Steve and Jack discuss how growing concerns about a possible economic recession are helping fuel CFO aspirations for creating a more agile finance function, and Steve reflects on how different career experiences and backgrounds influence how CFOs lead and make business decisions. Featuring commentary and FP&A insights from Planning Aces: CFO David Barnes of Trimble, […]
809: Leading Inside a Remote World | Danielle Murcray, CFO, AttackIQ
Among the many strategic changes that finance leader Danielle Murcray has helped to put in motion during her multi-chapter CFO career, perhaps none better reveals her mantle as a strategic leader than the move by cybersecurity firm AttackIQ to adopt a 100 percent–remote U.S. workforce. With the arrival of the pandemic, Murcray—like many of…
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808: Trading Up to a Macro-Driven Career | Komal Misra, CFO, Starry, Inc.
When Komal Misra, a software engineer turned asset manager, decided that it was time once again to make a career change, she found herself staring at a computer screen filled with stocks from various portfolios that were being traded based not on business fundamentals but larger macro-driven trends. “It got me to thinking: Here I…
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806: Being Ready for the Unexpected | Marc Levine, CFO, Tanium
Among the many acquisitions with which Marc Levine became involved during his 25 years at Hewlett-Packard Co., it may surprise few of his former colleagues that he counts HP’s purchase of Compaq Computer as one of the tech giant’s most unusual marriages. However, Levine doesn’t single out HP’s purchase of Compaq due to the…
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805: When the Flywheel Begins to Spin | Chris Greiner, CFO, Zeta Global
It was not long after Chris Greiner became CFO of IBM’s fast-growing Analytics Division that the gravitational pull that IBM had maintained on Greiner’s finance career-building began to give way. While his new divisional CFO title more than validated his 7-year career investment with the company, Greiner—like many divisional finance chiefs—discovered the next rung of…
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802: Making an Industry Lane Change | Mike Catelani, CFO, Anixa Biosciences, Inc.
When Mike Catelani seeks to identify the objectives and career milestones that have helped to advance him into the ranks of Bay Area biotech CFOs, he mentions that although he had a deep interest in biology during his high school years, upon entering college he decided to swap out a biology curriculum for an accounting…
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801: The Founder and the Future | Ryan Van Hatten, CFO, Prophix Software
Perhaps few CFO career paths better reveal the advantages a founder-led firm may offer career-minded executives than that of Prophix CFO Ryan Van Hatten. Back in 2016—when the firm's previous CFO exited the company—Prophix's founder and CEO, the late Paul Barber, asked Van Hatten, an 11-year company veteran, to step into the CFO office until…
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800: When the Road Rises to Meet You | John Herman, CFO, Movable Ink
Had the opportunity to work in the treasury department at American Express arrived 6 months earlier, there’s a chance that John Herman may never have landed in a CFO office. “Treasury was an area that I was fascinated by,” remembers Herman, who—after having spent a decade at American Express—was given a "package” in 2009 when…
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799: When Metrics Do the Talking | Adam Ante, CFO, Paycor
When Adam Ante first arrived at Paycor in 2017, the seasoned finance executive was tasked with prodding Paycor management to begin monitoring daily performance metrics. “At first, it was about building the relationship with the executive team so that they understood how important it was to understand how the company was performing on a daily…
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798: A CFO Links Past to Present | April Downing, CFO, Khoros
It was in the late 1990s when public accountant, savvy networker and future CFO April Downing decided that it was time to leave Dallas. “I had cultivated my network there really early—there was a group of friends from PwC whom I regularly attended a book club with, and later we would all go on to…
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795: The Canary in the Coal Mine | Anisha Sood, CFO, First Choice Health
Back in 2001, as the dotcom bubble imploded and the U.S. economy took a downward spiral, Anisha Sood, a recently hired consultant for Accenture, felt fortunate. “There were rounds of layoffs happening and Accenture was trying to manage it well, but I got lucky because I was in healthcare,” explains Sood, who reports that other…
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794: The Customer’s Many Experiences | Will Johnson, CFO, Iterable
Will Johnson can still hear the question that momentarily muted a management dinner and prodded the gathering’s executive diners to thoughtfully dispatch an answer. “'If you weren’t in your current role, which one—held by a peer at this table—would you assume?,'” recalls Johnson, echoing the inquisitor’s words. “There were some really surprising answers,” he…
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