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Alex Zank

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This CFO helps set growth strategy

Chikako Tyler counts sales-team management among her responsibilities.

Execs, board members diverge on path toward achieving company objectives

Directors must make an effort to understand C-suite concerns, survey suggests.

CFOville

Public companies that go looking for a CFO (and there have been a lot of them lately) tend to favor those with experience, according to the latest Russell Reynolds CFO Turnover Index.

Global CFO turnover at public companies reached a 

 in the first half of 2025, with 173 finance chiefs being replaced during the period, the index shows. Appointments were up slightly from 169 in the first six months of 2024. Turnover was particularly high among S&P 500 companies and in the industrial and natural sources sectors, according to the consulting firm.

The increase in CFO turnover came from “increased retirement rates and record high CEO turnover in 2024,” Russell Reynolds noted. The firm found that 56% of outgoing CFOs in H1 either retired or transitioned to board roles , another seven-year high and “significantly above” the 41% seven-year average.

 Amid a busy six months of CFO turnover, the proportion of women appointed to CFO roles declined YoY to 22%, from a first-half record of 28%.

“To maintain momentum, it’s critical that organizations continue to challenge traditional leadership profiles and accelerate the development of a broader pool of leadership talent,” the firm noted.

Most CFO appointments were internal hires.

 Insiders had the best path to CFO positions at public companies: More than half (57%) of incoming CFOs came from within the companies, a slight YoY uptick from 54%.

Organizations that went with an outside candidate put more emphasis on experience. H1 saw “the highest percentage of externally appointed experienced CFO hires,” (77%), according to the data. Russell Reynolds explained that companies 

 into experienced candidates to help them “navigate complex economic markets” or when succession plans didn’t come together.

Global CFO turnover reached a seven-year peak in the first half of this year

Most CFO appointments were internal hires, but companies opting for outside candidates emphasized experience.

Jesse Klein

Coworking is a recurring segment where we talk to CFOs and other leaders in the finance space about their experiences, their companies, and the larger economy. Let us know if you are—or you know—a CFO we should interview.

Christopher Smith has been in the sustainability world since his days as a director at Enron. (Yes, 

 Enron). These days he is the CFO of CleanChoice Energy, a wind and solar project developer and provider of clean energy to the Northeast Atlantic region. When he first started out in sustainability 25 years ago, it was more commonly called the “alternative energy” industry. And today, with Trump’s recent 

CFO Brew sat down to talk to Smith about how federal cuts are impacting the sector, his plans for a possible recession, and the unique challenges facing a solar CFO.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How have the cuts that have come to solar and wind from the Trump administration impacted your role as a CFO?

I’ve seen ups and downs through the energy business, so we’ve seen this sort of turbulence.

But long term, we think, and clearly see, clean energy is the long-term winner. And so we plan to stay the course and really stay focused on delivering for our customers and being citizens in the communities where we are.

Are there any unique challenges for being a CFO of a solar energy company?

A lot of the complexity is navigating the capital markets and the right way to finance the business and to grow the business. The reason the capital intensity is so high is because you’re investing in something that’s going to generate benefits for many years. And so to grow the business, you really have to be able to access and foster very good relationships with banks and with capital markets. And when I say banks, typically, I mean commercial banks.

I would distinguish that from being a public CFO, which I’ve done, which is very much about investor relations and the messaging. And capital is raised in that business in a very different way.

There has been chatter the past couple months about possibly entering a recession. As a CFO, how are you preparing for that possibility with your company?

I think the important thing is capital stewardship as a CFO and really positioning the businesses to be able to handle all kinds of outcomes. You hope for the best, but you plan for the worst. And that’s a tough thing to balance sometimes because it can affect people. The language can affect what they think about their prospects. And it can also be difficult because it may mean you need to be more guarded and more defensive.

But the businesses that survive and thrive are the ones that are able to power through, and not be too much skating close to the edge.

If you weren’t a CFO what would you be?

A portrait of Chris Smith, the CFO of Clean Choice against a beige background.

Veteran CFO in the clean energy sector gives his take on this moment

Christopher Smith breaks down being the CFO of a solar energy company. 

Niki Heim is the CFO and chief administrative officer of LogicSource, a procurement and sourcing services and technology firm. Before taking on the CFO role, she had stints in banking and athletic gear. This is her first role as a CFO. In addition to the traditional CFO duties, she sees her role as “as a strategic integrator,” offering insight that creates value within the organization.

CFO Brew recently spoke to Heim about the future of finance, her advice for aspiring CFOs, and how the role can change in a time of uncertainty.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in finance?*

While my role as CFO at LogicSource includes the traditional pillars of finance—accounting, forecasting, and financial operations—that’s just the foundation. Beyond that, I serve as a strategic integrator, applying a detailed, cross-functional lens to understand how each initiative and the department contributes to the broader financial picture. The core finance responsibilities get me in the room, but it’s that deeper operational insight that drives real value and continuous improvement.

How do you think the CFO role has changed over the past five to 10 years, both for you, and in general?

