CFO THOUGHT LEADER

Props to Anaqua CFO and COO Justin Crotty for allowing us to first zero-in on his early career chapters when the economy showed no mercy. Crotty, who joined the leading provider of intellectual property management software and services, about three years ago, launched his career with a tech consultancy at the height of the dot.com era. In his mid-20s, he took on the role of project lead for a prickly client that all of his colleagues ducked (a professional development approach he advocates). Crotty says he “wound up failing pretty miserably … I drove the project into the ground.” But the failure steeled him to dust himself off, get the project across the finish line, and devote himself to mastering project management, expertise that serves him extremely well in his dual role.” Those skills “have been a key part of my success. I still conduct daily standup meetings with my team and ensure that we’re getting things done, managing our plans … and focusing on delivering good experiences.” This candor and relational creativity probably should be expected from a finance executive who points to the flick Slumdog Millionaire for a career-development comparison. “Throughout that movie the protagonist has all of these experiences that come together in ways that he wasn't expecting – and ultimately for the better,” Crotty adds. “That’s the way my career has unfolded.”

On first glance, Ra Medical Systems CFO Andrew Jackson’s 20 years as a finance executive in life sciences and technology companies seems have progressed in a traditional, orderly manner. A closer inspection of Jackson’s experience reveals that taking early-career risks can pay off handsomely. Jackson joined the manufacturer of laser-based solutions for the treatment of cardiovascular and dermatological diseases two weeks after the company decided to go public, and he filed the company’s initial S-1 with the SEC four weeks after his start date. One high-stakes career decision involved Jackson taking a title demotion, moving from controller to assistant controller. The move was strategic, though, in that it transported him from a privately held firm to a publicly listed company where he rapidly accumulated the SEC reporting skills he knew he would one day need as the CFO of a public company. It was a “a risky move to take a step down,” Jackson says, “but it ended up paying off in the long run.”

Of the three traditional paths to the finance chief’s seat, Bluesnap CFO Chris Menard took the approach less traveled, and it’s made quite a difference. Most fledgling finance executives begin their journey in public accounting or investment banking, Menard parlayed an undergraduate experience rich with entrepreneurial grooming (along with an MBA) into financial planning and analysis positions at several high-growth software and fintech companies. One early career assignment – where he assisted the finance team in completing an IPO, six acquisitions and a stock buyback before the company’s lucrative sale to Oracle – proved especially valuable. Menard talks about applying his operational finance expertise and commitment to “leading with analytics” to the online payments technology company that he joined in May 2018. He also explains the two-step approach – assess and strengthen the accounting team first and then build up the finance function’s analytical chops – he favors when taking the CFO reins at a new company.

In a sector known for advancing leading-edge risk mitigation strategies, CFO Rejji Hayes offers a risk-minded response to those who ask why he steered his career into the power and energy sector. “I had this epiphany where I said ‘It would be nice to find (a sector) that’s was a little less cyclical and a little less transactional.’ … And people generally need heat and electricity irrespective of economic cycles,” explains Hayes, who exited an investment banking career in 2009 to join the treasury function of energy giant Exelon before blazing a path to the CFO office at CMS Energy of Jackson, Michigan. Today, Hayes illuminates the CMS risk mindset by emphasizing the value of risk mitigation opportunities: “During the course of the year - whether its weather developments, adverse regulatory outcomes or other downside cases - we try to identify enough risk mitigating opportunities to offset those risks,” explains Hayes. Join us when Hayes retraces his steps to the CFO office and lists his priorities for the year ahead.

Tony Tripeny’s remarkable career at Corning can be defined by some impressive numbers: 33 years of service in every aspect of corporate finance at the 167-year-old company whose cutting-edge materials reside in nearly every cell phone and flat screen among so many other products. Yet, the veteran EVP and CFO prefers to describe the keys to successful corporate finance leadership with qualitative measures such as time, location and communications. Tripeny continually exhorts his group to deploy automation and related tools to free up more time to devote to analysis and other strategic contributions –especially those that they provide from a seat at the decision-making table. He also emphasizes that it is vital for incoming finance chiefs to be as prepared as possible to manage the “public aspect of the CFO” role. “It’s just different,” he asserts, “when you’re the person being asked the questions, going to the conferences, or speaking for half the time on the conference calls.”

