It was October 2019. Red Hat, Inc., was preparing to submit its latest quarterly results to its new parent, IBM Corp., and Laurie Krebs had just been named Red Hat software’s new CFO. As a senior vice president of finance for Red Hat, Krebs had worked closely with the former CFO and more or less […]
619: Finding Finance’s Center of Gravity | Ray Carpenter, CFO, Xandr
When Ray Carpenter retraces his steps to the CFO office at Xandr—an analytics and advertising company formed by AT&T's WarnerMedia—he singles out two earlier roles as having been outside AT&T’s traditional finance track. “I actually got kicked out of finance for that role,” says Carpenter, referring to a stint as a marketer inside a start-up…
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618: From COVID’s Initial Shock to IPO in 60 Days | Dave Jones, CFO, Vroom
Not unlike the careers of his finance leader peers, the finance career of Dave Jones, CFO of online car seller Vroom, has been shaped and influenced by economic crises of the past two decades. Last month, as the initial shock of the coronavirus waned and the stock market rallied back, Vroom moved quickly to go…
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617: Finding Your Seat at the M&A Table | Dennis McGrath, CFO, PAVmed
Dennis McGrath was only recently married and a new home owner when he was invited to a Phillies game by the CFO of AC Manufacturing. At the time, McGrath was working for Andersen as an auditor of a roster of growing companies, among which AC—a maker of industrial air-conditioning units—was perhaps not the most glamorous.…
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616: Predictability and the Pipeline | Ashim Gupta, CFO, UiPath
When asked to share a few of the experiences that he feels prepared him for a CFO role, Ashim Gupta recalls what he characterizes as a significant accounting problem. However, it was not the nature of the accounting snag that Gupta wants us to know about but instead how his initial response to the problem…
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615: Validating Your Proof Points for Investors | Jeff Epstein, Bessemer Venture Partners
In the mid-1990s, when Jeff Epstein was busy satisfying the M&A appetites of media clients for First Boston, one of his smaller, but more boisterous clients asked him to join the firm as its CFO. “It was the type of situation where if they had gone to a recruiter, I would never have made…
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614: In Pursuit of Data’s Deep Impact | Matt Borowiecki, CFO, Biofourmis
When asked what led him to open his latest career chapter as CFO of Biofourmis, Matt Borowiecki quickly mentions the 2018 sale of MassMutual Asia Ltd. to Yunfeng FG. After helping to piece together a string of strategic plays for MassMutual, Borowiecki was instrumental in effecting the Yunfeng FG deal, which was a standout for…
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613: Helping Others Get the Big Picture | Anders Fohlin, CFO, Medius
Early in his finance career, Anders Fohlin discovered that he could ratchet up his capacity to consume information and problem-solve simply by drawing pictures. However, what had originated more as a personal observation would eventually evolve to something more as he discovered that his visuals could serve others. “I started to regularly draw processes…
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612: The Rewards of Customer Insight | David Wells, CFO, ENDRA Life Sciences
Back in the mid-1990s, David Wells was a financial analyst for a Bay Area supply chain management company that boasted an impressive list of Silicon Valley marquee customers. Counted among their clients was a large chip maker whose customer relationship upkeep had over time become Wells's responsibility. Because this was a coveted customer, Wells always…
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611: An Acquisitive State of Mind | Jon Nguyen, CFO, Kyriba
Jon Nguyen got his first taste of M&A-related work in the early to mid-2000s when he served as the vice president of finance partner for the auto lending unit of HSBC. “In consumer lending, you end up doing a lot of portfolio purchases rather than equity ones, but I have become more involved in the…
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610: Getting a Read on Economic Recovery | Michael Borreca, CFO, LYNX Franchising
Finance leaders who remain skeptical of the prospects for economic recovery inside the 2020 calendar year may want to consult LYNX Franchising CFO Michael Borreca. “I don’t think that it’s going to take us to 2021 to get back to March sales levels,” says Borreca, who doesn’t hesitate to credit three nontraditional metrics for influencing…
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609: Minding Your Financial Ps and Qs | Matt Ellis, CFO, Verizon
It’s a story that Verizon CFO Matt Ellis seems to enjoy telling and one that he has undoubtedly related more than once before. One evening while in high school, Ellis was working at the fish counter of a local supermarket when he received some feedback from the store manager. Earlier in the day, the man…
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