FP&A Today

Chikako Tyler FP&A lessons getting from CFO to COO at California Bank & Trust

Chikako Tyler is the Chief Operating Officer at California Bank & Trust (CB&T). She began her career at the leading California bank in 2010, starting as risk manager, progressing tos trategic planning and analysis (spanning seven revenue divisions and 150 units), before serving seven years as Chief Financial Officer revealing . Here she reveals the strategic leadership as the bank grew, from $9 billion to $15 billion in assets, and overcoming challenges from the post global financial crisis to COVID.
In this episode:
Math academic to commercial real estate
California Bank and Trust’s stress testing
Efficiency ratios and operating leverage
Differences in the path CFO to COO
Inclusion and leadership in banking
The most company specific fave Excel function answer

Fire Drills, Fractional Work, and AI Reality Check: Carl Seidman

As a fractional CFO and financial advisor, Carl Seidman, a returning guest, has worked with finance teams at some of the world’s most recognized companies, helping them strengthen forecasting, cash flow management, and strategic decision-making. He also teaches several top-rated online courses including the FP&A Mastery Signature Program. 
My first fire-drill, creating a cash flow in one week 
The under $50m revenue opportunity for fractional CFOs 
The power of an advanced (live) FP&A course 
Expectations and reality for AI in your finance career
The catastrophe if AI gets something wrong 
What I learned about Copilot in Excel developing a LinkedIn course
The Power of LET 

Secrets to a Simple Model: Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch is the founder of ASimpleModel.com and serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Stephen Gould. He has worked in private equity for most of his professional career at Rabobank, JP Morgan, Argenta Partners and Hilltop Holdings. But he’s perhaps best known for turning complex financial concepts into clear accessible lessons through ASimpleModel.com.
JP Morgan in Buenos Aires
Crazy models during the financial crisis 
Capital allocation strategy at Stephen Gould 
How a Simple Model took off 
Most common mistake in building a financial model 
Clarifying private equity
Incorporating AI into everything I do 

From Big Four CPA to Building a Lean Finance Function Driving 500% Growth – Andrew Polito

Andrew Polito is VP, Controller at Go HQ which provides a suite of back office services, including recruiting to delivery companies. The Fort Worth-based company provides back office support for transportation and logistics, seeing 500% growth in five years, earning a spot on the Inc 5,000 list of fastest- growing private companies in America. 
In this episode:
From audit to shifting to a private company finance team
Building FP&A from the ground up 
Power of the 13 week cash forecast
How I introduced automation in an initial two-person finance team  
How our finance tech stack delivers the data and insights to succeed  

$300 and a Suitcase to AI-Powered Finance: Mariya Guttoh

Mariya Guttoh is  Director of FP&A and Treasury at PayJoy, a global FinTech company expanding credit access through smartphones to underserved customers in emerging markets. Celebrating 10 years this year , the company has served over 15 million customers and is on track to reach $650 million in revenue and $110 million in profit by the end of 2025.
In this episode Mariya traces her steps from cosmetic marketing in Ukraine to arriving in the US with $300 and working three jobs while earning her MBA to becoming a finance leader.
My finance journey working three jobs to pay for my MBA
Becoming an advocate for AI in financeTwo finance camps– “excited but clueless” and “cautious but clueless” 
Using AI to automate vendor reporting across 10 countries 
Identifying high impact AI wins (forecasting) 
My ideal magic FP&A solution 
How I turned myself into a self-created extrovert 
Offset in Excel 

Top Quant Akhil Khunger on what FP&A teams are missing

Akhil Khunger, VP Quantitative Analytics, Barclays, has more than ten years of experience in the field. Akhil develops statistical models to forecast balance sheets, revenue and probability of default. He has experience with time series modeling, statistical modeling, machine learning and building implementation frameworks using Python and other programming languages. Akhil, who has a master’s in Financial Engineering from UC  Berkeley and London School of Economics, has worked in CCAR and Bank of England stress testing and know the Basel III/IV framework, SR 11/7, SR 15-18, and SR 15-19. He also has experience managing junior model developers.
In this episode: 
The worst year for modeling?
Diving into models 
Working with big datasets
Getting to the real reasons behind trends and data  
The power of stress testing 
What human judgement can bring to the table 
The AI component in forecasting 

