CFOs On the Move: Week Ending July 14

Uber CFO reportedly leaving, GlobalFoundries’ recently named CFO to exit, HanesBrands promotes interim CFO, and more.   

By Lauren Muskett • July 14, 2023

Professor Returns to the C-Suite: Karl Pichler

“To successfully run and lead a distributed organization, one has to firmly buy into an approach of strong empowerment,” says the CFO of Sourceability Global.  

By Adam Zaki • July 14, 2023

The 6 a.m. CFO: How ZenLedger’s Jonté Harrell Starts His Day

Harrell shares the mental model he uses for time management, how his West Point education shaped his leadership principles, and which podcasts he follows for lifelong learning.

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 13, 2023

Always Be Learning: GameStop’s Diana Saadeh-Jajeh

“Every role I assumed had to prepare me for the CFO path by adding new skill sets,” said the GameStop CFO.

By Sandra Beckwith • July 6, 2023

From CFO to CEO: Glean.ai’s Howard Katzenberg Rolls Up His Sleeves

The idea of starting your own business for anyone can be a challenge and a pipedream, and CFOs are no exception.  But for CFOs who also want to run the startup as CEO, there are additional leadership challenges. While the perspective gained working as a CFO can be invaluable in the transition, es...

By Adam Zaki • June 29, 2023

An Engineer’s Journey to CFO: Taulia’s Rene Ho

Whether it's surviving the grind of the Big Four accounting firms, putting ideas to the test in a consulting role, or rising through leadership positions at startups, the experience required to become a CFO stems from different roles. These journeys, some more financially focused than others,...

By Adam Zaki • June 22, 2023

Home-Grown Talent: Robert Leibrock

Fresh out of college with a finance degree and unsure if he should work on Wall Street or try corporate finance, Robert Leibrock decided to explore the corporate side at IBM for a few years. Wall Street could wait.  It’s still waiting. Now Leibrock is CFO and senior vice presiden...

By Sandra Beckwith • June 15, 2023

Shoot for Growth: CFO Bryan Hipsher

Learning how to set financial benchmarks and use data in decision-making are standard skills for a CFO. Where many executives struggle, primarily due to the lack of opportunity to gain experience, is in leading other people toward success as a unit.  A great opportunity to learn how to co...

By Adam Zaki • June 8, 2023

AI, Adaptive Leadership, and Innovation: Gartner CFO Conference Highlights

Alongside finance leaders from an array of industries, CFO attended Gartner's CFO and Finance Executive Conference last week in National Harbor, Maryland. Unsurprisingly, some of the most coveted contemporary disruptors dominated conversations. In what hauntingly sounds like the cryptocurrency an...

By Adam Zaki • June 5, 2023

61% of Managers Say Exec Leaders Hold Them Back From Innovation: Weekly Stat

With the transformation of the CFO role from finance-centric to a multi-dimensional, people-centric position, more finance chiefs have taken a hands-on approach to their leadership styles. To keep managers and employees motivated, productive, and involved in decision-making, many finance leaders ...

By Adam Zaki • May 24, 2023

4 Questions CFOs Need to Ask Before Q3

In our most recent survey, the Q2 2023 Outlook Survey, CFOs noted their confidence in their companies and the economy, a desire to cut costs, and the need to incorporate technology into their workflows and create positive work environments.During April, CFO's newsletter The Balance asked its fina...

By Adam Zaki • May 22, 2023

5 Tips for Controllers to Uplevel Their CFO Support

Your CFO is one of the busiest people at your company, managing cost pressures, financial planning, and other critical responsibilities within the limited hours available in a day — all amid the economic uncertainty caused by inflation, rising interest rates, and a tight labor market. In Deloitte...

By Bryce Armbruster • May 11, 2023

Fractional CFO Jay Jung: ‘Diversity of Experience’ Drives Companies Forward

After working in investment banking and consulting, Jay Jung, president and fractional CFO for Embarc Advisors, is now on a mission to help his corporate finance clients in everything from M&A to cash management. His experience makes him well-suited to a CFO position, but he instead runs his ...

