This special episode formed part of FP&A Con 2025 which saw a record-breaking 1500 registrants.  The guests:Nathan Bell, Managing Partner, VAi Consulting, is among the most in-demand experts. Bell has unique experience– having started in computer science, before leading finance teams at Native American Bank, Digital Media Trends and Gartner– where he advised hundreds of FP&A teams facing chaotic data situations). 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:  How AI is being applied in real FP&A workflows today  Predictive analytics as the gold standard Getting to a single version of truth with AI  ROI in AI  Mastering Data Management  Misconceptions about AI in finance and security  Co-pilot, prompts Bonus: Security and AI 

This episode is 53 minutes packed with practical Excel insights for an FP&A practitioner and Excel advocate at the top of his game.Jeff Gudim is a senior financial analyst, Excel evangelist and hardcore financial model architect at Strategic Education, listed on the NASDAQ and which owns for-profit, online Capella University and Strayer University, Jeff made the leap from private wealth management to corporate FP&A, leveraging his financial planning skills and Excel skills rising up as a data-driven problem solver. Jeff  leads forecasting and analysis for a hundred million dollars IT function.  In this episode Getting from private wealth management to FP&A How Excel jumpstarted my career  My favorite ever Excel model  Monte Carlo simulations  3 time saving tips every FP&A professional needs  Dynamic arrays and Lambda functions and “fundamental” Excel changeHow to convince your team to use advanced ExcelCompletely new favorite Excel function or featureConnect with Jeff Gudim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-gudim-7a994546/

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: Data science vs business analytics  Pulling data not yet able to be modeled  Python for Excel  The right models for risk scoring, variance analysis and forecasting  Replicating a process with a new tool using AI How can we survive in an AI first world 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:  Finance and FP&A as antidote to the machine of Big 4 3- 4 years in audit as the “perfect amount” Getting to strategy in FP&A Partnership vs accountability as a false choice for FP&A Improv comedy having its moment in finance  The Tarantino approach to finance presentations  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. Cost accountant to CFO and AI leader  How I practice servant leadership mindset as a CFO  Being an introvert CFO leader and overcoming the challenges Costly failures of traditional forecasting in FP&A Where FP&A Software is going to be in 5 years  Finance AI use cases  FP&A as custodians of financial truth in AI age  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”.In this episode: How Honeywell and PepsiCo are top training grounds for finance leaders Efficiency vs flexibility in supply chains  Is an MBA worth it in finance? Data privacy, AI, and finance  Making the case for SUMIFs 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: Evolution of FP&A  and AI  Certificates vs Certification  Why business school doesn’t prepare you for FP&A roles The impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on changing the CFO role  Why you need different CFOs at various stages of a company lifecycle  Why FP&A professionals are so hirable and promotable How to become CFO from an FP&A role  

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  Why I fell in love with manufacturing and finance over my career  How creativity drew me from accounting to FP&A Why a hard-coded accountant attitude was difficult to reconcile with more creative FP&A  How to create finance business partnerships on the manufacturing floor  Why I brought Datarails into my finance team at JL Clarke  The future of Excel in FP&A Is finance (finally) making a move with AI?  The power of getting out of your comfort zone in finance  Connect with Annette on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahdeyoung/

Craig Barry has held senior finance roles at some of the most iconic companies in tech and entertainment, including LinkedIn, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Electronic Arts. At LinkedIn, he led central forecasting, supported more than 10 acquisitions, and played a key role in the company’s integration with Microsoft before becoming Head of FP&A at BioRender- building FP&A from the ground up helping the company scale ARR from $18 million to $50 million. Now Barry is principal consultant at ClearSightIQ. In this episode  My winding road to strategic finance  Junior FP&A Analyst position at Electronic Arts as my first break  Cost center focus in creative industries at EA with $3b sales LucasFilm (pre-Disney) run as a sole proprietorship by George Lucas  Pixar head of finance for their Canadian operations and production planning  LinkedIn and focus on “revenue, revenue, revenue” FP&A focus on modeling for acquisitions at LinkedIn and “virtual” P&Ls Strategy for building out FP&A from scratch at BioRender  My fractional CFO life 