Finance has a unique opportunity to lead through data-informed, strategic decision-making, and for years it seems the industry has been intentionally repositioning the function as a true business partner. While the term “chief no officer” gets thrown around negatively, I believe we should reframe that perception. Upholding financial discipline and saying no to initiatives that don’t align with the company’s strategic direction is not a limitation, it’s a critical part of enabling long-term success. 

I am a big believer in collaboration and that finance should be deeply involved in the early stages of initiative development to proactively guide its success. This limits having to say no or putting an end to it downstream after significant time and effort has been exhausted. Finance can guide the direction with data informed decisions, whether it be analyzing historic conversion rates or pushing data out like increased costs of labor.

What have you learned about being a CFO in a time of uncertainty?

I feel like it’s been a time of uncertainty since 2020 so I’ve learned to just never be comfortable and constantly be adapting and just be willing to make decisions on the fly. In the past, I would overthink where I wanted to go with a decision, but having confidence in my initial kind of gut feel and taking it from there right away is something that I've learned to get much more comfortable with.

Future CFOs should think beyond the numbers. The role today is as much about strategic partnership as financial stewardship. Learn the business deeply, communicate clearly, and strike the right balance between growth and discipline. Invest early in scalable systems and stay curious. Collaboration across functions is key to driving real impact.

If I weren’t a CFO, I’d probably be crafting landscapes to combine creativity, structure, and patience to shape outdoor spaces. Not unlike financial planning (just with more dirt), it requires vision, discipline, and a long-term mindset. There’s something incredibly satisfying about doing something tangible with your hands and seeing immediate progress. Finance requires more time to produce results.

Correction 08/27/2025: LogicSource's company description has been clarified.

A portrait of Niki Heim, the CFO and chief administrative officer of LogicSource against a brown background.

This CFO thinks saying ‘no’ is critical 

Niki Heim, CFO of LogicSource, sees limitation as the key to success.

Courtney Vien

The home goods category has seen its share of twists and turns over the past five years: a pandemic-era boom and then a slump when consumers pivoted toward travel and experiences rather than physical items. Now, it’s facing headwinds in the form of tariffs and an uncertain economy, and generative AI could be changing how people shop.

Kate Gulliver, CFO and chief administrative officer at Wayfair, spoke with CFO Brew about her career, and about her company’s plan to roll with the punches.

 In some ways, Gulliver has grown along with Wayfair. After working in private equity, she joined the company as head of investor relations in 2014, and helped to run its IPO. At that time, it had about $1 billion in sales and 2,000 employees, Gulliver said. She describes it as “a super high-growth but relatively immature company from a systems and process perspective.” Today, Wayfair employs around 12,000 people and brought in $12 billion in revenue from June 2024 through June 2025.

From investor relations, Gulliver became global head of talent, and was named CFO and CAO in 2022. Her career at Wayfair has evolved in an organic fashion.

“I largely let my career be guided by the opportunity most immediately in front of me,” she said. “I’ve never tried to guide toward ‘10 years from now, here’s where that role is getting me.’ It’s been more ‘Is this the next right move?’”

As a combined CFO and chief administrative officer, Gulliver has plenty on her plate: HR, finance, real estate, legal and compliance, corporate affairs, and communications all report to her. She enjoys the breadth of the dual role, which she says gives her insight into the “backbone” of the company. “Intellectually,” the many departments she oversees “can feel quite different day to day, which is fun,” she said.

As a seller of discretionary goods, Wayfair has been on a rocky ride over the past five years. It was able to capitalize on the home goods boom of the pandemic, when shoppers stuck in lockdown were buying items for their spaces. But as restrictions lifted and consumers pivoted toward 

, it saw net losses for three consecutive years. Wayfair had to restructure and underwent several rounds of layoffs, cutting around 13% of its workforce, or 1,650 jobs, in 2024.

Now, though, the category is “starting to stabilize,” Gulliver said. Wayfair had a bumper second quarter this year, with revenues rising 5% year over year.

“We’re feeling good about the momentum currently,” she said.

Wayfair isn’t seeing consumer softness yet due to tariffs and economic uncertainty, Gulliver said, though it’s seeing more strength in its high-end lines, such as Perigold, AllModern, and Joss & Main, than in its “core mass” lines. (“There’s no question the higher-end market is stronger than mass,” CEO Niraj Shah said during a recent earnings call.) The company is keeping its eye on the macroeconomic picture, though. It’s doing a lot of forecasting, incorporating both its internal data and third-party inputs such as credit card data and housing market trends, Gulliver said.

So far tariffs haven’t had that much of an impact, Gulliver said. That’s partly because Wayfair is a marketplace. Sellers post many unbranded items that look similar to one another, so they’re largely competing on price, she said. Lower prices also allow for better placement on Wayfair’s search results, boosting sales. Sellers, Gulliver said, are finding ways to absorb or offset tariffs at different points along the supply chain, which is “helping to insulate consumers” from higher prices. “Consumers are still seeing like-for-like pricing,” she said.

