The way John Cappadona sees it, School of Rock—the company that he joined as CFO back in March 2019—just became another business. “We are deriving 100 percent of our revenue right now from something that did not exist 2 months ago. We were an in-person education business. We had to pivot immediately to deliver a […]
606: Leveraging the Value of Culture | Will Costolnick, CFO, Hire Dynamics
Years from now, when Will Costolnick thinks back to the start of his CFO career, he will likely count the 12 months that preceded his appointment as CFO of Hire Dynamics as part of the same chapter, for—not unlike many of his CFO peers—Costolnick first found his footing at his new employer by slipping into…
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605: When Finance Sings a New Tune | John Cappadona, CFO, School of Rock
Unlike the music artists and instructors recruited by School of Rock to provide music lessons at its 270 locations around the globe, John Cappadona was first hired by the firm to provide a crash course in accounting. “The day I joined, my controller and I walked through the door together not knowing anything,” explains Cappadona,…
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603: All Eyes on Recovery Indicators | John Bonney, CFO, Harness
When John Bonney joined San Francisco–based Harness a little more than a year ago, he became not only the company’s first CFO but also its first finance hire. “For me, this was the first time that I came into a role with a blank slate—it was at Ground Zero,” explains Bonney, who says that the…
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599: Sharpening Your Customer Acumen | David Woodworth, CFO, insightsoftware
At the age of 31, David Woodworth was offered CFO positions at two different firms. The first offer came from his then current employer, where as vice president of finance he was keenly aware of urgent challenges that the company’s next CFO would need to address. The second offer came unsolicited from a smaller company…
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591: Why CFOs Must Ask the Difficult Questions | Andrew Casey, CFO, WalkMe
Years from now, when Andrew Casey reflects back on his CFO career and seeks to make sense of its various chapters, he may want to title the mythical volume Timing Is Everything. Certainly, few expressions might better summarize the career path of a finance executive who for years diligently checked off each CFO prerequisite only…
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590: The Art of Fixing What’s Broken | Terry Schmid, CFO, Topia
Purchasing bananas and moving them through a warehouse in less than 24 hours is perhaps not a professional experience widely shared by today’s finance leaders. Still, as Topia CFO Terry Schmid tells it, mastering banana logistics may just be a worthy prerequisite for many of today’s CFO roles. “It taught me to think about the…
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588: FinTech Goes Beyond the Paycheck | Brian Whalen, CFO, Branch
Back in 2008, when auction giant eBay acquired Bill Me Later (BML), a Maryland-based payment credit company, Brian Whalen and his BML colleagues breathed a sigh of relief. “We had just enough liquidity and options to give us the runway to sell to eBay and PayPal, so—from a learning perspective—it was really about asking the…
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582: Fortifying Your FP&A Footing | Robert Richards, CFO, Centauri
Recalling a meeting that took place years ago at an industry conference, CFO Robert Richards remembers that the East Coast sales executive’s face suddenly dropped. At the time, Richards was more or less his company’s de facto CFO after the company’s finance leader had departed in the wake of the firm defaulting on certain loans.…
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580: Finding Your Groove Inside the CFO’s Evolving Role | Laura Onopchenko, CFO, NerdWallet
It was still early in Laura Onopchenko’s finance career when she removed “Chief Financial Officer” from the list of leadership roles that she aspired to someday hold. “I very specifically made the call that I did not want to be a CFO,” recalls Onopchenko, who says that at the time the decision seemed all the…
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579: When Your Two Worlds Become One | Shari Freedman, Room to Read
At several points during the early years of her finance career, a tug-of-war was seemingly under way between the professional and personal worlds of Room to Read CFO Shari Freedman. Back in the early 1990s, Freedman was running a homeless shelter in New York City while at the same time boarding flights for a string…
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577: Rethinking Sales Productivity | Carolyn Koehn, CFO, Boomi
When finance leader Carolyn Koehn looks back on her career to identify the experiences that she feels best prepared her for a CFO role, she shares a candid observation: “I went to places no one else wanted to go.” Such was the case in the late 1990s, when she moved to Bogotá, Colombia, for Nortel…
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