In her first CFO role, Amanda Whalen revamped cost accounting, restructured sales incentives, and overhauled P&L reporting—driving a 10% profit increase in one year. The experience revealed finance’s power to align teams, influence decisions, and shape business outcomes—ultimately convincing her to pursue finance leadership as her long-term path. [ssp-player] Now Watch our Complete Episode Featuring […]
46: From Flailing to AI Forward Motion
In this Planning Aces episode, Jack Sweeney and co-host Brett Knowles spotlight three CFOs who are advancing their organizations’ FP&A capabilities through thoughtful AI adoption. CFO Andrea Hecht of CSAA Insurance discusses aligning generative AI with enterprise strategy and efficiency. CFO Matthias Steinberg of MindBridge explores combining machine learning and LLMs in finance workflows. CFO […]
1110: When Leadership Mattered | Amanda Whalen, CFO, Klaviyo
Amanda Whalen’s first CFO role began with a question. “You’re not a finance technical person,” her company’s president told her, “but you’re the strongest leader on my team. Will you be willing to be the CFO and help me transform the finance function?” She accepted. Over the following year, Whalen tells us, her team tackled…
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Ep 42: From Misaligned Commissions to Unified Goals
In our latest Planning Aces episode, Jack Sweeney teams with performance management guru Brett Knowles to spotlight three finance leaders tackling one of business’s most critical challenges: aligning sales, operations, and finance around a common goal. First, Orion Innovation CFO Cyrus Lam recalls how transparent metrics and well-crafted incentives helped double profit margins by bridging…
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How CFO Cyrus Lam Transformed Profit Margins and Aligned Teams for Success
Inside The Mentoring Round, CFO Cyrus Lam of Orion Innovation, shares a compelling finance strategic moment that transformed business outcomes. Lam explains how aligning sales and delivery teams through transparent metrics and shared goals doubled profit margins in one business line. He also discusses empowering his team, implementing systems for seamless operations, and fostering a […]
731: When It’s All Systems Go | Vicki Dudley, CFO, TTX Company
Having previously held a succession of finance leadership roles inside Chicago’s ever vibrant financial services sector, Vicki Dudley was perhaps more surprised than anyone to find herself accepting a CFO position with Yancey Bros. Co. of Atlanta, the oldest Caterpillar dealer in the country. Nevertheless, the job hop drew Dudley into a world of opportunity…
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730: Facing Your Transformation Year | Charles Freund, CFO, FLEETCOR
"Don't sweat the small stuff ... AFTER confirming that it's small." –CFO Charles Freund When Charles Freund was named CFO of FLEETCOR in 2020 – his arrival in the c-suite became the latest chapter of a varied and lengthy career journey that paralleled the rise of the $2.6 billion fintech. Accepting a position in…
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725: Pivot Toward the Future | Mike Dodson, CFO, Quantum
"Fire the auditor!" Three words that Quantum CFO Mike Dodson vowed would never cross his lips were now being spoken aloud by Quantum’s board. "Fire these guys!" was the message that Dodson received after weeks of personally rejecting the notion. “We had been delisted, we were in the middle of a multiyear restatement, and…
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721: Every Transformation Begins with Listening | Melissa Ballenger, CFO, Mosaic
"It's all about integrity—always." –Melissa Ballenger, CFO, Mosaic When Melissa Ballenger stepped into a deputy CFO role for TD Bank’s U.S. subsidiary back in 2011, she did so knowing that she had been recruited to be a change agent. Having recently generated business headlines from acquiring two sizable banks in the U.S., TD Bank had…
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702: Making Relationships Matter | Andrew Kenny, CFO, Scoular
Andrew Kenny still remembers the smell of day-old pizza that lingered in the back of the Cairo conference room as negotiations between his company, food processing giant ADM, and a future joint venture partner entered day five. “Planting a flag in Egypt was extremely important for us because it was not just about having a…
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Four Priorities to Redefine Finance
SUMMARY There’s long been little question that the CFO role is expanding, but just how a finance leader should allocate their time to address their far-flung responsibilities has remained every CFO’s quandary. Now a new study from Workday boldly sheds light on four priority areas that hyper-occupied CFOs should keep in mind if they want […]
How Finance Talent Reenergized a Market Leader
When a CFO is tasked with transforming a finance team, it’s the type of opportunity that may come along only once or twice in a finance leader’s career. For Carol Lowe, CFO, Sealed Air Corp., it was a lot of hard work and “a tremendous amount of fun” because, as she explains, “There’s nothing like […]