Cimpress CFO Sean Quinn likes to set increasingly difficult professional goals for himself. His commitment to continual personal growth hasn’t hurt his mass customization company: Cimpress’ annual revenue has soared from $500 million when Quinn joined in the company nine years ago to roughly $2.6 billion today. We catch up once more with Quinn, who assumed Cimpress’ CFO position in 2015 and who was recently named to The Boston Business Journal’s annual ‘40 Under 40’ list honoring Beantown’s best and brightest young professionals. The former KPMG CPA talks about scaling the company’s financial infrastructure to support its rapid growth. He also details the levers he’s put in place to help the publicly listed company replaces its focus on a quarterly horizon with a long-term mindset.

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

Serving as a corporate finance executive for an organization on the perilous journey from “small and private” to “large, publicly listed, and thriving” taught Catalant CFO Anitha Gopalan what to hone in on as a finance chief. That experience and others like it also sharpened her gambling chops. She says that her Silicon Valley start-up experience showed her “how important and relevant it is to completely understand the company story and strategy” along with “the drivers that create value for shareholders.” Aligning corporate finance’s activities with that plan and its related plot points enables CFOs, she adds, to “optimize everything you do depending on what you are betting on and where you are doubling down.” The 20-year corporate finance veteran is now betting on her dynamic leadership skills to help Catalant to accelerate and scale its mission of enabling client companies to revolutionize their human capital strategy.

The executives and staffers profiled on Possible’s web site are described by the non-profit integrated healthcare provider as “possibilists” – “people with the perspective to embrace extraordinary challenge and the grit to get remarkable results anyway.” The term suits Possible CFO Pavan Makhija, a former investment banker who possesses dual undergraduate degrees in math and religion, a master’s in financial engineering from Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, and a passion for social issues. The former Lehman Brothers and Barclays controller is also an avid story-teller. Here, he narrates his anything-is-possible career trajectory while sharing how the Lehman bankruptcy – and his use the firm’s balance sheet as a powerful narrative device at an arduous time – educated him on his CFO path. Makhija also describes the challenge of applying all of his financial engineering and management skills to guiding a mission-driven organization that provides affordable (and often free) high-quality healthcare in the U.S. and Nepal.

Whenever he’s faced a difficult crossroads in life or business, Varnonis CFO Guy Melamed focused squarely on goals – sticking to them and scoring them. Despite playing for Israel’s under-21 national soccer team and fielding alluring offers to continue his playing career there, Melamed chose to leave his home country. He attended Boston College where he simultaneously played soccer, studied accounting and business, and learned English. His stick-to-itiveness helped him earn a B.A and an M.S.A. while becoming the first Israeli to get drafted by a Major League Soccer (MLS) team. After a year with the Colorado Rapids in the U.S. and a stint in the U.K.’s Championship League, Melamed decided to focus exclusively on his business career, joining KPMG as a CPA. Despite lucrative offers from private industry, Melamed opted to remain at KPMG and, later, EY, because, at those points in his career, he says “knowledge and experience were more important to me than making more money.” The pursuit of those goals also paid off by delivering him to Varonis, where he gained valuable experience helping to guide a booming cybersecurity company through an IPO.

Before joining Tableau four years ago and taking over the CFO seat last July, Damon Fletcher worked through a progression of experiences that could serve as a career roadmap for up-and-coming finance chiefs. After earning his Master of Accounting degree, Fletcher joined PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he worked closely with one of the fastest-growing companies in the world during the early 2000s. His early-career work included M&A valuations and integrations, extensive travel, valuable guidance from savvy mentors and risk management expertise earned during the depths of the global financial crisis. He has straightforward advice for aspiring finance leaders: Get out of your comfort zone. That means seeking out assignments in new areas of corporate finance and the business, gaining exposure to new industries, and accepting roles that require moves to new regions. Here, he discusses his role with the leading visual analytics company – including a valuable collaboration with the sales team—and the unique payoff of emptying your email inbox at the end of each day.

