CFO THOUGHT LEADER

Joanne Cheng’s career had already carried her through multiple successful exits and leadership roles when an unexpected opportunity arose. Having proven her ability to guide companies to liquidity events and beyond, Cheng had established a new benchmark for any next move: she wanted to steer a firm toward an IPO while serving as its CFO. But then along came Jellyfish, a company whose big day in the public markets would likely be years away.

At first glance, Jellyfish didn’t fit Cheng’s established criteria for her next CFO position. The company was still small—just about 90 people—and lacked a finance team. Yet there was something about Jellyfish that instantly drew her in. Before she fell for the company, she fell in love with its product. As Cheng puts it, “I’ve needed this product at every company I’ve been at. Measuring R&D impact and efficiency is something I’ve thought about for much of my career.”

While the prospect of an IPO was an important consideration, Cheng realized that her passion for Jellyfish’s offering outweighed any reservations about the company’s stage. She saw, firsthand, the immense value this product could bring to finance leaders. It addressed a persistent pain point: quantifying engineering effort and impact.

So, Cheng followed her instincts and joined Jellyfish as its first finance hire—even before an accountant or controller was brought on. In doing so, she committed not only to building a finance function from scratch, but also to a product she genuinely believed in. It was a decision grounded in long-term vision and authentic enthusiasm.

• Views the budget as a roadmap, aligning investments with measurable outcomes.
• Bridges cross-departmental gaps by serving as a connector and resource allocator.
• Advocates for data-driven decision-making in resource allocation and project prioritization.
• Balances long-term vision with operational discipline through collaborative leadership.

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Chris Nagy’s finance career began with a foundation in problem-solving, influenced by his early passion for math and logic. He started in commercial finance, focusing on pricing and market dynamics, which shaped his understanding of value differentiation and operational efficiency. His experience included IPO readiness, strategic planning, and time at BlackRock, where he gained insights into large-scale finance operations. Relationships played a key role in his ascent, with his first CFO role stemming from a decade-old professional connection. Over his career, he has navigated diverse roles, blending strategic planning and finance to drive business success.

Episode Highlights:

• Balancing Growth and Profitability: Focuses on aligning growth with sustainable profitability to ensure long-term success.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Builds from reliable data to generate insights and drive performance.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partners with key teams to align efforts and enhance efficiency.
• Agility in Dynamic Markets: Adapts quickly to market changes using driver-based models and actionable insights.

Learn more about Chris Nagy's Career Journey: Visit Us

For Cyrus Lam, the aspect of the CFO role that sets it apart from all others is the weight of non-negotiable priorities. Despite years spent closely collaborating with CFOs as an investment banker, Lam tell us he quickly discovered a new level of accountability in the role. Managing cash flow and ensuring payroll, he says, are unyielding priorities. “If you can’t make payroll, that’s a big, big issue. It destroys trust,” he reflects. While this hands-on responsibility was not unexpected, Lam tells us he's learned to enthusiatically embrace it, finding enjoyment in understanding financial details down to the dollar.

Lam’s career began in India, where KPMG had recently opened an office. “I was the third person to join them as an article clerk and the first among them to qualify as a chartered accountant,” he explains. Lam’s drive and capabilities propelled him through the ranks quickly. His fascination with technology eventually led him to KPMG’s technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) group in the UK, where he developed a reputation for his work with IT service companies and tech firms.

In 2006, Lam relocated to New York to lead KPMG’s global TMT corporate finance team. Over two decades, he honed his expertise in mergers and acquisitions, valuation, and strategic advisory, collaborating with CFOs on transformative deals. However, stepping into the CFO role at CDI, one of his clients, presented him with new and uncharted challenges.

Now CFO of Orion Innovation, Lam draws on lessons from his investment banking years while embracing the operational demands of finance leadership. Balancing strategic oversight with tactical precision, he demonstrates that leadership thrives at the intersection of experience and adaptability.

In this episode of Planning Aces, Jack Sweeney and Brett Knowles share insights from CFOs Sandra Wallach (Amprius Technologies), David Morris (Guardian Pharmacy Services), and David Eckstein (Vanta). The discussion explores how these finance leaders are leveraging technology, data, and collaboration to drive decision-making and value creation.

• Sandra Wallach (Amprius Technologies): Focuses on weekly collaboration and direct involvement to optimize supply chain and customer alignment.
• David Morris (Guardian Pharmacy Services): Shares Guardian's journey to IPO, emphasizing data infrastructure and rigorous planning.
• David Eckstein (Vanta): Advocates for experimenting with AI tools while showcasing their role in sales efficiency and operational improvements.
• Brett Knowles: Identifies a "crawl, walk, run" approach to technology adoption and its impact on FP&A as a strategic partner.

It's no secret that Moderna's R&D efforts have expanded well beyond the realm of COVID-19. CFO Jamey Mock tells us that today the company has more than 40 drugs in its pipeline, with targets such as respiratory, latent, and rare diseases. As he explains, this diversity means that the biotech innovator is reliant not solely on one product or therapeutic area, which makes for less risk than would be the case if the company had only a single product focus.