Mike Dion works at a Fortune 100 company. He has previously worked as a finance leader at Verizon-as well as startups and as a mentor to  enterprise giants to scrappy startups—unlocking tens of millions of dollars in value across industries like Entertainment and Telecom.  He does this through Mike’s F9 Finance:  a no nonsense website and newsletter (with 20k subscribers) passing on the skills that have accelerated his career, providing a guide to new tools (based on his experience automating 100,000 hours of labour) and secrets to promotion. He tells Glenn Hopper: “Three things, increasing revenue, decreasing expenses, and making your leaders look good. Those are the three things that move your career, not the reports, not the forecast tools to get to that.” In this episode  Passion in media and entertainment  putting in our first consolidated planning system At Verizon starting a center of Excellence (after facing a situation where 40 VPs wanted 30 decks based on Excel files    Lack of approachable finance content: introducing Mike’s F9 Finanance    Secrets to dynamic modeling and scenario planning  3 Ways teams are getting overwhelmed with forecasts   Better prompting and my relationship with AI A completely new answer for Fave Excel Function F9 Finance: https://www.f9finance.com/  F9 Finance YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@f9finance

FP&A Today goes on the road!. Our host city is Boston and the historic Harvard Club with an audience of Boston CFOs and FP&A leaders. Our first live recording sees an all-star panel of Jack McCullough, CFO Leadership Council, Michael Bayer, CFO of Wasabi Technologies, Cathy Yang, CFO Trexon.  By way of background, Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, talked of “remarkably high” levels of economic uncertainty. “I don’t know anyone who has a lot of confidence in their forecast,” he said. FactSet, a financial-data firm, found that over half of the companies in America’s S&P 500 index cited tariffs in their earnings calls—more than in any other time over the past decade. In this episode we probe how finance executives can navigate today’s complex geopolitical and technological landscape including:  The ROI of a CFO AI Strategy   How to navigate as a financial leader with tariffs and trade tensions Trexon’s Experience navigating tariffs affecting 12 business units and 16 sites Tech and AI’s role in enhancing supply chain visibility  Pricing increases for customers due to tariffs and navigating that from the CFO’s Office  Back to work or not for finance teams? The future of accounting

Shannon Nash is a chief financial officer, board director, investor, attorney, filmmaker, and CPA. She sits on the boards of Net Scout systems, Lazy Dog restaurants, and Sofi Bank, and most recently was CFO at Wing, the Alphabet-owned drone delivery company, and one of the hottest companies in the US. Here, she reveals the secrets FP&A professionals need to know about presenting to the Board and how to turn numbers into a narrative to advance to CFO and beyond Explaining the power of the Board to shape a company’s strategy The finance of film-making and my experience making a major new documentary  The power of  FP&A in securing $150 million in funding at Reputation.com   Presenting to boards -what drives us crazy How improv training unexpectedly revolutionized her executive communication style Connect with Shannon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonknash Watch On Board documentary: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/onboardthefilm

CEO and Principal Analyst at Amalgam Insights, Hyoun Park helps CIOs & CFOs create the ROI and strategic business cases for better AI and IT FinOps. He is also host of the weekly podcast, This Week in Enterprise Tech. In this episode Hyoun discusses some of the quick AI wins for finance departments. My journey Starting as a CRM administrator to analyst  Cloud spend getting out of control (unexpected cloud bills for $20m!) AI use cases: invoices, contracts, billing and spending contracts (dealing with 1000 software contracts) and reconciliations Agentic AI and uses in Finance  Zero based budgeting and Forecasting in the AI age  ROI for AI investment People who will lose their jobs in AI in finance vs those who will survive   My futurist prediction  Connect with Hyoun on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hyounpark/ Host of weekly podcast, This week in Enterprise Tech: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034  http://www.amalgaminsights.com/

