In this special episode Glenn is joined by Nate Saperia to answer the 10 most burning questions in FP&A. Nate brings nearly 20 years of finance experience including at Accordion, Spruce Finance, Hess Corporation and GE. At Saperia Consulting Nate specializes in real-time dashboards, financial planning, and interim CFO/FP&A leadership. 

The questions:

Q1: How can I use AI in FP&A?

Q2: What do you think of FP&A solutions?

Q3: How can you get to driver based decision making 

Q4: Fastest levers FP&A teams can pull with margin pressures rising?

Q5: How can an FP&A function trust the financial data it’s using when it doesn’t control the data?

Q6: Should the CTO or CFO own the data?

Q7. Skills to get from M&A Financial due diligence to FP&A?

Q8. FP&A Internship, what advice? 

Q9. Things I wish I had known earlier in FP&A?

Q10. What’s the future of Excel in FP&A? 

Australian-born Luke Mulcahy started in FP&A at larger businesses including Coates Group (internet leader in Sydney) and manufacturing company Sherwin-Williams. But for nearly 4 years he has loved having “wow” moments of finance insights with smaller companies. closer to the $5-10million range, where powerful insights are taken straight from finance to the CFO. In his words: “You can have those moments a lot more frequently with small business owners and just tell them what they’re, what they’re missing, what they haven’t got eyes on.”

This special episode formed part of FP&A Con 2025 which saw a record-breaking 1500 registrants. 

The guests:

Anna Tioma former CFO of Sandoz and  Softeq. Most recently she has pivoted to become a fractional CFO at Blend2Balance. 

Anna Yamashita, Solutions Consulting at Data Rails who has worked across SAS finance throughout her career where she helps FP&A teams implement modern performance management solutions.

In this session: 

This episode is 53 minutes packed with practical Excel insights for an FP&A practitioner and Excel advocate at the top of his game.

In this episode

In this masterclass Shifra Isaacs, developer Relations Advocate at Ascend.io, delves into her experience as data scientist, technical writer, and support lead providing fresh insights for FP&A and finance professionals.

In this episode:

Connect with Shifra Isaacs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shifra-isaacs/

Taylor Otstot, Vice President Finance,  Dashlane joined GoDaddy (now a $30billion valued) domain registry, domain registrar and web hosting company before their IP. In 8 years he climbed to senior Director of Finance running an FP&A team of 14. From this experience and as VP Finance at DashLane he says he hires for 3 things: curiosity, ambition, and finance leaders who are service-oriented. “If you bring those three things to the table, you're able to wade through a lot of the ambiguity that comes with those decision making processes.”

Also in this episode: 

Connect with Taylor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylorotstot/

Subscribe to CFO Frameworks newsletter on Substack: https://www.cfoframeworks.com/

Dave Sackett is Co-Founder and CFO of ecommerce company, AIOne,  and former CFO of  semiconductor company, ULVAC Technologies. He is a vocal advocate for blockchain and AI and finance, bringing a blend of tech savvy, operational rigor, and a  focus on “servant leadership" - that is putting the needs of the employees first and helping people develop and perform as highly as possible. He's a frequent keynote speaker, a Forbes contributor, and an active member of Financial Executives International.

Connect with Dave Sackett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davesackett/

Derek Paulson is Director of Finance and Performing Marketing at Rad Power Bikes, a Seattle-based e-bike company changing transportation. In this episode he talks about his approach to  navigating tariffs (“There  no, no word in the English language more scary to a finance professional than the word uncertainty” says Paulson as he discusses required “efficiency” and “flexibility” in their supply chains). He also reveals his approach to the finance transformation required to shift Rad Power from a direct-to-consumer to an e-commerce and retail focused model, that is “starting   with a blank Excel sheet to do the modeling for Rad Power Bikes”.

Connect with Derek Paulson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekpaulson/

“The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is a non-for-profit with a really simple mission, which makes it really easy for me to wake up and know what I’m doing every day,” says Bryan Lapidus, Director, FP&A Practice at the Association for Financial Professionals. “We exist for the success of the corporate finance and treasury professionals. FPAC, our certified corporate FP&A certification has been in the market for about 11 years now and 5,000 people have earned it in more than 80 countries.”

Returning guest Lapidus joins Glenn Hopper  as they discuss the climate for FP&A including:

Annette DeYoung, Principal Solutions Consultant at Datarails, is an accountant-turned FP&A manufacturing leader. She has deep experience in leading finance teams at manufacturing companies including Berner Food and Beverage, Rockford Products, Fairbanks Morse Engine, and JL Clark. It was at JL Clark, as Director of FP&A, that Annette implemented FP&A Solution, Datarails to mop up inefficiencies and end drain all-late night sessions at the finance department— she  liked the product so much she ended up joining the company and has since spoken to more than 1000 FP&A professionals seeking to love FP&A again by removing tedious repetitive processes.

In this episode 

Connect with Annette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahdeyoung/