Cfo Thought Leader

Sruthi Lanka is clearly not the only CFO who began her professional career at blue chip investment house Goldman Sachs.However, she may be one of the only CFOs—if not the only one—who can trace her career roots to Goldman’s technology engineering team.Back in 2009, as the economic downturn dispatched a daily dose of bad news, Lanka was tasked with separating Goldman’s nervous bankers from their long-tenured messaging device of choice:  the BlackBerry.  “Most banks would not even entertain the idea of switching because the BlackBerry was so locked down and considered to be ironclad,” explains Lanka, who notes that while Apple’s iPhone had become a popular alternative to the BlackBerry inside a number of different industries, bankers were known for clutching their BlackBerrys—and Goldman was no exception.According to her, “We found that most Goldman employees were already living on the iPhone, but meanwhile they would still carry this clunky BlackBerry.”After 3 years with Goldman Sachs, Lank