For Stéphanie Herbots, a finance perfectionist, everything was going to plan. Stéphanie got her masters degree. Sailed into a career in finance. Controllership and FP&A roles for the most prestigious companies followed This included budgets and forecasting for a division of telecoms giant, Orange. 

Then it struck.

Stephanie faced a series of challenges in the midst of the 12th revision of the annual budget (no exaggeration!). Becoming a mum. Staff leaving. Being forced to pick up the slack for FP&A challenges with strict deadlines. Stephanie could not cope. 

Stephanie faced burnout and a spiral of low mental health she describes as “slow and vicious.She had no option but quit finance

In episode 8 of FP&A Today, discussion Stephanie speaks about her journey, with Zoe Cooke, FP&A Director at We are Social, who has been a powerful advocate of mental health in finance throughout her career. 

Leading the discussion FP&A Today host Paul Barnhurst, who himself has seen the impact of mental health first hand and is among those leading the drive for better recognition and transparency  among the FP&A profession. This wide-ranging conversation discusses

The specific mental health challenges within the FP&A profession

Proven advice to lead and cope with stress, burnout and mental health in finance

The limits and challenges of forecasting in uncertain times

How challenges with data and manual processes can be overcome

Follow Stéphanie Herbots on LinkedIn

Follow Zoe Cooke on LinkedIn 

FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails.

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With Datarails on your side for FP&A you get improved data integrity and visibility helping your relationships with your internal business partners and external stakeholders; real-time latest version of all your company’s data in one place, with version control, audit trail and records, ensuring errors and multiple versions are avoided; the ability to let your data tell your story through proprietary, built-in visualization of critical KPIs in real-down; and drill-downs to answer questions on underlying data on the spot.

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Read the Full Program Transcript

Watch the Full Episode on YouTube 

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