CFO THOUGHT LEADER

Among the learnings that Dev Ahuja has gleaned from his three-decade-long, globe-hopping finance career, perhaps none has delivered a more enduring instruction than that which followed his very first hop.By his own account, after Ahuja had reached the summit of Novartis’s finance executive ranks in India, the drug giant invited him to occupy an office at its Basel, Switzerland, headquarters. Here, Ahuja was promised, he would be able to apply his flourishing financial acumen on a more global scale.  “I thought that I knew what it took—I came with a lot of confidence rather than in a mode of humbleness and wanting to learn,” comments Ahuja, who let us know that his first years at headquarters did not always go as planned.Ahuja reports: “The Swiss don’t mince words." Confronted with his shortcomings, Ahuja set out to get things back on track—beginning with a hefty dose of self-scrutiny.    “I had done a miserable job because I really had not made the effort to build relationships and take the time and make the effort to understand the cultural nuances,” remarks Ahuja, whose track change paid off with a Swiss stint in the roles of group controller and head of Basel’s finance operations that stretched to 5 years.Still, Ahuja’s Swiss experiences would prove to grow even more valuable in the years ahead, as he would come to occupy the CFO offices of Novartis Korea (3 years) and Novartis Japan (2 years).“Novartis was very active when it came to developing people across geographies, but my case—where I would end up living in five different countries—was not very normal,” observes Ahuja, whose fifth nation became the U.S. after the drugmaker’s $46 billion acquisition of Alcon opened the door to a number of opportunities for him.Announced in 2010, the Alcon deal was to present post-merger integration challenges that in part led Novartis to relocate Ahuja from Korea to Japan, where the Alcon integration tasks were more pressing.“We accomplished a lot in Japan in a short period of time, and it seems that Alcon U.S.—which was twice the size of Alcon Japan—was in need of some of what we had learned,” recalls Ahuja, who tells us that at the time, a son had recently relocated to the U.S. for studies.With little delay, it seems, Ahuja was headed to Fort Worth, Texas, to serve as CFO North America for the drug giant’s Alcon division—a business that years later would nab business headlines when Novartis opted to spin it off.According to Ahuja, he has been able to apply his Swiss “lessons” at each career move, including his change when he departed from Novartis in 2016 to accept the CFO position at aluminum products giant Novelis.It seems that regardless of whether a move has involved geographies or industries, Ahuja has been able to apply the benefits of his time in Switzerland.Says Ahuja: “When you fail, you must make up your mind to take every lesson from that failure and act on it.” –Jack Sweeney

It’s perhaps no secret that this podcast can be rather rigid when it comes to our policy for welcoming guests: Invitations are reserved for CFOs and CFOs alone. In fact, we regularly turn away book authors, consultants, and even CEOs. Such was the case for David Pennino, CEO of LogicSource, who recently was “pitched” to us as a potential guest. As always, we issued a templated email reply specially crafted to politely inform a dutiful communication professional of our “CFOs-only” mantra.This being said, LogicSource’s CEO has arguably nabbed a plus-size supporting role on our latest episode without having recorded a single word. Although unexpected, this was perhaps an eminently understandable development, given the central role that Pennino has played in the career of Niki Heim, LogicSource’s CFO, who easily met our necessary criteria and subsequently accepted our invitation.Still, when it comes to Pennino, CFO Heim does not serve up the familiar cadence of CEO kudos, any more than she attempts to tell us that Pennino is some kind of all-knowing C-suite Yoda forever imparting career wisdom.Instead, she swings open the door to a conference room of the past. The year is 2014, and Heim, a newly hired controller, is fielding questions from LogicSource’s private equity investors.Pennino is confident that she has the makings to be the company’s next CFO, but not all those gathered feel as certain—including Heim, who now tells us that at the time, she felt that she was not yet ready.“I’m very grateful that I had Dave Pennino, who was honest and open with me—he’d say, ‘Listen, here’s what I’m hearing—I believe in you, but you have to believe in yourself and you have to keep going,’” explains Heim, who adds that the company’s CFO had exited the company only days before her arrival, prompting the company’s investors to scrutinize the firm’s recent finance hire all the more.“During every single presentation that I gave to the board and to investor meetings, I was on edge—I needed to prove myself but always make sure that I was doing what Dave believed that I could do,” remarks Heim, who would shortly begin serving in an interim CFO role despite having her own misgivings about her CFO readiness.“Along the way, I would hear people say, ‘The work is going to come before the belief in yourself,’ and that was me—it was almost like my self-confidence wasn’t fully there yet,” comments Heim, who besides receiving confidence-boosting support from her CEO also began to extract feelings of self-worth from each new board encounter.“The board would be asking me to do something, and I would need to just go and figure out how to do it—I always found a way, and there were a lot of times early on when I was in the office at [6:00] in the morning and left at midnight,” recalls Heim, who tells us that once the work came, her confidence began to arrive soon thereafter.Says Heim: “More and more people and investors would call me up personally, and I’d be able to answer their questions.” –Jack Sweeney

