultimately offered Fennimore an opportunity to “step up.” The second example came after the resignation of a managing director responsible for the bank’s automotive sector. “I got a battlefield promotion when they said, ‘Hey, we want you to do this, and—depending how you do—we may not replace you,” recalls Fennimore, who notes that while he savored the opportunity and enjoyed success in the role, certain parts of it had little to do with his skillset. “I have a little bit of a baby face,” points out

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