Bea Ordonez still recalls the whirlwind of her first CFO post: a raw fintech start‑up where, in two short years, she recruited “over a hundred people,” built the processes they would follow and decided what kind of culture would bind them, she tells us. Immersing herself in every workflow taught her that finance leadership begins on the frontline—listening, questioning, then turning messy reality into structure.
Read MoreThat builder’s reflex shapes her playbook at Payoneer today. After a decade as a global COO and a stint as Chief Innovation Officer, Ordonez now sits in the public‑company CFO chair, but she leads with the same conviction that data and customer proximity must converge. Payoneer’s mission—“talent is equally distributed globally, but opportunity isn’t,” she says—drives investments in a cross‑border payments platform serving more than two million SMBs. To scale responsibly, she has poured resources into a robust data foundation, predictive AI models that flag churn, and governance that satisfies regulators across 190 countries.
Volatility, meanwhile, no longer startles her. Having weathered the dot‑com bust, 2008, COVID, the 2023 U.S. banking shock—and now a new wave of tariffs whose ultimate impact remains uncertain—she treats upheaval as a catalyst for opportunity.
For aspiring finance leaders, her path offers a signal: there is no prescribed ladder. Curiosity, operational empathy and a willingness to “lean into areas where there’s no obvious right answer” open the widest doors—and keep a company’s growth story moving long after the numbers are scored, through volatile cycles across global markets today.
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CFOTL: Bea, you’ve now been Payoneer’s CFO for two years. For readers who may not know the company, what is Payoneer about today?
Ordonez: Payoneer is a mission‑driven company. Our goal is to connect small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurs—especially in emerging markets—to the fast‑growing digital economy. We believe talent is distributed evenly around the world, but opportunity isn’t. One big barrier is limited access to the global financial system and to digital commerce.
Read MorePayoneer provides that on‑ramp: we enable more than two million customers to enter global marketplaces, move money across borders and simplify complex workflows so they can run and grow their businesses. We operate at the intersection of rising digitization and global trade. Since COVID, digital payments have accelerated, internet access has broadened, and more entrepreneurs are seeking cross‑border opportunities. Payoneer positions them to seize those opportunities.
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