Cloud ERP + Time = Strategic Influence When Kote Lomidze became World Learning’s CFO four years ago, he immediately began enhancing the functionality of a cloud-based ERP platform the global educational non-profit had implemented six months earlier. The work, which Lomidze oversaw in a very hands-on way, generated valuable returns as measured in dollars, time and influence. Thanks to his technological savvy, Lomidze and his team spearheaded the adoption of applications that streamlined timesheets and improved the collection of vendors' banking information among numerous other benefits. In all, Lomidze and his team spearheaded the adoption of 10 applications, which greatly reduced the time the function spends chasing data and closing the books. “We spend more time analyzing the data and translating that data into actionable outcomes,” he says. Less time on reconciliations also translates to more time supporting decision-making that “influences how the organization is run,” adds Lomidze, who discusses all of the tools and knowledge he deploys while operating with a for-profit mindset to help sustain World Learning’s mission well into the future.

After starting his career in a Big 4 accounting firm and then steadily ascending through numerous (and varied) corporate finance roles over nearly two decades, Michael Hug possessed a clear vision for his CFO tenure at the world’s largest publicly traded timeshare company. “I didn’t want my team to just be the people who come in, count the money and deposit it in the bank,” he notes. “Rather, I want us to be embedded in the business – to have a great relationship with our business leaders … while helping the organization to achieve its goals.” Hug assumed his finance chief role as Wyndham Destinations was spinning off its sister company. That timing gave him the unique opportunity to build a senior corporate finance leadership team – including the heads of investor relations, treasury and internal audit as well as a chief accounting officer – from scratch

Prior to joining Sysmex, a medical diagnostic testing equipment and information systems technology company, five years ago, spent his formative years in Siemens where his varied experience covered every aspect of corporate finance in addition to stints as the head of strategic projects for one of the conglomerate’s companies. One Garini’s guiding principles as a finance executive is to get as far away from his desk as possible and deeply engage with broad and diverse group of stakeholders. Over the course of a career that includes leadership positions throughout Latin America, Europe and North America, the Brazil native has embraced that principle to its extreme. Garini, who speaks four languages, exhorts his rising managers and executives to “train themselves to be global” by seeking roles in new regions to gain exposure to new cultures, languages, market environments and business perspectives. Guest: Alex Garini Company: Sysmex America Headquartered: Chicago, IL Connect: www.sysmex.com

Eagle-eyed vision may be Mphasis Executive Vice President and CFO V. Suryanarayanan’s most valuable leadership skill. His ability to zero in on crucial but obscured factors – market conditions affecting the timing of an IPO or the surprisingly high cost of indirect materials used in the motorcycle manufacturing process, for example – has helped him add substantial value to the companies he’s worked for while earning him impressive recognition. Honored as one of India’s 100 Best CFOs for 2017-18, Suryanarayanan also received CFO India’s First Annual CFONEXT100 honor in 2012 (and was a repeat winner the following year). That said he would rather talk about how he and his finance team’s analysis of market forecasts spurred them to accelerate the timetable for taking a company public – a move that “resulted in a fantastic valuation” and a successful listing completed weeks before a major market swoon. Suryanarayanan views those types of accomplishments as part of the strategic CFO’s core role. “Ideally, the CFO should track the pulse of the business,” he adds. “If the business is going to have problems, the CFO [should know] well in advance of anyone else in the organization.”

Wasabi CFO Michael Bayer’s career ah-ha moment struck early. He was a college math whiz in the early days of PCs when a professor enlisted Bayer to move all of his paper-based finance and accounting records to a computerized system. “He took me under his wing and taught me a lot,” recalls Bayer, whose 25-plus year professional career includes various finance, operations, technology and business development roles primarily for venture-backed technology companies. “Only recently have I realized the magnitude of the risk that he undertook … He allowed some college kid to build out his business systems [and] he trusted the trading of his fairly sizable investment portfolio to computer models that I built around my emerging understanding of options.” The experience has served as a leadership beacon for Bayer throughout his career as he managed IPOs, co-founded a mobile social network and served as a CFO in a number of companies: “I really think the most powerful thing you can do as a CFO and a business leader is to articulate the business strategy in measurable terms, hire great people and be a great coach.”

