Treasury Prime's CFO, Meghan Ryan, was a student at Notre Dame and a member of the women's lacrosse team during the height of the 2008 financial crisis. She originally wanted to get a finance degree but, given the state of the finance world at the time, had second thoughts. She received some advice that the accounting profession would provide more job security down the line, so Ryan followed it and started her career at a Big Four. But after the economic dust settled, she decided to shift away from accounting.
Now two years into her CFO role, it’s clear her decision was the correct one. Career advice in the moment may not always be clearly good or bad, but Ryan demonstrated the ability to pivot is crucial to career goal pursuits.
Meghan Ryan
CFO, Treasury Prime
- First CFO position: 2021
- Notable previous companies:
- Affirm
- Goldman Sachs
- Deloitte
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
ADAM ZAKI: You started your career in accounting, but then quickly shifted towards finance and banking. What was the thought process behind your early career moves?
MEGHAN RYAN: I was in college during the financial crisis and was given some pretty sound advice that there would be a higher likelihood of getting a job in accounting during challenging times than in finance. I was told, "You can always do finance with an accounting degree, but you can’t do accounting with a finance degree." So, I took that advice and changed my major from finance to accounting while I was still in school.
When I got the job at Deloitte, I still had a desire to work in finance, but was just excited about the opportunity to learn. I worked in their Financial Advisory Services practice, specifically in the forensic and dispute group, where I got the opportunity to work on a number of consulting engagements, largely for financial institutions. I focused on anti-money laundering compliance, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance, and fraud investigations. It was a tremendous experience.
When the market turned around a bit in 2012, I took an opportunity made possible by some connections I had after working with Goldman Sachs on a project in college to take a job there. For me, the move was really about finding the right timing and opportunity to make the jump from accounting to finance.
What did your time at Goldman Sachs teach you about work ethic, and what about it prepared you to be a good CFO?
RYAN: A lot about work ethic, for sure. I worked quite hard there; I spent many hours in the office. I worked for some really wonderful people who gave me lots of opportunities early in my career. One thing that I picked up there was learning how to get up to speed quickly on things I knew nothing about. In my previous experiences, I felt like I had more guidance day-to-day. Whereas at Goldman, I was jumping in the deep end and trying to figure all of these new things out.
At Goldman, I had the opportunity to sit in on lots of meetings with CEOs and CFOs, and this gave me insanely valuable exposure to what these roles are like. I was able to understand how these people were making decisions and the type of analysis they were doing to run their companies and how they could be better supported.
In the second half of my time there, I also learned a lot that helped me prepare for a CFO role. I worked on the investing side of things. Early on at Goldman, I did a lot of advisory work, which involved helping to raise capital. Then, I worked on the investing side of the business, which made me think in a completely different way and taught me about risk and putting capital to work in the right ways. A lot of that had to do with what I ended up doing afterward.
How did you know you were ready to take on a CFO role when you first became one?
RYAN: I think there’s a common thread of being intellectually curious that is so valuable when it comes to career growth. I want to know what I don’t know. I am not quite sure if you are ever ready to take a CFO role, but I know that I enjoy asking questions and learning about things that are outside of the core job that I am doing.
When I started at Affirm, which is where I took my first CFO role, I was working in capital markets; it was my job to find capital to help fund the firm’s loan book. To do that, I had to work with investors looking to participate in these facilities, and I had to articulate the product and explain to them our business. And that experience allowed me to connect with folks in all areas of the company and understand what we were doing.
"My job as CFO is not just to make sure the numbers are correct and properly reported every month, every quarter, and every year ... I spend most of my time working cross-functionally with our teams."
Meghan Ryan
CFO, Treasury Prime
When we acquired the largest “buy now, pay later” platform in Canada, they asked me to be the CFO of the newly formed Canadian business. So, I got started by saying to myself, "Well alright, I’ve learned all the different parts of this company and its business; let me leverage that to help build the finance function of this newly acquired business."
Now that you’re in your second CFO position and have gotten to know some other CFOs, I presume, how have you seen the demands of the position change?
MEGHAN RYAN: I certainly agree with the stance that CFOs are becoming a lot more strategic versus operational. What I mean by that is that my job as CFO is not just to make sure the numbers are correct and properly reported every month, every quarter, and every year. That is only one important element of my job, and it’s not where I spend most of my time.
I spend most of my time working cross-functionally with our teams. I work with our go-to-market teams on their opportunities, and our product folks on what they’re building, and I try to act as a financial lens for others to help the business as a whole.
I think it's become our job as CFOs to become increasingly involved from the perspective of saying, "When we do this or invest in that, how does it impact where we want to go as a business, and is that helping us get closer to what we are trying to solve for?"
Being able to articulate those decisions through metrics to people within and outside the organization is incredibly valuable.