CFO THOUGHT LEADER

For Rebecca Mahadeva, the late 1990s audit of a minor league baseball team was the type of rare career assignment that never failed to intrigue both accountants and non accountants alike. At the time, Mahadeva had been serving a variety of technology audit clients as a young associate for  Coopers & Lybrand when she added to her docket a major league baseball team otherwise known as the New York Mets.  “The Mets controller at the time engaged me to do a site visit and some compliance work on the financials of a single A team up in Canada known as the St Catherine’s Stompers,” explains Mahadeva, who says her visit’s findings were used to help bolster confidence behind the purchase price the Mets owners had divvied up for the single A team. Following the close of the deal, St. Catherine’s Stompers relocated to Brooklyn, and was subsequently renamed The Brooklyn Cyclones . The newly rebranded Cyclones became the first professional baseball team to play in the borough of Brooklyn since the Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1958. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but this engagement was really my job interview,” observes Mahadeva, who says that ess than a year later she received a Mets job offer from the same controller.  Mahadeva joined the Mets organization as an assistant controller and would spend more than a decade inside its finance function, often taking on assignments to improve operational efficiencies in different areas. “Baseball is a very hard industry to leave—people seldom do—but there were no growth opportunities for me,” comments Mahadeva, who next accepted a controller position in a professional services firm specializing in marketing communications and healthcare—a realm that has continued to bring Mahadeva new and more senior roles. Today, as CFO of marketing agency Greater Than One, Mahadeva believes that professional services present a challenge to finance leadership unlike that presented by other sectors.   Says Mahadeva: “The CFO of an agency must find the delicate balance between the output of our employees and the hours that are required to pursue new business opportunities.”  Of course, no matter what balance maybe achieved, few challenges will ever match the deal that brought baseball back to Brooklyn. – Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

When Paul Ottolini is asked to share a personal trait—one that a family member might divulge to us— the seasoned finance leader tells us that he likes to cut his own lawn and that he is known for being “cheap.” Still, Ottolini makes clear to us that it’s more the satisfaction of completing a job and not the cost savings that regularly fuels his pursuit of manual tasks. “I’m smiling when I spread 10 yards of mulch,” says Ottolini, whose words perhaps provide a clue to his past as well as to a work life cadence with which one suspects that he has rarely if ever fallen out of step during his more than three decades of  career-building. The son of a chemist employed by General Motors Corp., Ottolini graduated from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) after completing a co-op undergraduate degree that permitted students to pay for their education by alternating 3 months of classes with 3 months of work inside General Motors. Upon graduation, Ottolini joined GM, where he worked 2 years as a software engineer before heading to business school at Harvard. With an MBA in hand, Ottolini next joined Deloitte Consulting, where for 6 years he piled up frequent flyer miles as a client-facing consultant—before a surprise return to GM. “I had wanted to get off the road, and while with GM I knew that it probably was going to take 15 years to match what Deloitte had offered me in 6, I felt that coming from a GM family, I wanted to go back,” recalls Ottolini, who notes that at the time, he was introduced to the GM opportunity by a recruiter from Russell Reynolds Associates, the executive search firm whose CFO office he now occupies. And just as GM and later Russell Reynolds would make repeat appearances in Ottolini’s professional life, so too did Deloitte, to which Ottolini returned in the early 2000s to serve in a succession of finance leadership roles that ultimately allowed him to place both feet on the CFO path. - Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021     

