FEI Weekly Podcast

Financial Executives International was founded nearly a century ago as a community of like-minded professionals focused on developing the role of the financial controller. Today, the profession is going through another accelerated transformation with the development of the ESG controller role that requires new skills and metrics to match against stakeholder demands that are rapidly changing.

The Financial Education and Research Foundation, or FERF, is kicking off a series of conversations with ESG controllers and other thought leaders in the ESG finance space, focusing on how these leaders are adapting to the challenge.

These conversations, along with a survey and other interviews, will ultimately result in a new research study on ESG controllers by FERF.

In this first conversation I spoke with MasterCard's, ESG controller Tarynn Zenk. Tarynn leads the team responsible for reporting integrity over MasterCard's ESG disclosures and KPIs that measure progress towards the organization's ESG goals.

Special Guest: Tarynn Zenk.

The role of artificial intelligence in finance is just starting to be understood and, more importantly, how it mixes with other tools like predictive analytics and robotic process automation to build a solid forecast.

In this sponsored episode of FEI Weekly we talk with Justin Croft VP, Cross Solutions Architecture at QueBit, about the promise and practicality of AI in financial planning and analysis.

Special Guest: Justin Croft.

If there’s been a consistent theme of disruption in an era of disruption over the past decade it’s the US relationship in China. Shutdowns, trade battles and now real threats of force are being ratcheted up on both sides.

For financial executives tasked with managing supply chains and forecasting overseas markets, the threat of global conflict puts everything on the balance sheet in doubt.

But there is a broader historical context for today’s China worries that can help put the current conflicts in context and lay out a path to forecasting the future.

In this episode of the FEI Weekly podcast we speak with Dale Copeland, Professor of international relations at the University of Virginia and author of “A World Safe for Commerce”, a new book that reveals how trade and commerce has defined America's foreign policy – and often its military actions – and how contemporary challenges with Russia and China can be thought about in that lens.

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Special Guest: Dale Copeland.

CFO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) talks achievement and passion.

Special Guest: Amber Kinney.

Julie Bell Lindsay, CEO at the Center for Audit Quality, talks about embracing your mistakes instead of hiding them, adapting to change both personally and professionally, and being honest about what we know and don’t know.

Special Guest: Julie Bell Lindsay.

Geof Brown, Illinois CPA Society’s president and CEO, discusses the latest CPA Pipeline Report, which investigates why more accounting majors and young professionals are skipping over becoming CPAs.

Special Guest: Geoffrey Brown.

ServiceNow's Danielle Fontaine talks about how to advance your career by recognizing your worth.

Special Guest: Danielle Fontaine.

Nasdaq's Michelle Daly explores the power of having a strong network, before you need it.

Special Guest: Michelle Daly.

"Show Her the Money" explores the new acceleration of female founded funds looking to level the playing field.

As an annual celebration of environmental protection, Earth Day means a lot of things to a lot of people. But in the world of finance and accounting, it’s an opportunity to take stock on the progress the industry has made in building sustainability metrics over the past year as well as the implementation and policy challenges facing companies in the next twelve months.

In this episode of the podcast we speak with Mike Wallace, Chief Decarbonization Officer at Persefoni about the opportunities and risks the ESG movement faces and how financial executives should navigate those issues until Earth Day 2025.

Episode links:

Special Guest: Mike Wallace.