What's Rarely Measured Matters Most

leadership

1190: Fixing What Growth Tries to Hide | Jaylene Kunze, LegitScript

When Jaylene Kunze was asked to help rebuild a struggling subsidiary in the United Kingdom, she packed up her family and moved overseas with her nine-month-old daughter. The assignment was one more example of the type of challenge that would come to define her career. Rather than following a traditional finance path, Kunze gravitated toward…
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1189: Why Finance Should Lead with “Yes, And” | Bruno Annicq, CFO, Wellhub

A conversation from years earlier still stands out to Bruno Annicq. While working at AOL, he was supporting business leaders and helping tell the story of the business through data and analytics. Then a senior executive, Holly Hess, approached him with an unexpected suggestion: Why not become the CFO of AOL’s platforms business? Annicq’s reaction…
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1188: Testing Assumptions Before Burning Capital | Kevin Hettrich, CFO, QuantumScape

Kevin Hettrich walked into a conference room with a whiteboard full of numbers and a problem no one had fully articulated. QuantumScape’s leadership team was discussing how to scale an expensive R&D tool used to produce early battery materials. Hettrich had spent two weeks gathering data, talking with engineers, and analyzing manufacturing economics. Then he…
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1187: Pattern Recognition: How CFOs See Around Corners | Alex Chun, CFO, NEOGOV

Alex Chun already knew the management team at NEOGOV long before he became its CFO. As an investor at Warburg Pincus, he spent more than four years “in the trenches” with NEOGOV’s leadership team, flying to Los Angeles to work through operational challenges alongside them, Chun tells us. His path to finance leadership did not…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:43:21)
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1182: From Cockpit Decisions to Capital Decisions | Andre Mancl, CFO, Nium

Andre Mancl recalls sitting only a few months into his first CFO role when a senior technology executive arrived with an urgent warning: engineers were leaving for Google and Facebook, and the company needed an immediate across-the-board compensation increase of 30% to 40%. It would have been a major financial commitment. But Mancl hesitated. Drawing…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:46:38)
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1137: When Finance Leads With Curiosity | Amy Foo, CFO, Ignition

She starts with tape from the field, not the spreadsheet. Listening to enterprise sales calls, Amy Foo heard customers whose usage rose and fell with seasons. Fixed per-seat pricing “wasn’t quite hitting the mark,” she tells us, so she piloted a pooled-seat model that flexed monthly within an annual commitment—turning smaller clips into “one to…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:57:16)
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The Power of Relationships in Driving Enterprise Value

Amid a competitive, banker-led acquisition during COVID, he insisted on traveling to meet the founder in person. That relationship-building shifted perceptions, secured the deal, and underscored how trust can decisively shape enterprise outcomes. Now Watch our Complete Episode Featuring CFO Chris Miorin of apexanalytix Chris Miorin traces a leadership-first path to finance, forged at West […]

1122: Capital Allocation as a CFO’s North Star | Chris Miorin, CFO, apexanalytix

Chris Miorin’s path to the CFO office began in a crucible of leadership. At West Point, and later at Ranger School, he was forged in environments designed to test resolve. Commissioned shortly after 9/11, he knew combat was certain. Leading an infantry platoon in Iraq, he found himself working side-by-side with a colonel “30 years…
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1116: The CFO Who Thinks in Full Color | Dan Zhang, CFO, ClickUp

When Dan Zhang joined ClickUp in 2021, she stepped into a company intent on unifying how the world works. Two years later, she entered the CFO office—just as ClickUp’s strategic bet on AI was beginning to reshape its platform and its future. ClickUp is not just a place where work is tracked, Zhang tells us—it’s…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:55:27)
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Debt Down, Opportunity Curve Upward | Jerome Upton, CFO, Genworth Financial

A Finance Strategic Moment Facing a liquidity crunch, Upton convened a cross‑functional team, ran downside‑focused scenario models on every business, and pinpointed one unit for divestiture. A swift minority IPO abroad raised capital at a premium valuation, cut leverage, strengthened Genworth’s balance sheet—and put Upton’s strategic acumen squarely on the CEO’s radar. Now Watch our […]

1090: Broadening the Field: Turning Risk into Reach | Jerome Upton, CFO, Genworth

Jerome Upton still remembers the silence that descends just before a game begins. As captain of a college team, he’d scan the huddle, gauge nerves, and ask, “What does winning look like today?” “That’s where I learned the power of shared goals,” Upton tells us. Years later, the Genworth Financial CFO opens staff meetings similarly—then gives…
Listen to the Episode Below (0:46:32)
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The 60 Seconds That Changed the Conversation

Faced with a complex tax strategy and an overwhelmed board, Tony Jarjoura cut through dense technical jargon and distilled thousands of hours of work into two simple sentences. The clarity shifted the conversation instantly—highlighting his belief that finance leaders must translate complexity into insight that moves decisions forward. Now watch our complete episode featuring CFO […]