FP&A Today

After the Gold Rush: The $75M Operation behind America's Hockey Champions

The history-making USA Hockey won golds (and millions of fans in the process) at Milan’s Olympic Games. But behind the on-ice glory is a $75 million organization with a finance function as disciplined as its players. Kelly Mahncke , CFO of USA Hockey, joins Glenn Hopper and FP&A Today to pull back the curtain on what it takes to fund the gold-winning national hockey program — with business interests from memberships and sponsorships to restaurants and insurance. Kelly traces her own journey from center ice to chasing the bottom line, explaining how a hockey career shaped her instincts as a finance leader. She walks us through four-year "quad budgets" and the typical annual cycle, and what it took to weather COVID's financial shock, from cash management to the logistical nightmare of paused travel programs. She also gets into the digital transformation underway at USA Hockey. And why she believes curiosity is the defining trait of great FP&A professionals. Catch this fascinating look at finance leadership — at the peak of Hockey USA's Olympic moment.

How to ignore the loud numbers and listen for the quiet risks: Sahil Kamani

Sahil Kamani, is a Berlin-based senior finance leader and FP&A professional at Ellie (Volkswagen Group), Starting at a credit rating agency in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — inspired, fittingly, by a fascination with the documentary Inside Job — Sahil moved through regulation, capital markets, and an MBA before pivoting into operational finance 
In this episode: 
Being the person handing out credit ratings 
Cash burn and the KPIs that matter most in a turnaround
What bankers and regulators instinctively look for 
How the CFO you work influences your storytelling
Being CFO of Berlin's fastest-growing pickleball club.
 
Sahil R Kamani on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahilrkamani/

What an AI-Native General Ledger Means for FP&A: John Glasgow

John Glasgow, is the founder, CEO and CFO of Campfire AI native ERP with more than $100m in funding, built to help high growth companies close faster, get richer visibility from their accounting data, and scale. John brings his insights as an operator who has spent time in FP&A and strategic finance, including at Adobe and an executive at Invoice To Go, leading that finance company to a $625 million sale to bill.com. Campfire came out of firsthand frustration with legacy ERPs and a need to rebuild the general ledger for the AI era.
In this episode:
My years in FP&A and strategic finance at Adobe before becoming a founder 
CFA Certification 
Invoice to Go acquisition what I learned  
The frustration and origin story of frustration and why Campfire was set up
Why building our own AI model makes sense 
Key quote: “If you slap AI on top of an ERP with summarized revenue data, then you’re essentially gonna get no insights that are of any value.”

Perspectives from Controller, FP&A, CFO and Gartner: Marko Horvat

Marko Horvat has been a public accountant, Controller, head of FP&A and CFO, as well as VP in Gartner's research and advisory practice, specializing in topics most relevant to CFOs and finance transformation.
In this episode he talks: 
Interplay IT and CISO and organizational politics (“if it runs on electricity, it’s ours”)CFO skillsets gap
Real change in CFO’s Office with AI (audit pattern recognition to forecasting)
Last mile transformation in finance 
Mindset, skillset, toolset transformation 
Treating forecast as in perpetual beta 
The power of the subtotal function 
Recommended books:
There's Got to Be a Better Way: How to Deliver Results and Get Rid of the Stuff That Gets in the Way of Real Work
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

35 Years in Finance and constant change: Troy Anderson CFO at Kelly Services

Troy Anderson is CFO of Kelly Services, a staffing solutions provider to various industries, who has spent his career driving transformation across some of the most complex business environments. Before joining Kelly, he served as CFO at Universal Technical Institute, where he helped double revenue over five years through a mix of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Earlier in his career, he held senior finance leadership roles at Conduent, a $6billion player (bought by Xerox). 
Conduent life cycle a $6b public company acquired by Xerox
Investor relations at Xerox as a game-changer for my career 
Making finance a partner across the value chain
Business Process Outsourcing vs AI
The need for a deep understanding of your business 
Catch the full transcript below

The Future of the AI-Native ERP Stephen Hedlund, Rillet

Stephen Hedlund is head of finance at Rillet, an AI-native ERP which has raised over $100million from Sequoia and  Andreessen Horowitz. In  Steven’s words Rillet is “building the modern NetSuite.”In this episode:
How Isaac Asimov’s Foundation helped me discover finance 
Experience from enterprise at Walmart to building startups 
Go-to-market (marketing) to Head of Finance Gillet 
The moat for leading ERPs and our strategy 
Being the ICP and marketing voice for Rillet 
“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.”― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Building back Trust Between CFOs and CROs: Eddie Reynolds

Eddie Reynolds, CEO of UnionSquare Consulting, opens up about the often-fraught relationship between CFOs and CROs. Eddie shares insights from his unique journey—from banking and private equity to being an account executive at Salesforce which forecast within 5% accuracy despite 30%+ growth.
The conversation tackles the critical disconnect between finance and go-to-market teams: Why do CFOs struggle to trust CRM pipelines? What breaks when companies hit $50-100M in revenue? 
In this episode:
How Salesforce was able to forecast with 5% accuracy,
The role of FP&A and CROs in go to market strategy and efficiency
The issues with LTV to CAC ratio in SaaS 
Biggest challenges of the CFO/CRO relationship
Bottoms up annual planning working with finance 

From Flight Deck to Finance: Bobby Bray on Military Precision in Analytics and FP&A

Bobby Bray brings his perspective from more than 20 years in banking and consulting with Capital One, Oliver Wyman, and Regions Bank. The retired Navy Captain with four commands talks about strategic decision-making under pressure, working with Fortune 150 C-Suite executives, and the rigor required in FP&A.
He says: “To use an aviation term you need to be able to follow the drop of gas through the engine and understand the different cogs in the engine that turns a drop of gas into thrust, but it also is what turns raw data into usable analytics on the back end.”In this episode 
A Truly Non-Traditional Path to Finance
Commercial banking as the most educational finance job
Discipline and rigor in FP&A
Cloud infrastructure changes in the past 7 years 
The rigor of a capital market stress test 
Explainability of AI in finance 

Demystifying the Role of the CFO in Growth Stage Companies: Rick Smith

Five-time CFO Rick Smith has led finance at companies including inVentiv Health Communications, Exos, Parchment, Solera Health before founding Bonfire advisory. He is also the author o fDemystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies, a no-nonsense approach to the topic. Reviews for the book include: “This book is a must-read if you want to understand how to scale a company as a CFO” and “Should be required reading for CEOs and PE people along with CFOs.”
In this episode Smith provides his take on being a CFO and his long background in FP&A, providing insights on:
The path from FP&A to CFO (without a CPA)
Why I like being CFO at SMBs (sub $50m)
Being a dreamer, artist and buildingFP&A 
Audits vs QOEs 
The unspoken challenges working with PE firms
FP&A and M&A – what you need to know 
Link to the book: Demystifying the Role of the CFO in Venture and Growth Stage Companies

Building a lean, mean, FP&A team from scratch – Preston Naegle

Preston Naegle started his career in private equity at Leavitt Equity Partners (founded by Michael Leavitt, the former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Negale then moved into the operating world and for more than 2 years has led strategic finance and FP&A at a PE-backed Midway Mechanical Services  in the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) industry at the company which has completed 15 acquisitions (3 in 2025 alone) within the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing sector across the Western US region. 
In this episode
An origin story in Private Equity
Learning from a “firehose” of business models 
Bringing PE thinking to a head of finance role at Midway Mechanical 
Bringing people with you as you create FP&A, budget and forecasting processes
Choosing an FP&A solution
Enhancing time to insights that bring long-term business partnering and profit growth