From Big Four to Fiverr: How Esti Levy Dadon scaled Finance at the Gig Marketplace

Esti Levy Dadon, Executive VP Finance, Fiverr ,started in public accounting at Ernst and Young, before leading the finance function at Fiverrr. Since joining the global marketplace in 2016 she steered the company to a successful IPO in 2019. In her words: “In almost 10 years at Fiverr  I’m still waiting for things to be boring and repeatable, but it never happens because things change all the time”
In this episode:
Building finance from the ground up at Fiverr 
The path to IPO and the financial work required 
Challenge of building a robust forecasting model for a public company
Creating a finance team to last
Business partnering process at Fiverr
Traits for hiring in FP&A at Fiverr   
Mindset FP&A perspective shift to connect you to the business

From Data to Decisions - How Wasabi's FP&A and BI Teams Execute at Scale

What do FP&A professionals need to understand about data work and BI and the work that BI is doing? Marcos Bento, Director BI, at Wasabi Technologies: “They need to translate business requests in English in a way that the BI folks can translate that into codes.
That’s where the magic happens.”
In part two of our deep dive with Marcos Bento (BI) and David Suter (FP&A) from Wasabi Technologies, we explore the execution side of their successful data partnership. In this episode:
Our 130-Iteration Journey: Net retention metric evolution
Cost per dollar of new ARR (and how settled on it)
Storytelling across technical and executive audiences
Lean team compositions (4-person FP&A, 5-person BI)
Power of the problem solving skillset in our hiring 

Building a high functioning partnership between BI & FP&A

Wasabi Technologies (a Boston-based cloud storage company with over $530M in funding, a decade of hypergrowth, 450+ team members, and multiple exabytes of storage deployed) sets high standards for its finance and analytics teams.  Both teams are under pressure to deliver fast, accurate, and actionable insights. Marcos Bento, Director Business Intelligence at Wasabi Technologies and David Suter, Director, Financial Planning And Analysis at Wasabi Technologies join us for a special two-parter. They delve deep into how their teams work together, across functions to turn raw data into real-time financial intelligence.
In this episode: 
Building and gaining trust between BI and FP&A 
Getting from “10% out” to within a couple percentage points for forecasting 
KPIs such as dollars per terabyte 
BI and FP&A as investigative reporters 
Predictive analytics: forecast in the 6 or 12 months working with sales 
The manifesto for AI at Wasabi 

A "Systems Thinking" Mindset for FP&A Success - Daniel Gardner

Daniel Gardner is operational finance business partner at FirstGroup Plc, a leading UK-based provider of public transport. Daniel brings a unique perspective shaped by a diverse finance career across iconic consumer brands like L’Oreal, the Body Shop and Hunter Boots, where he led major forecasting overhauls and drove commercial transformation. Now at First Group, he is leading the development of a cloud-based forecasting system for a billion pound division, working with more than 50 stakeholders to deliver scalable real-time insights. 
In this episode he talks about the power of “systems thinking” in the CFO’s Office as a way of understanding how different parts of an organization (or any complex system) interconnect and influence each other.”If there’s an area, I’d say that FP&A could do with its systems thinking. Structure makes behavior and behavior makes structure. So it travels in a loop, which means that to make changes in an organization, you either have to hire people who do not exhibit the behaviors naturally or you’ve got to change the structure and alter the incentives that are producing the problems.”
In this episode:
Bringing my philosophy-training to finance 
Six week finance transformation at Hunter Boots 
Getting from lagging to leading indicators 
99% of People Problems Are Really System Problems
Python+ Excel (practical examples)