What's Rarely Measured Matters Most

finance leadership

2017: A Sharper Portfolio, A Clearer Capital Story | Brittany Cerwin, CFO, Middleby Corporation

For years, Middleby executives arriving at investor conferences faced a storytelling problem: 30 minutes wasn’t much time to explain three different businesses, each with its own brands, markets, investments, and stage of development. Today, CFO Brittany Cerwin has a different story to tell. Over the past 18 months, Middleby separated its food-processing business into a…
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The CFO Checklist Keeps Growing | Jack Gordon, CFO, Harri

In this episode, Jack is joined by Jack Gordon, CFO of Harri, an AI-powered workforce operating system serving the hospitality industry. They discuss how Harri helps restaurant operators manage hiring, scheduling, labor, compliance, and employee engagement, and why Gordon views customer usage and satisfaction as important leading indicators of financial performance. The conversation explores AI-driven […]

2016: Building the Operating System for Agentic Automation | Ryan Roccon, CFO, Zapier

At Zapier, the rise of AI is changing more than the automation products customers build. It is reshaping how the company organizes, invests, prices its offerings, and thinks about its next stage of growth. COO and CFO Ryan Roccon describes Zapier’s emerging role as the place where AI-built work actually runs. As tools such as…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:49:03)
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1214: The CFO Checklist Keeps Growing | Jack Gordon, CFO, Harri

For Jack Gordon, the CFO role at Harri increasingly extends beyond finance—and into the mechanics of how an AI-powered business scales. Harri, a workforce operating system focused on hospitality, has evolved from a point solution into a broader platform spanning talent acquisition, workforce management, and employee engagement. Gordon says the company’s opportunity rests partly on…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:56:46)
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1209: Finding a Larger Voice in the Room | Ross Grainger, CFO, Nasuni

Ross Grainger remembers an early chapter of his career when finance was only one part of the job. After stepping outside a traditional finance path to own and operate a Maako auto-body franchise, Grainger tells us he learned what it meant to “act like an owner.” That sometimes meant cleaning toilets, learning to paint cars,…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:33:12)
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1206: The CFO as an Architect of Execution | Phil Fracassa, CFO, Magna International

At Timken, it was generally known that Phil Fracassa knew he would become CFO after the company separated its steel business. But first, he tells us, the board gave him a different assignment: lead the project management office and set both resulting companies up for success. The separation followed pressure from an activist investor and…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:48:23)
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1204: When Capital Conviction Matters More Than Market Timing | Andrew Korn, CFO, EliseAI

Andrew Korn tracks growth first. EliseAI had surpassed $200 million in annual recurring revenue when he spoke with us, and Korn tells us the company had maintained year-over-year growth above 100% throughout his four and a half years there—“correlation, not causation,” he adds. That growth gives finance a clear assignment. According to Korn, EliseAI monitors…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:41:20)
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1203: Making Strategy—and the Money—Move Together | Laura Miller, CFO, Strata Decision Technology

In April 2020, Laura Miller stepped into her first CFO role at Pampered Chef. According to Miller, she was pregnant with her second child, working with a new CEO and joining an executive team that had never worked together in the building before the pandemic sent everyone home. Demand was anything but predictable. Miller tells…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:42:51)
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1202: Allocating Capital in an Age of AI | Samantha Greenberg, CFO, AlphaSense

In the early months of Francisco Partners, Samantha Greenberg sat in a room on folding chairs with the firm’s cofounders and one other colleague, planning the business. According to Greenberg, the private equity firm was pursuing an idea that many considered impossible in the late 1990s: executing leveraged buyouts of technology companies. Greenberg tells us…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:50:23)
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1199: The CFO’s Biggest Challenge Isn’t AI—It’s Leading Through It | John Kinzer (Interim CFO), OneStream

John Kinzer still remembers sitting in a closed meeting at MCI, presenting revenue results, when something unexpected caught his attention. It wasn't the numbers he was reporting—it was the questions coming from the FP&A team. Listening to their discussion, he realized, "I also want to see that side of it," Kinzer tells us. That moment…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:41:07)
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1198: Building Long-Term Value Starts With Better Capital Allocation | Shane Hostetter, CFO, Chemours

When Shane Hostetter arrived at Chemours in 2024, he stepped into a company facing liquidity challenges while also pursuing important long-term growth opportunities. His goal was not to replace decades of institutional knowledge but to complement it. Chemours CEO Denise Dignam brought nearly forty years of experience with DuPont and Chemours, while Hostetter brought an…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:48:41)
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1197: The CFO Who Learned Finance by Owning Sales | Sinohe Terrero, CFO, Envoy

Sinohe Terrero still remembers the timing. He joined Envoy in January, only to see the workplace transformed just two months later as offices around the world shut down because of COVID. The company had been building products for offices, but suddenly, almost no one was going to the office, Terrero tells us. That abrupt shift…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:45:27)
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