What's Rarely Measured Matters Most

CFO

564: Synchrony Steps Beyond the Shadow of its Historic Roots | Brian Wenzel, CFO, Synchrony

It was roughly 10 years ago when Brian Wenzel realized that his coveted and time-tested career path inside GE Capital had become somewhat fogged over. He was not alone. Somewhere between the economic downturn and GE’s headline-grabbing restructuring, Wenzel and his career-building colleagues had seen their traditional corporate career ladder begin to disappear in a…
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557: Sharpening Your Finance Team’s Growth Mind-Set | Bill Ruckelshaus, CFO, Extrahop

Guest: Bill Ruckelshaus Company: ExtraHop Headquarters: Seattle, WA Connect: www.extrahop.com CFOTL: What is the latest chapter for this business - what is it about? Ruckelshaus: It's very much growth, expansion, and scaling that will consume capital, so raising capital will be a part of my role. It's also working with the leadership team to lean…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:36:21)
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550: The Funnel: Where Sales & Finance Meet | Andrew Hicks, CFO, Advanced

For every top sales leader who confides to friends that he or she is really a numbers freak at heart, there’s an Andrew Hicks, who, as CFO of Advanced, would be just as apt to boast about a sales funnel innovation as he would about the adoption of a new accounting rule. In fact, it…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:36:37)
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546: When Speed to Market Matters Most | Richard Steinhart, CFO, BioXcel Therapeutics

When asked what sets BioXcel Therapeutics apart from other clinical-stage biopharmaceutical companies, CFO Richard Steinhart doesn’t mention a specific drug or therapy. Instead, he describes a system that the company developed to advance the speed with which drugs are commercialized. According to Steinhart, the biotech company’s system uses artificial intelligence to reveal “hidden connections” that,…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:38:42)
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544: Tales of a Finance Journeyman | John Pokorney, CFO, LeTip World Franchise

Few finance leaders have boiled down the take-aways from their career journeys into as many palatable, bite-size portions as John Pokorney, CFO of LeTip International. Having found his original finance door of entry at Intel Corp. in the early 1990s, Pokorney credits the chipmaker’s collaborative culture for prodding him to speak the language of others…
Listen to the Episode Below (01:01:12)
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543: Whetting Your Firm’s FP&A Appetite | Paul Willson, CFO, Compeat

After years of careful finance career–building within the healthcare sector, Paul Willson came upon an opportunity inside Austin’s energetic technology start-up community that he found hard to resist. Becoming employee number 23, he was immediately dubbed “the finance guy”—a label that he would wear for only 5 days before the ambitious start-up announced that it…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:29:54)
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542: Now See This: One CFO’s Data Visualization Mantra | Tim Zue, CFO, Boston Red Sox

­­­When it comes to guessing a person’s email address, most of us would agree that the best way to optimize your odds of success is to first assume that the person was using their actual name as part of the address. From there, your next decision arguably is whether to spell out the individual’s first…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:42:52)
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541: Energizing Your Stakeholder Network | Smital Shah, CFO, ProQR Therapeutics

As an Indian citizen living in the United States and working for a Dutch company, CFO Smital Shah frequently spends her days on conference calls with investors from Asia, Israel, or Europe. On every investor call, at every board meeting, and at every employee gathering, the same question gets asked: “How far is ProQR from…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:35:23)
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540: When the Whole is Greater | Lucy Rutishauser, CFO, Sinclair Broadcast Group

Like a savvy investor, Lucy Rutishauser built her early career by carefully tracking the activities of different companies. Sometimes, to glean better insights, she would actually cold-call a company and ask for the finance department. But Rutishauser wasn’t looking to invest money—instead, she was looking to invest that all-so-valuable commodity known as career-building years. “The…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:34:00)
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538: When Saying “No” Is a Strategic Imperative | William Edmondson, CFO, 1E

The mass migration of software developers from perpetual licensing to subscription licensing models has allowed quite a few CFOs to enrich their strategy credentials in recent years. It’s a movement that has allowed finance chiefs to rebrand themselves as champions of change, and one that has helped to dismiss the image of CFOs being the…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:39:58)
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537: When Every Megawatt Matters | Sharif Metwalli, CFO, Vantage Data Centers

When Sharif Metwalli decided that the time was right to accept a CFO position with Vantage Data Centers, he was confident that he had found a company that allowed him to check all of the boxes when it came to his finance leader search criteria. Box #1: Know and respect the management team. Box #2:…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:25:50)
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533: Taking the Temperature of Your Business | Jeff Friedman, CFO, Savi Technology

When asked about which numbers have been top-of-mind since his arrival two years ago inside the CFO office at Savi Technology, Jeff Friedman quickly mentions accounts payable, receivables, and cash before taking a short pause and stating “the sales pipeline.” After 24 months as Savi’s finance chief, it’s clear that Friedman has lines of sight into…
Listen to the Episode Below (00:41:27)
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