When Stéphane Berthier joined Uniphore of Palo Alto, CA, as CFO this past January, the move no doubt raised more than a few Silicon Valley eyebrows. For more than two decades, Berthier had served a list of prestigious Bay Area tech companies as a top audit partner for PricewaterhouseCoopers, where his impressive tenure had originally been kicked off by his relocation from France to better serve one of the firm’s most coveted Silicon Valley clients: Hewlett-Packard. During the next two decades, Berthier would become inducted into Silicon Valley’s coterie of familiar advisors and consultants known to provide sound advice to IPO-minded technology start-ups as well as software firms struggling to replace “on premise” customer revenue with new cloud-driven funds.   “I stayed 20 years and loved every aspect of client service—this was a tough decision for me, but I think that it was the right time,” says Berthier, who describes Uniphore as being uniquely positioned to pursue the fast-growing tech opportunities in conversational AI. Asked what his priorities are when it comes to the CFO role, Berthier doesn’t hesitate to tell us what he believes distinguishes great CFOs from good ones. “From the accumulated knowledge gained from my experience in dealing with CFOs, I would say that a great CFO is someone who not just can report the numbers but also knows how to influence them,” he observes. He continues: “It’s like landing a plane on time: People expect that, but what sets an airline apart is the customer experience. For CFOs, it’s insight into how to influence the numbers.” Certainly, the notion that Berthier was vacating his esteemed industry practice to become one of the very CFOs he had for so long served came as a surprise to both past and present CFO clients. For some, Berthier’s January appointment begged the question of why the CFO advisor’s aspirations had not surfaced sooner. Says Berthier: “There had been other opportunities to leave along the way, but I finally realized that I needed to be in the driver’s seat—so it just became a matter of finding the right company.” –Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

When CFO John Collins is asked how his background in data modeling and strategy is influencing the role that finance plays inside LivePerson, the artificial intelligence (AI) software firm that he first joined 2 years ago, he draws our attention to the mountains of data accumulating alongside most businesses today. “Given the volume of data that exists and that the tools to transform it into information have not evolved very much, my taking over the CFO seat and building out this team under me is putting us on a path to better achieve more data efficiency,” explains Collins, while referring to the team that he’s dubbed “DMD,” or Data Models and Decisions. “Data is essentially an input into a model. The model may be rather simple and rules-based or it may involve more sophisticated machine learning, but the models manipulate and organize that data to produce useful information,” continues Collins. Still, what sets Collins’s data aspirations apart from those of his more traditional CFO peers is not the act of transforming additional data into information, but what he refers to as the Flywheel Effect, through which the system for digesting the information over time “gets smarter” and begins to create “automations” for different transactional activities while reducing uncertainty and maximizing the returns around decision-making. “That’s the essence of the flywheel that gets generated, through the vision that we have for the CFO and the modern tool set underneath him or her,” says Collins, who characterizes the proper operation of the accounting and reporting processes as “tables stakes” inside a broadening finance function. “For me, the past should be accounted for perfectly, but where I would like to focus is on being a strategic partner and the creation of long-term value,” comments Collins, who considers the Flywheel Effect as a primary contributor to long-term value creation. Says Collins: “From my perspective, it’s pretty clear that we’re digitizing the world at an accelerated pace, which has had implications not just for traditional products and services but also for traditional jobs and corporate functions.” –Jack Sweeney  Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

As Christian Geyer sees it, the path to the CFO office can begin just about anywhere. For him, anywhere happened to be the accounts payable department of a DC-area construction company. Having built numerous government facilities across the region, the company hired Geyer—along with three other “payables specialists”—to manage the process of paying for the expansive list of building materials that the company was constantly acquiring to use in the construction of its buildings. “I knew that if I stayed in step with the department’s typical rhythm, I would never go anywhere,” explains Geyer, who reports that shortly after his arrival, he converted what had been a 40-hours-a-week job into a 60 to 80 hours one. “I looked at the purchase order process as well as the payment approval process, and I tried to whittle these down to figure out where the bottlenecks were in order to make us more efficient,” recalls Geyer, who quickly began eliminating snags within the process while at the same time introducing new approaches that ultimately cut the number of required man-hours per week from 160 to 10. According to Geyer, the newly streamlined A/P processes helped to save the company $300,000 annually.   Still, what did he get out of it? “This allowed me to free up my time and focus it elsewhere,” remembers Geyer, who adds that he soon became involved with the company’s accounts receivable and payroll processes, as well as its general ledger and audit support. Says Geyer: “Too often you see people sitting in a job and doing the same mundane thing day in and day out. You have to challenge yourself and don’t settle.” Next, Geyer joined a not-for-profit organization where he accepted a non-management position despite having a resumé populated with management experience. “I took a step back in title, knowing that I could go in there and change that organization,” remarks Geyer, who notes that he reduced the organization’s reporting cycle from 6 months to 1 week—a feat that drew people’s attention and promptly got him promoted. –Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

