When AI Changes the EPM Decision | David Den Boer, CEO, Column5 Consulting

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1. 

   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…

2. 

   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…

3. 

   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…

4. 

   16 Sep 2026 · 50 min

   1215: Building Finance for the Long Game | Jessica Somers, CFO, Aledade

   At Aledade, CFO Jessica Somers is helping finance navigate a business where investment decisions can take years to fully reveal their value. The technology-driven, physician-led company works with more than 3,000 primary care practices and touches more than 3.6 million patients, using data and technology to support proactive, preventive care. Its value-based model also creates an unusual finance challenge: connecting better patient outcomes with healthcare savings and, ultimately, financial performance. That long-term orientation shapes how Somers approaches capital allocation. Aledade has…

5. 

   13 Sep 2026 · 57 min

   1214: The CFO Checklist Keeps Growing | Jack Gordon, CFO, Harri

   For Jack Gordon, the CFO role at Harri increasingly extends beyond finance—and into the mechanics of how an AI-powered business scales. Harri, a workforce operating system focused on hospitality, has evolved from a point solution into a broader platform spanning talent acquisition, workforce management, and employee engagement. Gordon says the company’s opportunity rests partly on years of data accumulated across mission-critical workflows, an advantage that becomes increasingly important as AI reshapes workforce technology. That evolution is also reshaping Gordon’s finance agenda. As Harri…

6. 

   9 Sep 2026 · 54 min

   1213: When Constructive Tension Yields Sharper Decisions | Martin Uhrik, CFO, Third Bridge

   When Martin Uhrik compared the margins of two visual-effects brands at Technicolor, one appeared far more profitable than the other. Uhrik tells us the reported difference prompted him to investigate. One brand showed project results only to the direct-margin level, rather than revealing fully absorbed profitability. Uhrik says he asked the business-unit CEO why the company was not showing creatives “the true state of the business.” The response was resistance: management feared that exposing weaker bottom-line results could cost the premium brand its talent and luster. Uhrik insisted.…

7. 

   7 Oct 2026 · 50 min

   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…

8. 

   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…

9. 

   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…

10. 

    6 Sep 2026 · 37 min

    1212: When Working Capital Rewrites the CFO Agenda | Dan Barzily, CFO, Tipalti

    Shortly after Dan Barzily became CFO of Tipalti, a go-to-market transformation altered the company’s working-capital profile. One quarter later, Barzily tells us, the company missed its forecast across multiple parts of the P&L. The surprise reached back to a subject he had barely considered since his university accounting class. “It really hit me,” Barzily recalls. “I’m now the CFO, and I’m in charge of those things.” Until his appointment, Barzily says, he had never expected to become a CFO. He studied engineering, where he developed skills in analytics, accuracy, modeling, forecasting,…

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