Inside The Mentoring Round, CFO Michael Kennedy tells us that while he had anticipated a significant workload at MDA, the reality was far beyond his initial expectations. This is a common experience for many CFOs when they transition into roles that demand organizational transformation. Leaders tell us they often underestimate the scale of the tasks […]
956: The Underpinnings of Operational Growth | Zhi Li, CFO, Customer.io
Just as Zhi Li was entering the world of investment banking in 2008, many of his future CFO peers were making hasty exits from the banking realm. “We were the smallest incoming associate class ever,” recalls Li, who joined Credit Suisse’s New York office during some of the darkest days of that economic downturn. “After…
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952: Solving the Almond World’s People Equation | Mark Lampe, CFO, Monte Vista Farming Co.
As California’s 2023 almond harvesting season nears its end, the management of Monte Vista Farming Company has begun to turn its attention from the almond producer’s seasonal flow of "almonds in" and "almonds out" to people and operations. “After what we pay our growers for the almonds, our number one cost becomes labor,” explains…
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Trusting Your Long Term Mission | Teresa Chia, CFO Vertafore
947: Finding Pathways to Innovation | Teresa Chia, CFO, Vertafore
Among the different career phases that Teresa Chia credits with having helped to advance her down the CFO path, there is little question that Phase 2 was the most formative. Still, how she came to enter this phase had little to do with career ambitions—or at least her own career ambitions. The second phase of…
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Ep 28: How Planning Aces Are Made
This episode features insights and commentary from three finance leaders: CFO Michael Linford of Affirm, CFO Ana Chadwick of Pitney Bowse, and CFO Jason Leet of Zylo. Planning Ace's Cohost Jack Sweeney points out that all three of this episode's finance leaders have noteworthy M&A backgrounds, including Michael Linford's role as the first CFO after…
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945: Achieving a Management Rapport | Doug Lindroth, CFO, Tealium
Doug Lindroth tells us that he is not likely to forget the day that Google filed its S-1 registration statement simply because it was on the same one that semiconductor distributor Memec filed its own S-1. Back in June 2004, Lindroth was CFO of Memec when the firm’s management opted to file a registration statement…
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Finance Transformation, Metrics, Networking | Ana Chadwick, CFO, Pitney Bowes
944: Building Your Network | Ana M. Chadwick, CFO, Pitney Bowes
Back in 2020, the call that longtime General Electric veteran Ana Chadwick accepted from a recruiter would prove to be the one solicitation in a career’s worth of such outreaches that would ultimately result in an executive search fee. Still, while Chadwick would be a prize placement for any headhunter, it is clear that this…
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940: All the Moving Parts | Michael Linford, CFO, Affirm
For those executives residing inside the private equity and investment banking realms who aspire to someday occupy the CFO office, it’s not uncommon to seek out an “operator’s role”—one that allows recruiters “to check the box” and confidently present a leadership candidate (operations credentials intact) to a company’s management team or board members. “Inspect your…
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The Virtues of “Payback” | Ralph Leung, CFO, Achieve
939: Creating a Narrative for Growth | Ralph Leung, CFO, Achieve
When Ralph Leung relocated to Hong Kong from Morgan Stanley’s New York offices, he was a newlywed eager to energize the financial world as one of the bank’s senior deal makers for the Asia Pacific region. Four years later, when he accepted a call from a U. S. recruiter, he had been credited with having…
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