Human-Centric Finance, Part 2: ‘The Complexity is Accelerating’

The evolution of the CFO role is never more apparent than when you're surrounded by hundreds of them and they can offer slightly different takes on emerging challenges. Two of those people with high visibility in this emergence are Andrew Hoag, CEO of Teampay, and Marshall Cooper, CEO of the Chie...

By Andy Burt • June 21, 2022

Joining a Tech Icon: Adobe CFO Dan Durn

Daniel J. Durn has been a finance chief in the semiconductor industry for over a decade. By leaving Applied Materials and joining Adobe in October 2021, he moved downstream in the tech supply chain. He is now leading finance at the iconic software company that serves professional designers, graph...

By Vincent Ryan • June 16, 2022

Data Delivers: CFO John Collins

John Collins is pioneering a new path to the CFO role, one that draws on not only his experience as an institutional investor but as a data scientist as well. After starting at LivePerson as senior vice president of quantitative strategy charged with leveraging data to improve strategic decision-...

By Sandra Beckwith • June 1, 2022

Path to the Top: CFO Sue Vestri

During her senior year as an accounting major at Temple University, Sue Vestri had second thoughts about her career choice. Would she get bored in accounting? No, it turned out. Not only was Vestri good at her first accounting job at a large national real estate company, but she also enjoyed the ...

By Sandra Beckwith • May 9, 2022

Temp to Top: Leanne Cunningham’s Ascent to CFO

When Leanne Cunningham, CFO of Brown-Forman, asked if this story could highlight the company as much as her own career path, I wasn’t surprised. She believes firmly her success is intertwined with the environment and values of the 152-year-old company that makes Jack Daniels, Old Forester, and He...

By Vincent Ryan • April 28, 2022

Pharma CFO Anthony Doyle Plans for Uncertainty

“If we tell you something, it's because we believe it, and we're neither sandbaggers nor are we going to lead with our chin and put out outrageous goals,” said Anthony Doyle, CFO of BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, when asked to describe how the publicly held biotech has established credibility by execu...

By Vincent Ryan • April 21, 2022

Disrupting Insurance: CFO Teodora Gouneva

Teodora Gouneva had no background in payments or travel before joining PayPal and 15 years later Airbnb, holding roles like finance chief of PayPal’s Braintree and Venmo divisions. That doesn't matter much, though, when a company is disrupting old ways of doing business. In December 2021, she lef...

By Vincent Ryan • April 18, 2022

Legal Eagle — CFO Roberto Cuca

As an attorney at a law firm representing biopharma industry clients early in his career, Roberto Cuca worked alongside finance leaders structuring licensing agreements and other collaborations. It wasn’t long before he knew that a corporate finance role would allow him to contribute more broadly...

By Sandra Beckwith • April 5, 2022

Leading Finance at an AI Unicorn: Stephane Berthier

Stephane Berthier knows about handling exponential growth. As a Silicon Valley partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he’s worked with pre-IPO tech companies for 20 years. You might recognize some of the client names: VMware, Splunk, ServiceNow, Crowdstrike, Databricks.  Fourteen months ago, Berthier...

By Vincent Ryan • April 4, 2022

Prakash Hariharan: ‘CFOs Need to Have a Good Partner Ecosystem’

The role of the CFO over the past 10 to 15 years, amid economic recovery, expansion, pandemic, and now recovery and growth expansion again has had a considerable arc. Chief financial officers who have lived it and led through it have risen to meet myriad challenges. And for others who are outside...

By Andy Burt • March 14, 2022

Hyland’s Nancy Person Navigates the Post-Pandemic Economy

Nancy Person was promoted to CFO of Midwest-based Hyland Software in April 2020, replacing the finance chief of 28 years. The global pandemic was in full swing, and the content management platform provider was determining if its infrastructure could handle all 4,000 employees, 40% international, ...

By Vincent Ryan • Feb. 11, 2022

Q&A: Mohit Daswani Preps ThoughtSpot to Go Public

  After years of experience in finance at Paypal (divisional CFO) and Square (head of strategy and finance), Harvard Business School MBA alum Mohit Daswani was fully equipped to head up finance at ThoughtSpot. Six months before joining the eight-year-old software company in January 2020, Daswani ...

By Vincent Ryan • Jan. 27, 2022

Boards Embrace Diversely Skilled CFOs

As the CFO’s role has expanded beyond financial reporting to become the CEO’s strategic partner, U.S. organizations took off the blinders that had kept them oblivious to CFO candidates outside of the traditional accounting and auditing career path.Evidence of CFOs coming from wider professional e...

By Sandra Beckwith • Jan. 24, 2022