Episode notes
Taking a Company Public: What CFOs Know What does it really take to prepare a company for life as a public company? In this special CFO Thought Leader compilation, we revisit three conversations with finance leaders who helped guide some of the technology industry's most recognizable companies through the IPO journey. Rather than focusing on the transaction itself, these CFOs share what happened behind the scenes—the operational changes, leadership decisions, and financial discipline required long before the opening bell rang. John Kinzer , former CFO of HubSpot, explains how preparing for…
CFO THOUGHT LEADER
by The Future of Finance is Listening · English · Business
CFO THOUGHT LEADER is a podcast featuring firsthand accounts of finance leaders who are driving change within their organizations. We share the career journey of our spotlighted CFO guest: What do they struggle with? How do they persevere? What makes them successful CFOs? CFO THOUGHT LEADER is all
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12 Jul 2026 · 48 min
1198: Building Long-Term Value Starts With Better Capital Allocation | Shane Hostetter, CFO, Chemours
When Shane Hostetter arrived at Chemours in 2024, he stepped into a company facing liquidity challenges while also pursuing important long-term growth opportunities. His goal was not to replace decades of institutional knowledge but to complement it. Chemours CEO Denise Dignam brought nearly forty years of experience with DuPont and Chemours, while Hostetter brought an external perspective. Combining those viewpoints, he tells us, helped create “the best of both worlds.” That approach reflects much of Hostetter’s broader leadership philosophy. Rather than viewing finance solely through the…
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8 Jul 2026 · 31 min
Inside the CFO Mindset Before the Deal
Three accomplished CFOs. Three candid conversations. One revealing look at how finance leaders think about acquisitions before the headlines ever appear. In this special CFO Thought Leader edition, we revisit conversations with Jonathan Carr, former CFO of Armis, James Redfern, CFO of Reltio, and Toby Driver, CFO of IdeaGen. Each discusses acquisitions from a different vantage point—planning, integration, organizational readiness, and the people challenges that ultimately determine whether a transaction creates lasting value. What makes these discussions especially compelling is their…
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5 Jul 2026 · 45 min
1197: The CFO Who Learned Finance by Owning Sales | Sinohe Terrero, CFO, Envoy
Sinohe Terrero still remembers the timing. He joined Envoy in January, only to see the workplace transformed just two months later as offices around the world shut down because of COVID. The company had been building products for offices, but suddenly, almost no one was going to the office, Terrero tells us. That abrupt shift forced Envoy to rethink its future. The company quickly introduced a product called Protect to help organizations safely welcome employees and visitors back into their facilities. From there, it expanded into desk management, room scheduling, deliveries, analytics, and…
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7 Oct 2026 · 50 minNew
The New Economics of Revenue | Sam Chung, Chief Customer Officer, Salesforce
How consumption models, AI, and rising complexity are reshaping the CFO mandate Revenue models are becoming more complex—and for finance leaders, the consequences extend well beyond how a company bills its customers. As businesses combine subscriptions, consumption-based pricing, and other models, CFOs face new questions around predictability, visibility, cash flow, and the infrastructure needed to manage revenue from beginning to end. Salesforce Chief Customer Officer Sam Chung brings an unusually broad perspective to these challenges. Over more than two decades at Salesforce, his roles…
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4 Oct 2026 · 48 min
2019: Building a Health Plan Around What People Actually Do | Tami Wilson-Ciranna. CFO, Curative
When Tami Wilson-Ciranna joined Curative in April 2020, the assignment came with what now looks like a spectacularly optimistic assumption: three months. “I met with Fred on a Tuesday and I started on Thursday,” she recalls. Curative was helping respond to COVID-19, and Wilson-Ciranna—who had retired and become bored—figured she would help with the pandemic. Three months became three years. Curative ultimately administered 36 million COVID tests. Then came the harder question: What was phase two? Curative wanted to remain in health care, but its leaders concluded that influencing care meant…
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30 Sep 2026 · 49 min
1218: Why Pegasystems Is Betting on Work, Not Tokens | Ken Stillwell, CFO, Pegasystems
When Pegasystems began building its cloud business, the economics were hardly what investors would expect from a mature software company. Cloud gross margin was below 30%, recalls CFO and COO Ken Stillwell. The destination was roughly 80%. Getting there, however, required accepting that the path would not be straight. At one point, Pega deliberately stepped backward on margin to make investments needed to scale the operation. “It put us probably off our margin targets by a year or two,” Stillwell says. “But it was a necessary investment for us to continue to scale.” Today, he says, cloud…
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27 Sep 2026 · 41 min
2017: A Sharper Portfolio, A Clearer Capital Story | Brittany Cerwin, CFO, Middleby Corporation
For years, Middleby executives arriving at investor conferences faced a storytelling problem: 30 minutes wasn’t much time to explain three different businesses, each with its own brands, markets, investments, and stage of development. Today, CFO Brittany Cerwin has a different story to tell. Over the past 18 months, Middleby separated its food-processing business into a standalone public company and sold 51% of its residential kitchen business to private equity firm 26North. What remains is a more commercially focused Middleby—and, Cerwin says, a clearer capital allocation story. The change…
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23 Sep 2026 · 37 min
People and Places: The Geography of a CFO Career
CFO careers are often described through titles, companies, and accomplishments. But another force can quietly shape the journey: place. In this themed episode of CFO Thought Leader, five finance leaders reveal how geography influenced the opportunities they encountered, the relationships they built, and the choices they made. Mike Brower explains how Wyoming’s close-knit business community allowed relationships to carry him across industries and into new finance roles. Boston Red Sox CFO Tim Zue recalls an unconventional path through MIT, Bain, and the Boston public schools before an email…
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20 Sep 2026 · 49 min
2016: Building the Operating System for Agentic Automation | Ryan Roccon, CFO, Zapier
At Zapier, the rise of AI is changing more than the automation products customers build. It is reshaping how the company organizes, invests, prices its offerings, and thinks about its next stage of growth. COO and CFO Ryan Roccon describes Zapier’s emerging role as the place where AI-built work actually runs. As tools such as Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT make it increasingly easy to build applications and agents, he sees a different challenge emerging: keeping those automations reliable, observable, auditable, and cost effective once they enter production. That challenge is influencing…
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18 Sep 2026 · 28 min
When AI Changes the EPM Decision | David Den Boer, CEO, Column5 Consulting
AI is rapidly changing not only what finance technology can do, but how CFOs should think about the technology stack itself. In this bonus episode of CFO Thought Leader, David Den Boer, CEO of Column Five and Darwin Analytics, joins Jack Sweeney to explore how AI is reshaping enterprise performance management—and why finance leaders may need to rethink long-held assumptions about EPM platforms, data systems and analytics. Den Boer describes a market in which capabilities once associated with EPM are increasingly emerging from multiple directions. Large language models, data platforms,…
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