A little more than a decade ago, Ron Knutson remembers, when he first stepped into the CFO role at Lawson Products, he quickly realized that the productivity improvements that he was expected to help drive would demand a number of significant infrastructure and technology investments. In anticipation of the investments that would need to be made, Knutson recalls, he first completed a “competency review” for every member of the finance team, a process that was in part designed to help flag those employees deemed well suited for training tied to future investments. “We wanted to make certain that we would be training the right individuals,” comments Knutson, who notes that the review ultimately led to “extensive” staffing changes as he sought to lessen the team’s overall dependence on existing systems and use new training to whet its appetite for the adoption and implementation of new technologies, including ERP software.     “Having these individuals go through the implementation process just made them so much stronger coming out of it,” explains Knutson, who credits the new technologies with—among other things—helping the sales team to monitor and interpret customer engagement patterns.     Meanwhile, some of the biggest gains from Lawson’s technology investments may have been occurring inside their system of warehouses, or distribution centers (DCs). In addition to consolidating the number of DCs from eight to five, Knutson reports, the distributor also significantly lessened excess inventory through the adoption of a demand-forecasting tool that uses historical customer demand patterns to provide Lawson with regular inventory management insights.       Adds Knutson: “We had quite a bit of working capital tied up in inventory, but now we are able to make the right investments in our high-turning items as well as our slow-turning ones.” –Jack Sweeney  Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

Looking back, AgroFresh CFO Graham Miao says that the decision to change careers early in his professional life was triggered more or less by resource allocation. Originally, Miao had trained as a biologist, but after having earned a doctoral degree in biology from Columbia University, he quickly found gainful employment as a scientist at a research facility run by pharmaceutical giant Roche. It was here amidst the daily pursuit of biological insights that Miao began to observe how finance and accounting professionals held sway over many of the resources needed to complete different projects. “It made you wonder, ‘What is it that accountants know about science that scientists don’t?,’” explains Miao, who after 5 years with Roche returned to Columbia to study business full-time. “At the time, my boss and colleagues thought that I was being crazy and that it was too risky,” remarks Miao, who notes that the pursuit of yet another degree required that he take out a student loan. Next, Miao joined JPMorgan, where he worked in equity research and served investment banking clients that were looking to better communicate the “equity story” to investors.   “The pace of the job was completely different from what I was used to as a scientist,” comments Miao, who adds that the discussions he found himself having as an investment banker further revealed to him the breadth of finance’s influence and boosted his confidence in having made the right decision.  –Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021     

When Ed Goldfinger is asked to relate a moment of strategic insight that he has experienced as a finance leader, he draws our attention to his CFO tenure at Zipcar, the car-sharing upstart that targets the short-term needs of its customers by being billable by the hour as well as the minute. At Zipcar, Goldfinger would achieve the fabled CFO milestone of taking a company public. However, the biggest takeaways for him were related to the experience of growing a company widely recognized as an industry disrupter—and thus member of a cohort known as much for innovation in business modeling as for often startling deficiencies in benchmarking data. “You couldn’t point to any existing player and say that this was what we should look like over time,” explains Goldfinger, who notes that Zipcar grew from roughly $55 million to $300 million in annual sales during his term as CFO, a 6-year tenure that ended with the sale of Zipcar to Avis Budget Group in 2013. Among the more sizable obstacles that Zipcar’s finance team faced was the lopsided rental habits of its weekly customers. “There were probably 50 percent more rentals on the weekend than on weekdays,” comments Goldfinger, who reports that the spike in customer demand on weekends burdened Zipcar with growing numbers of dormant vehicles on weekdays.     He continues: “I invented a metric that we called ‘weekality,’ which was simply weekend usage over weekday usage, with the goal being to lower it.” What’s more, Goldfinger says, the company introduced incentives to make overnight rentals more appealing to weekday customers and at the same time launched a “big push” into the business rental market by using promotions specially designed to attract weekday corporate customers. Still, Goldfinger admits that few incentives were more effective than pricing when it came to striking a weekday/weekend balance: “We charged a lot more on weekends on a per-day basis because there was just no way that we could hit our revenue-per-car numbers if we didn’t achieve a better balance during the course of the week.” –Jack Sweeney  Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021   