With nearly 300k subscribers on YouTube, Bill Hanna’s weekly videos on The Financial Controller Channels provide his audience with lessons over a 15-year career in Auditing & Corporate Accounting. He provides inspiration and practices in accounting and finance through his videos and courses “Designed To Save You Years of Learning” (as one reviewer wrote “I have learnt more with you than 3 years studying accounting and finance”). In this episode: How I stumbled into accounting  Lessons in accounting leadership  The power of mentoring teams about mistakes I make FP&A vs controller  The accounting crisis affecting the CFO’s Office   My accidental influencer journey  Bringing practical explanation of concepts through one company followed across the course The accounting concepts needed to get to CFO Having a wife who is also an accountant  Being a Mac user using Excel  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-hanna-cpa-7653a851/YouTube channel (Financial Controller) https://www.youtube.com/@TheFinancialController Courses: https://controller-academy.com/

Today’s guest is perhaps the leading CFO name in data and analytics, the ex-CFO of Tableau and DataRobot. Now as Founder & CEO at Caliper, Fletcher draws on over a decade of executive experience at the intersection of finance and analytics. At Caliper, his mission is transform cloud cost and usage data into actionable insights In this episode Fletcher discusses  The relationship between analytics and the CFO Subscription, net dollar retention, customer retention, and annual recurring revenue as key metrics  Getting from CFO to CEO and the learning curve  How we rely on AI and predictive ML and seasonal patterns to find anomalies Getting to base analytics and starting in AI Challenges and waste with cloud and holding engineers accountable The opportunity to  save 30% on cloud spend Moving from Excel to Google Sheets Connect with Damon LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/damon-fletcher-bb8a6614/ https://calipersoftware.ai

Walmart, Kraft Heinz, Blue Rock Therapeutics, and the Four Seasons hotels are just some of companies that  regularly invite Ron Monteiro to coach their finance teams in storytelling. But Ron’s success followed decades of fear in presenting and public speaking in FP&A settings. Starting in accounting at Hitachi (“Ron Monteiro: “it was actually the only job I could get”) the CPA and CMA was inspired by a manager who gave him direction and mentorship doing FP&A as Kraft, as well as work over a decade in daily overcoming his debilitating fears. Now he delivers a playbook to teams across the world where finance is “expected to be at the table, not just tactically, but strategically.”Ron is also the author of a new book: Love Mondays which draws on his experience and interviews with finance leaders.   In this episode  Fear of public speaking I’ve carried through my life  Kraft Foods and a leap of faith from my manager 15 years at Kraft with 7 jobs and five promotions including FP&A manager, analyst and director  Transforming Kraft FP&A into strategic value: Kraft Singles and “Getting Our Shit Together” meetings Brendan Flynn’s leadership of finance at Kraft developing future finance leaders  The downward trend of FP&A post 3G Capital’s buyout  CPG and the essential metrics  Learning what you can do to grow – listening tour as business partnering and putting your hand up Love Mondays! A Proven Process to Bring Joy Back Into Your Work Week and Life Paperback by Ron Monteiro https://www.amazon.ca/Love-Mondays-Proven-Process-Bring/dp/B0DPMTVYY3

“Consolidation. A  lot of people don’t know exactly what it is. They think that it’s just an aggregation of numbers. Like you just add numbers, but it’s more technical than that. Most of the time when we are talking about consolidation, it’s international big groups that have subsidiaries around the world. Consolidation is the process of converting those financial statements normally built locally, because they have to be compliant with the local requirements and be compliant with the GAAP of the group.” Charaf Bourhalla has been Head of Consolidation at Nestle Skin Health, Vimian Group and Edify Investment Partner.  He holds several key certifications, including the FMVA from CFI, ACCA with a focus on IFRS, and the PMP from PMI. His posts on LinkedIn reach millions of people explaining complex topics simply such as IFRS 10 – Consolidated Financial Statements, AS 16 – Property, Plant and Equipment and AS 1 – Presentation of Financial Statements. In this episode: From years of struggle, to Kimberly Clarke as a reporting analyst to entering a pharma company as business controller  13-year tenure as a consultant developing a deep understanding of IFRS, USGAAP, French GAAP, and IPSAS,  3 Jobs as Head of Consolidation including Nestle Skin Health with 70 subsidiaries around the world Simplifying complexities of financial consolidation and non financial KPIs Secrets to working with FP&A for consolidation and forecasting and building a mid-term plan Continual training for teams in subsidiaries  Technology and complexity changing the consolidation game How Charaf called in when a company found itself consolidating more than 70  legal entities using Excel Not to pick consultants with partnerships with only one provider  Connect with Charaf on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charaf-bourhalla-04760a1b/

