Cfo Thought Leader

During the early years of his finance career, Dan Fletcher was accustomed to being the executive from somewhere else.When he first joined the asset management team at Allstate Investments, he was “the auditor from Price Waterhouse,” and when he landed in an interim management role as a private equity advisor, he was a former investor now turned operator.Fletcher’s early career journey stands out not just for its navigation of the financial triad of auditor–investor–operator but also for the speed at which he was able to leap from one to the next.“I did not look like everyone else,” recalls Fletcher, who doesn’t try to cloak the burdens of his first pivot.He continues: “These are two totally different disciplines. Whereas from an auditor’s perspective you’re viewing the business from the outside in and mainly trying to validate financial statements, from the investor’s perspective you’re mainly concerned with returns.”Meanwhile, Fletcher makes it clear that his ability to transition was dependent on regular ou