For many professionals, the period stretching roughly from March 2020 to December 2022 will forever be known simply as “COVID,” as in “I changed jobs during COVID.”Thus it was for Erin Colgan, who in July 2020—after having invested 9 years within the finance rank-and-file of pharma giant Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and 8 years with PwC—opted to become the 20th employee of a promising biotech start-up.Still, Colgan’s game change was prompted not by COVID’s well-earned reputation for employment displacement nor by the allure of start-up dreams but by what recruiters have long referred to as “the call to leadership.” For Colgan, this meant joining Boston-based Sensei Bio as senior vice president of finance, a title that guaranteed her the status of being the firm’s senior most finance executive.At the time of her appointment, the pandemic had already begun to be recognized as having certain accelerant qualities for business, which were perhaps nowhere on display more than inside the biotech realm, an industry that was experiencing a COVID-fueled adrenaline rush.“It was only about 6 weeks after I joined the company that we found ourselves meeting with banks to talk about how we could go public to capitalize on the market being especially hot for biotechs,” explains Colgan, who alongside her CEO spearheaded an IPO process that ultimately raised $152 million for Sensei Bio in February 2021.However, as Colgan was to learn, a more formidable leadership challenge still lay ahead, as a Phase 2 drug trial rendered disappointing results and the biotech market at large suddenly began to cool.     “Six months past our IPO, some data on a Phase 2 program came in that wasn’t what we had hoped for, so we huddled,” recalls Colgan, who reports that the company’s cash runway then became top-of-mind as management debated whether the capital markets for small-cap biotech firms might turn around in 6 to 9 months.“I said, ‘Let’s assume that this period lasts a lot longer and see how long we can stretch our cash while still enabling ourselves to achieve what we feel is most important,’” continues Colgan, who tells us that Sensei Bio ultimately advanced down her preferred path, which allowed the firm to extend its cash reach by a year and a half.In the 6 months that followed, Colgan remarks, the finance, science, and medical areas of the business achieved a shared mind-set that allowed them to work together in the new, capital-constrained biotech environment.  In January 2022, nearly a year after Sensei Bio’s IPO and 6 months after Colgan had made her compelling argument to extend the firm’s cash coverage calendar, she was named CFO—an appointment that we would wager she had sealed up a half-year earlier when certain hard decisions had been called for.  Colgan observes: “You can’t make those types of decisions ‘later.’ You have to make them early and often.” –Jack Sweeney

This episode of Planning Aces features the FP&A insights and commentary of  CFO Dev Ahuja of Novelis, CFO Alex Triplett of Appfire and CFO Rick Rosenthal of Clara Analytics.One of the key topics co host Brett Knowles drills down on is the difference between complicated and complex problems. Brett uses the examples of manufacturing a car, which is complicated, and raising a child, which is complex. The distinction is crucial in understanding how to approach problem-solving in an organization.While complicated problems can be solved with the right formulas or spreadsheets, complex problems require more. They demand strong interpersonal relationships and effective communication. It’s not just about having the right tools or processes, but also about having the right people who can use these tools effectively.Planning Ace CFO Dev Ahuja brings some perspective on the role of people in finance transformation. CFO Ahuja shared insights into the structure of his finance organization at Novelis. Despite being well-established, the organization needed a renewed focus on the role of finance in driving decisions and adding value.Dev emphasized the importance of finance being a thought partner and actively shaping strategy. He also highlighted the need for a strong talent pipeline and succession planning. This ensures the organization has the necessary depth of talent to drive its vision forward.