When Michael Pickrum tells us about ExecOnline, the company that he joined as CFO back in 2019, he wants us to know that the education technology firm is aligned with his goals both professionally and personally. When it comes to the professional side of things, Pickrum says, ExecOnline in certain ways is a media company. “You’re taking some IP and figuring out how to distribute and monetize it,” comments Pickrum, while boiling down the somewhat complex approach that ExecOnline uses to repackage the curricula of top business schools and universities to better serve the specific people development needs of a variety of corporate clients. Still, Pickrum’s shorthand description is intended not to spotlight the facets of ExecOnline’s business model but instead to draw our attention to its similarities with his past media industry experience—such as his 17 years with BET Networks, where he occupied the CFO office for 9 of them.   As for the personal side of things, Pickrum says that he is a “big believer” when it comes to the transformative power of education. “I went to public schools growing up—I was very fortunate to go to a great university, and it changed my life,” remarks Pickrum, who adds that ExecOnline packages the academic IP not with aspiring college students in mind but with an eye toward first-time managers as well as more senior business leaders. According to Pickrum, part of the added value that ExecOnline offers corporate clients derives from providing the IP in a more relevant and efficient way. “Most of our programs are 1 week, 3 weeks, or 6ix weeks,” explains Pickrum, who says that at times the material being covered can be applied to a specific project that the managers are undertaking within their company.   “It’s just a great marriage between the business school’s IP, professors, and resources, and our platform and ability to engage people where they are, which is at work.” –Jack Sweeney  Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021  uf1Uaz9iI5wYUzzsFtwd  

Back in 2015, after nearly two decades of diligent career-building across United Technologies, Paul Lundstrom fixed his career builder’s gaze upon the span of companies known as the Fortune 500. Like many seasoned finance executives who spend the balance of their careers inside large enterprise companies, Lundstrom had to confront the obvious truth that for every company, the CFO office has but one occupant. By all accounts, a Fortune 500 company was a worthy target for Lundstrom’s CFO ambitions, but here, too, the number of CFO roles quickly diminishes when you consider the industry-specific focus that spans the arc of Lundstrom’s career and those of so many others.   Finance executives often tell us that it was here within this realm of heightened ambition and shrinking opportunity that they dared to add one of the most satisfying chapters of their CFO careers, and so it was for Lundstrom. Last fall, the UT veteran landed safely inside the Fortune 500 world when he was named CFO of Flex, a $24 billion contract manufacturer. However, it was the 4 years between UT and Flex that Lundstrom now points to as constituting one of the most satisfying periods of his career. Back in 2016, Lundstrom exited UT to accept a CFO position with Aerojet Rocketdyne, a struggling aerospace company that had recently found it necessary to restate its financials. “This was a $2 billion NASDAQ company that did not have a controller,” explains Lundstrom, whose 4-year tour of duty as Aerojet’s CFO coincided with a rise in the company’s stock price from $16 to $50 per share (pre-COVID). “The goal was business transformation,” explains Lundstrom, who now characterizes his Aerojet years as a “turnaround” chapter that no doubt put yet another stripe on his CFO career path sleeve. –Jack Sweeney Leave rating & review   Signup for our Newsletter GET MORE: Order now The CFO Yearbook, 2021