The Berlin headquarters of software developer Contentful occupies an old brick warehouse with heavy metal doors, broad functional corridors, and spaces native to its industrial past. Standing six stories high, the structure once accommodated its worker population with a miniature kitchen on every floor, a favorite employee perk perhaps first introduced by a coffee-loving tenant. […]
695: As Public Perception Changes, Opportunity Advances | Louie Reformina, CFO, Turning Point Brands
Chances are that CFO Louie Reformina never expected to be in the rolling papers business. Having advanced down a career track populated with different private equity firms, a stint at Goldman Sachs, and a Stanford Business School degree, Reformina could have landed inside any number of industries granting him multiple C-suite doors of entry. However, not…
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694: Specific and Time-bound, Aggressive Yet Realistic | Ana Sirbu, CFO, Nitro
Not unlike other finance leaders, Nitro CFO Ana Sirbu wants you to know that she’s a “prioritizer.” Both personally and professionally, Sirbu has created a list of objectives that never strays far from her mind’s eye. Meanwhile, she undoubtedly keeps a second list—a listing of key results. “Effective key results are specific and time-bound,…
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691: Get Out of the Weeds | Rob Krolik, Burst Capital (CFO emeritus)
When Rob Krolik agreed to join us for a CFO (emeritus) episode, we expected to hear about the successful business turnaround chapter that he added to his finance resume while CFO at Move.com. We also anticipated learning about his years at Yelp, where—back in 2011, as the firm’s new CFO—he was credited with helping to…
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687: The Room Where It Happened | Ken Kaufman, CFO, Community Dental Partners
Each Wednesday morning, as the CEO prodded his team for business projections and troubleshooting ideas, the midsize company’s top managers would huddle around a white board inside a glass-enclosed office. For 20-something Ken Kaufman, the management huddle was a silent spectacle—except for the occasional bouts of laughter that burst out from behind the glass. “The…
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676: The Next Transformation Journey | Paul Lundstrom, CFO, Flex
Back in 2015, after nearly two decades of diligent career-building across United Technologies, Paul Lundstrom fixed his career builder's gaze upon the span of companies known as the Fortune 500. Like many seasoned finance executives who spend the balance of their careers inside large enterprise companies, Lundstrom had to confront the obvious truth that for…
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669: Transactions, Trades, and Treatments | Ozan Pamir, CFO, 180 Life Sciences
We seldom hear a finance leader tell us that they took a pass on a promotion early in their careers, so when CFO Ozan Pamir told us that as a 25-year-old associate he had turned down a vice president position with Echelon Wealth Partners, a Canadian investment banking firm that he had been with for…
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668: Investors Make Room for a Streaming SPAC | Jason Eustace, CFO, CuriosityStream
It was roughly 12 months ago that Jason Eustace was named CFO of CuriosityStream, an upstart streaming media company launched in 2015 by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks. For Eustace, CuriosityStream represents something of a flashback career chapter, arguably having more in common with the first 10 years of his finance career than the past…
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664: Good Judgment: Every CFO’s Star Attribute | Gary Swidler, CFO, Match Group
Back in 2015, when Gary Swidler was a candidate for a CFO position at Match Group, the seasoned banking executive recalls being told by company management: “On paper, you are definitely not the most qualified person for the job.” The gap on Swidler’s resume was due to the fact that he had never held a…
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633: Marching to Fintech’s New Beat | Matt Briers, CFO, TransferWise
Among the more transformative chapters of Matt Briers’s finance career was his 3-year stint monitoring and forecasting margin performance inside Google’s UK operations. “The core role was really to understand what was happening in the organization from a revenue and margin performance perspective and then help to operate the organization so that it could better…
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624: Accelerate Around the Curve | Alyssa Filter, CFO, Clari
When Alyssa Filter was named CFO of Clari, her strategic mind-set was the by-product of having been involved from early on in the development and growth of several of the Sunnyvale, Calif., software developer’s organizational functions. Having first been hired as a consultant when Clari was still a pre-revenue company, Filter discovered that she was…
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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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