Meanwhile, Mock leaves little doubt that the finance function is included in the firm's appetite for innovation when he details how Moderna's innovative use of mRNA technology has been a key factor in de-risking its R&D investments. Mock emphasizes that mRNA is the body's information molecule, which Moderna can quickly reprogram to target different diseases. This adaptability and flexibility make it easier for the company to adjust its approach if initial trials or results are suboptimal.

By all accounts, when Moran Shemesh joined Mobileye in 2016 as Corporate Controller, the drama of its IPO was behind it. The Israeli autonomous vehicle technology company had gone public two years earlier, and Shemesh saw the opportunity to grow within an innovative tech company. “I was stepping into a fast-growing organization, that was already publicly traded,” she says, “and I understood the responsibility of being a Corporate Controller in a public company that was still in its growth stages.”

For Shemesh, this role was a chance to hone her understanding of what it meant to oversee finance operations in a public company. She recalls, “The finance team was very lean at the time, so I had to wear many hats, which gave me broad exposure to financial reporting and controls.”

However, the calm period soon gave way to a dramatic change. In 2017, Intel acquired Mobileye for $15.3 billion, taking it private. “The acquisition was not just a delisting process,” Shemesh explains. “It also meant adapting to working with a new shareholder that owned 100% of the company, which brought its own set of challenges.”

The experience of transitioning from a public to a private company broadened her perspective. “It was a crash course in managing financial complexity during a major shift in ownership structure,” she says, “and it prepared me for later challenges, including leading Mobileye through its next stage.”

When Intel spun Mobileye back into the public market in 2022, Shemesh was deeply involved. “The spinout required carving out the company from Intel and ensuring we had the systems and processes in place to support a standalone public entity,” she recalls.

In this episode of Controllers Classified, Erik Zhou speaks with Jessica Peng, Controller at Invoca, about mastering change management. Jessica shares her experiences transitioning from a Big Four to client side, offering insights into SOX compliance and the nuances of internal controls. She then uses Invoca’s recent revenue recognition system overhaul to highlight best practices and considerations for managing complex change.

When Mark Partin first became CFO at BlackLine nearly a decade ago, the concept of Sales Ops was still rather new within the company, and he was tasked with building it from scratch. Over time, Sales Ops evolved into Revenue Ops, integrating finance, sales, and customer success functions to support BlackLine’s rapid growth. In this discussion, Partin shares critical milestones, including consolidating over 100 systems to achieve a "single source of truth," aligning departments around the customer journey, and leveraging data to drive productivity and efficiency—a transformative journey that enabled sustainable growth.

From day one of his professional life, Derek Warnick knew his career would be driven by a purpose greater than mere career advancement. As an undergraduate studying finance and international business, he contemplated how his professional life could make a meaningful impact. Upon graduation, he joined the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, focusing on empowering small businesses in developing countries. “I was excited by the opportunity to help people and have an international focus,” he recalls.

However, Warnick soon realized he wanted to do more to address climate change. “I started to become much more interested in learning about how we could avert the worst effects of climate change,” he says. This passion led him to pursue an MBA at MIT Sloan, concentrating on clean energy finance. “I believe in utilizing a financial focus to further technology and business innovation,” Derek explains. “I don’t think that the role of a CFO or a finance department should be an afterthought.”

After his MBA, he joined a commodities trading firm but soon took on the role of CFO at a small power development startup. There, he gained hands-on experience in all aspects of finance and operations. “I had to do absolutely every single thing in a finance organization,” he says. “I enjoy walking that tightrope and being an operator.”

His dedication to sustainable energy culminated in co-founding Electric Hydrogen, where he serves as CFO. “At Electric Hydrogen, we are singularly focused on bringing down the cost of industrial-scale decarbonization,” Derek states. He believes that providing cost-effective, scalable solutions is key to making a real impact on climate change. “I can’t imagine doing something where I worked for a company that made widgets,” he reflects. “For me, there has to be that business purpose so that I’m excited about what I do.”

Throughout his career, Derek has consistently chosen roles that align with his commitment to sustainable energy. “I firmly believe that if you have a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life,” he says.

One of the key lessons that helped advance Jim Benson down the CFO path was one in clarity and focus during his tenure as FP&A leader for the customer service division of Compaq, freshly acquired by Hewlett-Packard. Eager to influence how the division’s performance was presented, Benson dedicated himself to crafting detailed reports and narratives. However, each time he handed his work to the general manager—a skilled storyteller in his own right—his carefully prepared materials were distilled down to two or three essential points.

At first, Benson, a ten year HP veteran, found the process frustrating. “You work very hard to prepare a set of materials and a narrative,” he recalls, “but he would take my materials and build his own narrative.” Yet over time, Benson began to see the value of simplicity and focus, especially in conveying complex financial information to large audiences. The customer service division was in the spotlight for HP’s earnings, so every quarter required a clear, compelling story that was rooted in financial reality and accessible to diverse audiences.

Through this process, Benson honed his storytelling skills, learning to construct narratives that cut to the core of the message without sacrificing key details. This foundational experience shaped his leadership style, setting a high standard for strategic communication throughout his career. Today, as CFO of Dynatrace, Benson applies these skills to ensure that every financial story aligns with the company’s mission, balancing growth, profitability, and innovation.