Among the different career highlights that Chris Kramer shares with us, perhaps none is as memorable as what might be called his “Indiana Jones moment.”Having distinguished himself as a “technical accountant” during the first half of his career, Kramer was often dispatched to observe and scrutinize the accounting practices of prospective acquisition targets in foreign lands—a succession of deployments that led him to frequently encounter unexpected circumstances.Such was the case one time in the mid-2000s, when he entered the UK corporate offices of an acquisition prospect and found himself casting his eyes upon something that he “had never seen before.”Somehow, in doing his due diligence, Kramer had found a big bound book: a company ledger. Given that few details populate this ledger tale, we’ll assume that he may have been engaged in some polite conversation with the UK office’s accounting team when it occurred to him that he needed a network login code. This request led to one UK accountant subsequently winking at another, who from what seemed like out of nowhere produced a large brown volume—or perhaps it was black, or maybe blue, and perhaps the company was mostly using QuickBooks but had relied on bound ledgers prior to 2004. Kramer doesn’t tell us. However, the words that he uses to illustrate his “find” arguably echo the tone and sentiments of an archaeologist making a heroic discovery. “It was incredible—a physical ledger, which I then had to ‘translate’ before taking it back to corporate!,” exclaims Kramer, whose depth of technical accounting knowledge and range of M&A experiences had made him an invaluable asset for deal-minded CFOs.However, Kramer tells us, he would have appreciated having a broader view of finance earlier in his career, which would have allowed him to see beyond accounting and position himself to acquire more acumen across different finance disciplines such as IR and FP&A.“I was very far down the accounting track in the realm of chief accounting officers before I began speaking to CFOs and CFO recruiters and spending time inside these other disciplines,” reports Kramer, who tells us that his deliberate push to acquire a wider view of finance didn’t always feel like an upward climb.He continues: “I went from having this massive team as a chief accounting officer to being an SVP of FP&A with only a fraction of the number of people who previously reported to me.” –Jack Sweeney

Back in 2001, the new finance recruits roaming the corridors of General Electric Company prodded themselves along as they confronted the everyday challenges of orienting themselves inside GE’s hard-shell corporate culture. This was perhaps especially true for financial analyst Ken Bowles, whose cultural trial was somewhat more daunting, considering whence he had come.Turn back the clock only a year or two, and you would have found Bowles based in South Korea as a member of the U.S. Army’s 177th Finance Battalion, which was tasked with supporting the army’s 2nd Infantry Division.  “It’s always a shock when you go from the military into a corporate job—anyone who talks to you about it will tell you that there’s definitely a transition,” explains Bowles, who during his 5-year stint with the military served within the Army’s Finance Corps, a combat service and support branch that at the time was made of only about 300 officers.During his college years, Bowles had completed the U.S. Army’s ROTC program with distinction, which allowed him to choose from a menu of branch options upon graduation. Thus, with an undergraduate degree in hand, he enrolled in the United States Army Financial Management School at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Using his stateside time wisely, Bowles enrolled at the University of South Carolina, where he was able to allot some of his off-base hours to completing an MBA. Along the way, came a deployment to South Korea.“We were there to support the organization and the base by doing any number of typical finance activities, such as all of the funding and budgeting and payroll and allocations,” recalls Bowles, whose transition to corporate life appears to have been a success by any measure when you consider that his GE career would span 15 years and include multiple unit CFO roles.Still, Bowles points out that the transition challenge for former military members often begins on Day One of their job search.  “When you’re going out to try to find a new opportunity, the transition can be difficult because a lot of the skills that you learn in the military don’t seem as though they’re transferable,” remarks Bowles, who notes that during his initial transition period he was fortunate enough to be able to engage with a GE unit CFO who was “willing to take a chance” on him. “So, you have to do a lot of explaining with regard to exactly what you did in the service and how it can be applied to different types of jobs—and this is particularly true when you get into something like finance.”Of course, while most of the skills and experience of finance professionals are transferrable, Bowles doesn’t hesitate to point out that certain management practices are not.  Outside the military, he says, “you have to ask people to do things, not tell them.” –Jack Sweeney

While the 2008 financial crash turned out to be a reliable source of career lessons for many of our finance leader guests, Joel Campbell may be the first CFO to share with us a customer support lesson learned from the crisis.Back in 2006, Campbell, a seasoned treasury executive, had been recruited to help to build a robust treasury function for Ameriprise Financial, the recently spun-off financial planning division of American Express.“Those first 2 years were really about finishing this spin-off process, but the day that’s burned infamously into my mind is September 16, 2008,” remembers Campbell, who reports that this was the day when a money market fund widely used by Ameriprise customers “broke the buck.”“It became the first money market fund in investing history to let its net asset value drop below a dollar—and this had just never happened before,” continues Campbell, who adds that the fund served more than 300,000 Ameriprise customers who had routinely deposited their excess cash into it with the intent of using the proceeds to pay a variety of expenses, from mortgages to college tuitions.Not more than 10 days after the fund “broke the buck,” Ameriprise’s management team committed $400 million from its own balance sheet to support those customers impacted by the fund’s sudden collapse.Besides underlining the prioritization of customer care, Campbell notes, the experience also shaped his perspectives on treasury and finance.“It helped me to think about how to look forward,’ remarks Campbell, who continues to laud Ameriprise’s response, “and I’m saying ‘look forward’ with regard not just to what’s happening in a business but also to trying to understand where the market is headed. It’s all about reading the signs so that you can step back and make sure that you’re making the right decisions from a risk or liquidity standpoint to be able to both run your business and support your customers in the right way.”Says Campbell: “It’s the response that sticks with me. It was how the executive team quickly pivoted and said, ‘We need to take care of the customer, period. Full stop.’” –Jack Sweeney

