3 finance chiefs give advice to controllers who want to be CFOs

Controllers who have their eyes set on the CFO chair heard from finance chiefs at an annual convention about how to get there as they compete with those that have an investment banking background and MBAs. 

There’s more than one path to becoming a CFO, Brandi Joplin, senior VP and CFO at Sam’s Club, told an audience of mostly controllers during a panel session on Wednesday at the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) conference in Las Vegas. The annual event brought together more than 3,500 accounting, tax, and financial professionals, according to the organizers. 

“I’m fortunate that I work for an organization that has a diversity of experience among our CFOs and we kind of all push off of each other,” Joplin said. “The Walmart U.S. CFO is in my neighborhood, and we will go on walks. His strength is in a different area than mine.” They have conversations about their tasks at work, and “we kind of learn from each other,” she said.

Know the business

Joplin, who has worked in leadership positions at Walmart for 14 years in audit, accounting, and controllership, became CFO at Sam’s Club, a division of the retail giant, in 2019. Advice for accountants thinking about transitioning to the CFO role? “You need to get out into your operations and understand what’s going on,” she said. “Listen to associates and find out their challenges.”

Mark Hammond, EVP and CFO at AssuredPartners, who started his career in public accounting and has spent more than 15 years at Deloitte, had the following advice: “You’ve got to be a great storyteller.”

“I think you’ve really got to hone your communication skills in terms of taking what is a highly technical complicated message and whittling it down into something that is very simple,” Hammond said. Storytelling skills are especially important for controllers to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders, he said. “Your audience that you’re dealing with every day is probably the chief accounting officer and the CFO. They speak your language.”

Steve Robertson, CFO at HDMI Licensing Administrator, Inc., agreed with Hammond’s advice and shared a previous CFO experience. “That’s one of the things that was my biggest challenge going from controller to CFO,” Robertson explained. “I was thrust into the position when a CFO abruptly left. What I was not prepared for was having the right language of finance to communicate to the board. As a controller, oftentimes you’re raised with a bottoms-up mentality, and board members have a top-down mentality. They want quick answers.”

An audience member asked about the impression that fewer CFOs, especially in public companies, have come up through the accounting track. One such analysis by the firm Crist Kolder Associates on the CFOs at a group of more than 650 companies in the Fortune 500 and S&P 500, found that in 2022, 50.2% had MBAs compared to 34.5% who had CPAs.

“I think the investment banking community probably would walk into the role having a better understanding of the business drivers, particularly if they’re going through M&A and transaction kind of things,” Hammond said. The CEO and board want to hear the business story from the CFO in the context of “not just the math or the numbers,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to talk about what’s going on in the business that causes those things,” he explained. “They want to know about top line, production, or sales. They want to know about economic conditions and how those impact your business.”

Joplin offered another piece of advice: “I would tell the accountants in the room to lean into technology, understanding A.I. and what’s coming with machine learning because you need to think about the possibilities of how that can change the work.” 

Enjoy your weekend. See you on Monday.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Big deal

A new report by executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. found that U.S.-based employers announced 80,089 cuts in May. That's 287% higher than the 20,712 cuts announced in the same month in 2022, according to the report.

The technology sector announced the most cuts in May with 22,887, for a total of 136,831 this year, up 2,939% from the 4,503 cuts announced in the same period last year. The tech sector has now announced the most cuts for the sector since 2001 when 168,395 cuts were announced for the entire year, according to the firm.

Going deeper

Here are a few Fortune weekend reads:

"As A.I. stocks soar, here’s what top investors like Ray Dalio, Dawn Fitzpatrick, and Stan Druckenmiller think of their prospects" by Lucy Brewster

"4 tech giants accounted for more than 16% of Fortune 500 earnings—even in a down year" by Will Daniel

"The Roberts Supreme Court is poised to strike down a key civil rights era ‘pathway to achieve the American Dream.’ What follows affirmative action?" by Ellen McGirt

"Stress may be wiring your brain to crave sugary food and more of it. Here’s how to reverse that" by Alexa Mikhail

Leaderboard

Here's a list of some notable moves this week:

Jonathan Lock was promoted to SVP and CFO at The Chemours Company, a global chemistry company, effective June 6. Lock succeeds Sameer Ralhan as CFO, who announced his intention to resign, effective June 19. Lock most recently served as SVP and chief development officer at Chemours. He joined the company in 2018 as VP of corporate development and investor relations and went on to have responsibility for M&A, corporate strategy, enterprise risk management, and more recently, sustainability.

Ritu Kalra was named VP for finance and CFO at Harvard University. Kalra currently serves as Harvard’s assistant VP of finance and treasury and special projects adviser. She succeeds Thomas J. Hollister, who has served in the role since 2015 and will depart on June 30. Before joining Harvard, Kalra spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, where she held several progressive roles culminating in managing director and served as head of public sector and infrastructure finance for the western region, and as head of higher education finance nationally.

Ravit Ram was promoted to CFO at Motus GI Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: MOTS), a medical technology company, effective immediately. Her appointment is part of the previously announced transition plan for Andrew Taylor, who stepped down as CFO on June 2 to pursue other opportunities. Most recently, Ram served as a senior member of the Motus GI management team, including site manager, and VP of global operation and finance, since 2018. Before Motus GI, she served as a site manager, and VP of finance and supply chain at EndoChoice.

Salman Khan was named CFO at Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: MARA), a digital asset technology company. Before joining Marathon, he served as CFO for Verb Technology Company Inc., a provider of interactive video-based software-as-a-service applications. Khan previously served in various senior executive-level positions at Occidental Petroleum Corporation and its spinoff, California Resources Corporation, including director of renewable energy, director of corporate development, director of technical accounting and financial reporting, and business division controller and CFO.

Vikas Mehta was named CFO at Komodo Health, a health care technology company. Mehta brings more than two decades of experience. He was central in digital transformation at Fortune 50 companies including Nike, Walmart, Microsoft, and Paypal. Most recently, Mehta served as the CFO of Anaplan, where he was responsible for finance, audit, legal, procurement, investor relations, accounting, and strategy. Before Anaplan, he was CFO of Nike Direct, where he provided leadership and direction across the supply chain and finance functions to drive digital transformation during the height of the pandemic.

Dave Salverson was named CFO at DTEX Systems, an insider risk management provider. Salverson will support the company’s growth trajectory and advancement of its InTERCEPT Platform. Salverson brings more than 25 years of financial leadership experience, developing finance teams, systems, and processes in high-growth companies. Before joining DTEX, Salverson held the role of CFO at Hazelcast. He has also held leadership roles at Shape Security, Ruckus Networks, and Brocade.

Daniel Welch was named CFO at Kate Farms, which brings plant-based nutrition into health care. Welch joins Kate Farms from Oura Health, maker of the Oura Ring, where he was CFO. Before Oura, he led the corporate finance team at Sonos, Inc. Welch started his career in investment banking, and before Sonos, he was at Morgan Stanley, where he was a VP in the investment banking group.

Overheard

“The current systems are actually not very good at all at doing whole jobs. They’re very good at doing tasks.” 

—Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that released ChatGPT last year, said on Wednesday at an Economic Times event in India. Altman thinks artificial intelligence is more likely to change your job than steal it, at least in the short term, Fortune reported.