Category: The Accidental CFO
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The Accidental CFO — 3 Mistakes Companies Make with Cash Flow (and How to Avoid Them)
“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.” Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. But cash flow? That’s reality. Over the years, I’ve sat in boardrooms where revenue graphs looked like hockey sticks, and profit margins were trending in the right direction. Everyone was smiling—until I had to deliver the uncomfortable truth: “We don’t…
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The Accidental CFO: What My Family Taught Me About Leadership
“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.” It’s a season of big transitions in our household. Last weekend, we took our son back to Villanova for his senior year. Earlier this week, our youngest daughter started her first year at Scripps College. And in a few weeks, our oldest daughter heads to UCL…
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The Accidental CFO: Leading Through Crisis
“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.” Every crisis is a leadership exam—graded in real time. The numbers matter, but they’re not the whole story. What really defines you as a leader is how you show up when the pressure is highest and the margin for error is smallest. I learned this firsthand…
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The Accidental CFO: What is EBITDA?
“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.” Ever hear the term EBITDA thrown around in business meetings and wondered what it really means? Don’t worry—you’re not alone. Finance, like any business, has a language all its own. As part of The Accidental CFO series, I will occasionally use this blog to try to break down finance concepts…
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The Accidental CFO: It’s Not About the Numbers
“Stories and lessons from an unexpected journey in finance.” One of the first things I learned as a CFO — and a lesson I still carry today — is that being a finance leader isn’t really about the numbers. Early in my days as a CFO at Accenture, I was tasked with building a forecast…