CFO Michael Cox reflects on the need to upgrade the guiding philosophy for acquisitions, considering the increased cost of debt. Speed to value becomes crucial for M&A success. The podcast also touches upon Cox's past experiences at PwC and his role as CFO of IRIS Software Group. The evaluation process for potential partners and acquisitions is discussed, along with personal habits like running and setting goals. The importance of not becoming complacent is explored through real-life business examples. The CFO also discusses plans for growth, infrastructure support, and data democratization.

When David Parsons tells us that he remains concerned about the whereabouts of his 20-something-year-old self, we realize that our talk with Zuto’s CFO is going to be different from most of those that we undertake with today’s finance leaders.According to him, “Thirty-nine-year-old Dave is looking at mid-20s Dave and asking, ‘What are you thinking?!‘”Some further probing on our part reveals that “mid-20s Dave” was roaming the English countryside on weekends as part of a wedding band, as well as a member of other assembles—including a popular Michael Jackson tribute act.   “I just went down this rabbit hole where I was working weekends as a musician and doing studio work in the evenings,” explains Parsons, who adds that his weekend music tours would often book-end 70-hour workweeks in corporate finance.“I don’t mind working the hours, if I get to do what I love doing,” continues Parsons, who began serving in a succession of FP&A roles once he was safely beyond his 20s.“I have not necessarily built my career by trying to fill niches and gaps on my c.v., which is, by the way, a good way of going about things—but it’s just not for me,” remarks Parsons, who notes that he began to find his work increasingly satisfying as he moved into a number of commercial finance roles, which eventually led him to accept a position with UK-based automobile finance and loan company Zuto.“Basically, we begin by placing a customer with a lender and a preapproval, which means that we can tell them with a very high degree of accuracy whether the lender is going to accept them,” reports Parsons, who points out that Zuto deploys a sizable team of car-buying experts who can offer customers one-on-one service for vehicle history checks, free vehicle valuation checks, and the like.Parsons recalls that at the time that the CFO role opened up at Zuto roughly 5 years ago, he was overseeing FP&A. Nonetheless, although the company was evaluating other CFO candidates, he knew that in the end he was a good fit—and not necessarily because of his familiarity with the business.Says Parsons: “It really comes down to being a cultural fit, and for me, I found that this business is doing something that I believe in.” –Jack Sweeney

When OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, recently announced that it would be opening its first office outside the U.S., few who were roaming the tech corridors of Silicon Valley likely were surprised that the generative AI company chose London for its new outpost.As a backdrop to the decision, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been energetically pitching the UK as the intellectual and geographical “home” of AI, at the same time that UK executive recruiters have been busy compiling evidence to convince tech prospects that the UK is on the verge of becoming the next Silicon Valley.Such claims are bold moves indeed, but ones for which a resume such as that of American Michael Bannon might serve the recruiting community as “Exhibit A.”  A quick glance at Bannon’s bio reveals a familiar professional trajectory, from his 11 years as an investor with TPG Global of San Francisco to the operations side, where to date he has occupied the CFO office at three different tech firms. Other noted Bay Area laurels have included an MBA from Stanford and board seat with Meals on Wheels, San Francisco (2013 to 2017). Bannon’s resume is one that any aspiring Silicon Valley CFO might hope to someday replicate, although any peruser of it would also note that his professional journey has also been a geographic one.   “My assumption was that I would end up in the Bay Area, but one of the conversations that I had was with a London-based company—and you know how one conversation can quickly lead to two or three,” explains Bannon, who after 6 years in the UK recently opened his third CFO chapter with SaaS software developer Typeform.Still, based in London, Bannon points out that as the UK’s tech community has expanded, so too has the “weight class” of tech companies that he now prefers as a finance leader.“I love this size of company because I think that there really is an opportunity for each of us here as an individual to have an impact,” he notes, going on to give little to no mention of his geographically nomadic professional path. “I love building teams and building organizations—and so far, the companies of which I’ve been a part have grown significantly over the periods of time when I have been with them.”Says Bannon: “As an American who was based out in the Bay Area for close to 15 years, to now get to see the tech scene over here in Europe is a pretty special thing—it’s where I feel that I can be additive, given my previous experience.” –Jack Sweeney