Cfo Thought Leader

As we have been interviewing CFOs from different industries, many finance leaders have told us that they had bracketed the CFO office as their preferred career destination beginning from Day One of their professional lives.Still others have reported that it was only due to the intervention of a determined mentor that they were able to muster the resolve to aim ever higher and ultimately arrive in the C-suite.As it turns out, neither of these profiles depicts the experience of Don Bassell, CFO of ARKO Corp., a Fortune 500 company that is one of the largest operators of convenience stores and wholesalers of fuel in the United States.For Bassell, the CFO office would become “the destination” only after he received a particular job offer when he was in his early 40s.“Something didn’t feel right,” he recalls, reflecting back on the opportunity to fill a senior controller role.Bassell remembers being seated across the table from the CFO, who was trying to sell him by saying, “Don’t you understand? You are goin