When he started his career, Western Union CFO Raj Argawal never expected to wind up leading a global finance function. That seems appropriate today considering he defines his role – first and foremost – as “driving and executing the strategy of the company.” Trained as an electrical engineer at General Motors, Argawal also earned an MBA and then set out in pursuit of a variety of job roles (in the treasury function at General Mills, running one of Western Union’s business units) and diverse experiences (managing foreign exchange risks, taking overseas assignments). Those activities ultimately helped groom him as a finance chief with a broad perspective and a highly strategic lens. “I really look at myself as being a strategic CFO because I’ve had so many experiences in the field interacting with our customers, our agents, our business partners and our employees,” he says. “I’ve always brought the business perspective to my thinking and my decision-making.”

Tim Saunders seems like the kind of leader you’d absolutely follow into battle. He thrives in high-pressure situations, remains cool under pressure and truly values his troops’ expertise. Saunders also fully commits to taking on new -- and seemingly overwhelming – challenges, like the one that greeted him in his first finance executive role following his time in public accounting. During his first week on that job, Saunders discovered his telecommunications company had lost $25 million the previous year, received news that the New York Stock Exchange was threatening delisting, and received a letter that had been languishing on his CEO’s desk for days. The note, from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, contained more than three dozen comments requiring prompt remediation. “Dealing with 44 SEC comments is a good way to learn about the company during your first week on the job,” Saunders deadpans. But he’s not entirely kidding. That unflappable demeanor has served Saunders well while pursuing a varied procession of daunting challenges in a diverse blend of industries, including telecom, semiconductors, clean-tech, private equity and, now, the burgeoning cannabis industry.

Circle CFO Naeem Ishaq’s Forrest Gumpian career trajectory has given him extraordinary exposure to most of Silicon Valley’s touchstone technologies – the semiconductor, cloud computing, mobile payments and, most recently, cryptocurrency. After a stint as a dot.com-era entrepreneur he launched as an undergraduate, Ishaq has invested the past 18 years accumulating a trove of experience within some of the technology industry’s most iconic companies, including Intel, Salesforce, Square, Box and Circle. Along the way, he learned crucial leadership lessons from a remarkable collection of CEOs and CFOs, including former Intel finance chief and current Intel chairman Andy Bryant. Ishaq says Bryant demonstrated what it takes to cultivate a thriving “strategic finance culture.” Today, as head of Circle’s finance team, Ishaq views the ability to quickly “shift context” as key to nurturing his team. He honed that agility at Salesforce when its market capitalization (now $100 billion) was a plucky $3 billion. As head of finance for Salesforce’s emerging businesses group, Ishaq managed the finance functions of 13 different divisions. “It was definitely great training to be a CFO and to really context-shift between different businesses,” he adds. “The reality of being a CFO is that you are often shifting context between many different parts of the business.”

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

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NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

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While the viewing public watches TV – Roku CFO Steve Louden and his finance team are watching Roku’s data – a treasure trove of viewing tastes, habits and streaming developments that are being derived from the billions of hours of content that Roku today streams quarterly. Join us when Steve explains how a data science and analytics platform – originally incubated inside Roku’s finance organization – aspires to provide digestible insights across the company. Learn how the platform’s “super users” today reside in Roku’s finance and advertising groups and why communication between data science engineers, data analytics and functional executives has been key to the platform’s growing success. NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

A brief summary of this episode

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

A brief summary of this episode

A brief summary of this episode

NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).

Over a period of 12 years Patrick Shannon served in seven different finance and business development roles inside the sprawling operations of industrial manufacturer Ingersoll Rand, Inc. He found the work both challenging and satisfying and outside CFO opportunities earned little interest until one day an outside opportunity came from inside Ingersoll Rand where management was formulating a spinout that would shuttle an impressive collection of the company’s security brands into an independent company, known as Allegion. And so in 2013 – Shannon climbed on board as Allegion’s CFO and began a tour of duty that not unlike the seven roles that preceded it requires a restless and independent mind. “There’s more data out there than we know. The question is, ‘How do you collect it in a meaningful way so that you can analyze it and have some insights for the business?’ At Allegion, we do a lot of things on the front end of the business that are driven not only from the finance organization but from inside the broader organization as well. We’ve gained a lot of additional insights related to how we interact with our customers and distributors by using CRM tools and utilizing them more effectively to better understand demand and what’s going on in the marketplace.” - CFO Patrick Shannon NOW SUBSCRIBE: The Quarterly Digest of CFO Strategic Insight http://bit.ly/2Wfv291 (50 CFO Profiles Every Issue).