CFO THOUGHT LEADER

Kimberlee Duval, CFO of Cymbiotika and finance transformation leader, discusses the company's leap from direct-to-consumer to major retail channels. She shares insights on adopting AI and automation to streamline operations, emphasizing a cross-channel approach that avoids siloing e-commerce and retail finance. Duval highlights the importance of transparency in wellness products and the significance of critical thinking in hiring. Her leadership philosophy focuses on team unity and purposeful development, ensuring the finance function supports strategic growth.

Steve Sutter, CFO of Celigo and seasoned finance leader, shares his insights on integrating business processes through innovative automation. He emphasizes the importance of unit economics and sustainable growth strategies, balancing aggressive marketing investments with solid financial discipline. Sutter advocates for quickly acknowledging failures to pivot towards success, and he elaborates on leveraging AI to enhance workflow efficiency. His approach to resource allocation embodies both artistry and accountability, making finance a pivotal ally in business success.

Beth Gaspich, the CFO of NICE with over 30 years of experience in finance, shares her transformative journey from a volatile IPO in 2008 to leading a cloud-native, AI-driven enterprise. She discusses how NICE scaled its revenue from $1 billion to nearly $3 billion, emphasizing a culture that encourages finance leaders to drive strategy. Gaspich highlights the role of AI in reshaping financial metrics and engaging investors, while also addressing compliance challenges and the importance of mentorship in her career.

When David Obstler joined Datadog in 2018, the company’s co-founders had already built momentum with a product that observed modern cloud workloads. What struck Obstler was the alignment with a powerful long-term trend—the shift from legacy, on-premise systems to modern cloud applications. “It was a product that had a lot of product market fit in a really strong growing market,” he tells us.From that foundation, Datadog scaled rapidly. Today, the platform serves more than 3,100 customers worldwide, including Samsung, Nasdaq, Shell, Autodesk, and Toyota. The company recently entered the S&P 500 after reporting more than $820 million in second-quarter revenue—a 28% year-over-year increase—alongside $200 million in free cash flow, Obstler tells us.The CFO attributes the growth to Datadog’s unwavering commitment to product-led innovation. The company began in infrastructure monitoring and quickly expanded into logs, application monitoring, and security. “The company invests R&D at very high and consistent levels to continue to maintain and grow the platform,” Obstler tells us.His own role centers on scaling the infrastructure needed to support expansion. That includes building global go-to-market operations and strengthening his team across financial planning, predictability, and business operations. “We’ve been investing behind this growth opportunity and doing it in a strong, prioritized way,” he tells us.With new investments in AI, Datadog is preparing for its next chapter. For Obstler, disciplined prioritization and product-driven growth remain at the heart of how finance can fuel scale.

On her first day as CFO of UHY, Laura LaPeer asked a simple question: “Do you guys do Copilot?” She had grown accustomed to using Microsoft’s AI assistant for tasks ranging from summarizing documents to creating slides, and she wanted it in place immediately. The request, she tells us, reflected both her pragmatism and her view that technology should be leveraged quickly, but carefully, to support higher-value work.That same instinct—to look beyond the surface of a task—has shaped her career. At an earlier company, LaPeer noticed that procurement and treasury were being handled transactionally. Purchase orders were checked for compliance, and cash was managed cyclically. By zooming out, she recognized the chance to turn these into strategic functions: evaluating vendor risks, aligning relationships with business goals, and putting idle cash to work. This shift, she tells us, allowed finance to deliver tangible impact.Her time at ProQuest, where she witnessed growth through M&A, gave her a business lens she later carried into her CFO role at Plante Moran. Now at UHY, she applies the same perspective. With Summit Partners as a new investor, the firm is targeting $1 billion in revenue within five years, LaPeer tells us. Growth will come through both acquisitions and services such as outsourced accounting, valuation, and state and local tax.To get there, she emphasizes unity. “One UHY,” she says, requires integrating regional groups, building the bench, and ensuring technology like Workday delivers consistent, firm-wide insights.

Ben Gammell, President and CFO of Brex, discusses the company's groundbreaking decision to build its own payments infrastructure for direct integration with MasterCard. He highlights Brex's tailored expense management platform for high-growth businesses and its strategy of forming best-of-breed partnerships. Gammell shares insights on AI's role in finance automation, his company's adaptive response during the SVB collapse, and his priorities for IPO readiness. His journey from Goldman Sachs to Brex underscores the importance of discipline and strategic vision in a fast-evolving market.

When Damon Lee reflects on his first conversations with C.H. Robinson’s CEO, he recalls how natural the alignment felt. “We spoke the same language. We were finishing each other’s sentences,” Lee tells us. For a finance leader whose ambition had long been to step into the CFO chair, the clarity of vision he encountered at Robinson made the opportunity stand out.Lee emphasizes that Robinson’s longevity mattered. “A company that survived and thrived for 120 years—that’s special in its own right,” he tells us. The business, rooted in logistics services, relies on people as its core differentiator. “Our people really make the difference with our customers,” he adds, underscoring why the culture resonated with him.What sealed the decision, however, was the simplicity of the CEO’s plan. “We’re going to outgrow the market, we’re going to expand our operating margins, we’re going to do both,” Lee recounts. Complexity, in his view, often derails execution. A straightforward mandate with conviction behind it gave him confidence that transformation was possible.The CEO, Lee notes, wanted more than a traditional finance executive. He wanted someone who could “show up like a CEO,” bring lean discipline, and act as a true partner in reshaping the company. For Lee, this aligned perfectly with the operational mindset that had guided his career.After more than a year in the role, he reflects simply: “We’re winning in the marketplace. We’re winning in the eyes of investors. So certainly it was the right move for me, no doubt.”

Holly Grey, CFO of Horizon3.ai, boasts over 30 years in financial leadership, guiding cybersecurity firms through key growth phases. In this discussion, she reveals Horizon3.ai's revolutionary approach to penetration testing, harnessing AI for rapid assessments. Grey shares her insights on the importance of trust among executives and the strategic decision-making needed for hypergrowth. She also emphasizes the pivotal role of data analysis and the urgency of team building for new CFOs in fast-paced industries.

Jay Peir, CFO and Head of Strategy at Pigment and a former Tableau executive, shares fascinating insights into finance's transformation in the AI era. He reflects on his unique career path, from mergers and acquisitions to leading a subscription shift at Tableau. Peir emphasizes the critical role of cross-departmental collaboration and effective change management. He discusses Pigment's innovative planning tools powered by AI, which enhance decision-making and organizational agility, making financial leaders key players in future growth.

Craig Foster, CFO of Pax8, leads the charge in transforming the enterprise marketplace through AI. He discusses how Pax8 connects vendors with 43,000 managed service providers and the significant role AI plays in automating operations. Foster anticipates a shift toward ‘agentic marketplaces,’ where AI enhances efficiency for small and midsize businesses. He also reflects on evolving pricing models and lessons from the dot-com crash, emphasizing the need for innovation in finance and technology to adapt to current market dynamics.