By Adam Zaki • May 11, 2023

From Astrophysicist to Finance Leader: Alice Globus

While Alice Globus began her career as an astrophysicist, it wasn’t long before she took her data analytics and problem-solving skills to investment banking. Now the CFO of Nanotronics, a company that applies artificial intelligence to complex manufacturing, Globus spent more than 10 years with a...

By Sandra Beckwith • May 4, 2023

Coupa CFO Tony Tiscornia: ‘I Wanted to Build Something Big’

"I think the job of a CFO is ultimately to create return for stakeholders." Tony Tiscornia, CFO of Coupa, the spend management technology company, has spent the majority of his career in finance, helping turn a 100-person start-up into a 3,000-person global organization. Starting as the company's...

By Andy Burt • April 28, 2023

Leading Through Education and Hard Work: TS Imagine’s Kate Peachway

Life experience combined with a wealth of knowledge and a desire to learn always tends to be great stepping stones to the sound development of leadership skills. As a graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities amid a 15-year career in financial services and technology, Kate Peachway of TS Imag...

By Adam Zaki • April 20, 2023

Pushing Mindset and Culture Change: Kyndryl’s David Wyshner

Managed infrastructure services is not a bad business when a U.S. recession and weak global economic growth in the next five years are on the horizon. Companies like IBM spinoff Kyndryl provide IT infrastructure services for large organizations, a product offering that “tends to be inherently sti...

By Vincent Ryan • April 6, 2023

How CFO Ryan Tyler Built Molekule Through Stock Acquisitions

When Ryan Tyler, not yet 40 years old, landed his first CFO job in 2020, he’d already been a key player in more than 20 M&A transactions for previous employers. It’s not very surprising, then, that much of his time since joining AeroClean — a maker of air sanitation devic...

By David McCann • March 30, 2023

From CF-GO to CF-NO: The CFO Decision-Making Journey

The chief financial officer position has changed dramatically over time, particularly in light of how technology has affected business.  CFOs are simple folk and we simplify our focus down to two things: activities that will increase revenue and activities which will reduce costs. Sometimes an un...

By Michael Bayer • March 24, 2023

Lamborghini CFO Paolo Poma: Luxury Auto Growth, Finance, and Competency to Execute

The luxury sports car business is booming. Automakers are now globally incentivized to produce the electric and hybrid luxury vehicles the younger demographic demands. Automakers built the first electric cars alongside combustion engines in the early 1800s, but the 21st century has brought a resu...

By Adam Zaki • March 23, 2023

Customers Need Real Returns: Cybersecurity CFO Andrew Casey

A term being uttered in enterprises as they instill more discipline into technology spending is “vendor consolidation.” But cutting back any resources devoted to the protection of systems and data might seem ill-advised. At the current rate of growth of data breaches and other digital crimes, dam...

By Vincent Ryan • March 17, 2023

Real Estate Finance Pro: Masha Sherman

A native of Belarus, Masha Sherman, CFO of industrial real estate firm Greek Development, moved to the U.S. when she was 19 years old to study accounting. After college, she joined Ernst & Young’s real estate group as an auditor. During her five years there, Sherman worked with high-profile c...

By Sandra Beckwith • March 9, 2023

From Hedge Fund Founder to CFO: Mint House’s Samantha Greenberg

Few CFOs have the investor pedigree of Samantha Greenberg: early associate at private equity firm Francisco Partners; partner at Paulson & Co; portfolio manager at Citadel; and a vice president in the special situations group at Goldman Sachs. She also founded Margate Capital Management and g...

By Vincent Ryan • March 2, 2023

KPIs and the Power of Measurement: Bernie Smith

"I passionately believe in the power of measurement and understand how it can drive improvement. There is a structured, repeatable, and logical way of coming up with KPIs." Bernie Smith, the architect and founder of his company Made to Measure KPIs, has dedicated his professional mission to bring...

By Andy Burt • Feb. 21, 2023

The Non-Traditional CFO: Pairwise’s Lynsey Wenger

For Lynsey Wenger, CFO at Pairwise, a food tech that specializes in gene-editing capabilities and deep crop science expertise, work experience outside the traditional realm of CFO has played to her strengths. She has a combined 16 years of experience in equity derivatives and global natural resou...

By Adam Zaki • Feb. 16, 2023