Grab a beer and listen to this special episode. We are joined by Pavels Cvetkovs FP&A director at Carlsberg Group who reveals the formula of FP&A at the famous brand. Carlsberg was founded in 1847, has 140 brands, and 30,000 employees – and FP&A is core to their success, says Cvetkovs. In this episode: How my career in the Big Four (and audit) served as “finance military school”  Moving from business controller to FP&A The essence of Carlsberg – innovation in brewing and sustainability  Distinct shareholder structure at Carlsberg run by Carlsberg foundation  What’s so special about the beer and beverage industry and our FP&A practices  Power of inventory management, sales seasonality, and supply chain and cost planning in brewing  Forecasting and planning and achieving highest levels of collaboration  FP&A set up and management of 10-20 KPIs at Carlsberg  Business partnering as a mindset at Carlsberg  Visiting sites in operations at Carlsberg  Biggest challenges overcome in budget season Refining my financial modeling skills Follow and connect with Pavels on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavels-cvetkovs-471b231a  

Alex Edmans is a professor of Finance, non-executive director, author, and TED speaker. He is regularly interviewed and writes for WSJ, Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports. He was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.  In this episode we talk to Alex about his new book “May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About.  He is also a co-author of the classic text book,  “Principles of Corporate Finance” and top business book (his first book) Grow the Pie, How Great Companies Deliver both purpose and Profit. His Ted Talk on what to trust in a post truth world has alone been viewed nearly 2m time. So many thought-provoking takeaways for anyone in FP&A!  Leaving Morgan Stanley to become a professor of finance Why I give Ted Talks rather than just publishing research  How CFOs and FP&A leaders can think about purpose  Is ESG a tick-box exercise for finance? How FP&A and finance leaders can check their biases  How you can control your addiction to bias Silicon Valley Bank and why financial models were affected by bias  Follow Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aedmans/ Links to Alex’s new book: May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases―And What We Can Do about TED: What to trust in a “post-truth” world

Over the last 12 years, Jason Hershman led financial planning & analysis at successful, hyper-growth companies in the sports arena.  But his career started as a ballboy at the Philadelphia Eagles. It was a  job he spent months pursuing at 14 years old. This experience taught Jason a key lesson. He says: “things that seem out of touch, out of reach are not, it just takes a little hustle, a little effort.” This attitude has stayed with him as he has led multiple finance teams and embarked on everything from redesigning the chart of accounts, owning  the month-end close, building financial models from scratch, raising millions in equity, renegotiated debt, to IPOs. Finance highlights included leading the $400 million sale of Appetize, a B2B SaaS business in the sports industry (Appetize is the software provider for all of the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL stadiums as well as theme parks such as Six Flags, Disney, and SeaWorld).  After this, Jason launched his own fractional CFO business, Point FP&A, providing FP&A to some of the most exciting companies in the sports industry. He has the luxury of turning down clients who are not in the sports world. In this episode: The Philadelphia Eagles as a ballboy for 5 years – things that are out of touch are not  Learning accounting and FP&A on the job in my first online retail startup in New York – which eventually became public  Getting hired at sports startup Appetize (B2B SaaS)- combining my passions for sports and finance + getting to exits  The power of rebuilding a financial model as central to my career  Going to market as a sports FP&A fractional CFO at  Point The ideal balance and differences between accountancy and FP&A Secrets to rebuilding the financial model  Being honest on my journey with AI and FP&A Connect with Jason on LinkedIn Check out Point at www.pointfpa.com