Wayfair is also anticipating changes generative AI might make to shopping habits. It’s partnering with some major AI providers on developing agentic shopping tools, Gulliver said. And it’s added 

 to its website and app that show customers how furniture might look in different spaces within a home, alongside recommendations for similar Wayfair products. “It’s a fun way to capitalize on how consumers might be changing how they shop,” Gulliver said.

At the same time, the retailer’s made a surprisingly analog move: opening brick-and-mortar stores. Its Chicago store has resulted in a “halo” effect, boosting sales and brand recognition in the Chicago area, Shah said on an earnings call. Three more physical stores are planned in the coming years.

As a Wayfair shopper and home design fan herself (“That is the thing I read about in my spare time”), Gulliver understands what consumers are looking for. But even her broad remit, she acknowledges, only goes so far. “I’m always going to the brand team or the merchant team” and asking, ‘Have we thought about getting this product?’,” she said. “And they’re like, ‘Kate, stay in your lane.’”

Wayfair’s CFO guides the retailer through turbulent times

Kate Gulliver has seen her share of booms and busts.

Scenario planning and analytics software company Anaplan boasts a client list including 44% of the Fortune 50. Even Nvidia uses its supply chain planning solutions.

Naturally its CFO, Hemant Kapadia, was eager to talk with CFO Brew about AI and the importance of having clean, structured data. But he also told us about his unusual path to CFO, and about how he strives to build the finance acumen of companies where he’s worked.

Kapadia, who has a degree in electrical engineering, jokes that he “took the securest path to finance.” After a stint in engineering at GE—where, among other things, he worked on the F-35 fighter jet—he took an accelerator program at that company, earned an MBA, and made the move to internal audit. Kapadia took on different finance roles at GE and then was a CFO for various companies, including SunEdison Semiconductor. He joined Anaplan as CFO in 2022.

Kapadia sees parallels between engineering and finance. Both realms, he observed, require that you be good at math but also “very process-oriented and analytical.”

He hasn’t forgotten the mentorship he received in GE’s accelerator program, though, or the experience of learning accounting in a compressed time frame, which he describes as “drinking from a fire hose.” His experience made him realize that other people at companies he worked for could benefit from financial knowledge. At his past few employers, he said, he’s started informal internal training programs consisting of video calls or recorded videos where he walks viewers through topics such as how to interpret balance sheets and income statements.

It’s “bringing the company along on the journey of why we make certain decisions,” he said. “It’s part of me paying it forward, because someone did it for me.”

As CFO of a software company, Kapadia is bullish on AI. He’s hearing that customers are looking for AI to “deliver efficiencies,” which, frankly, means reducing headcount.

They’re wondering, “If I had 10 people doing a certain activity, can I do it with four or five?” he said. But he’s also noticing that companies are asking “Can I get to better answers and better-quality outcomes fast?” That’s more important than efficiency, he said, “because in a business environment, hallucinations can be very, very damaging.”

He stresses the importance of clean data, giving the example of having the same SKU for the same item throughout your entire organization.

“Data wrangling and ensuring that you have truly structured data is so important,” he said. It’s vital, he said, that an AI’s training be “based on actual business information” rather than the massive data sets some LLMs are trained on. Hallucinations, he said, “occur when you don’t have structured data.”

Kapadia does feel that “companies are being very methodical and intentional about how they approach” AI. His own business is a case in point. Though Anaplan has ambitious plans to expand its AI agent offerings, internally it’s slowed down AI adoption in order to ensure data security.

“We’re in the data business, so given that there’s a lot of customers’ data on our servers, we want to make sure that any AI solution does not permeate or break that data,” he said.

A portrait of Anaplan’s CFO, Hemant Kapadia

How Anaplan’s CFO is seeing AI priorities shift

Companies are starting to prize accuracy as well as efficiency, he said.

 soar, CFOs are looking for new, more cost-efficient energy sources. Hydrogen energy has long held the unrealized promise of scalable clean energy, but historically, 

Vema Hydrogen, an early stage hydrogen energy company, has developed a production process that reduces the cost significantly.

CFO Brew recently spoke with Vema CFO Jim Kueser about being the CFO of a small startup, rising energy prices, and producing clean energy post-IRA cuts.

What’s different about being the CFO of a pre-revenue hydrogen company versus a traditional CFO role?

The CFO role here is very focused on building the business, as opposed to building a financial department or building an accounting team. It’s very strategic oriented…We are building something as opposed to nurturing something that’s already been built. I think that’s a big, key difference. We are operating off the funding provided by our investors, and we need evidence that we’re making proper use of all those funds…We are looking at the individual milestones on our execution plan and adhering to that, and if we have bumps in the road, there’s a discussion because we have a runway of cash flow that we need to adhere to from our investors to make sure we’re hitting that execution plan.

How do you see Vema’s place in the energy sector as the Trump administration has cut subsidies for solar, wind, and other green energy investments that were in place under the IRA?

The response I’m going to give you is somewhat counterintuitive. We actually don’t feel bad at all. We don’t feel competitively hurt by the effect on the IRA. Whereas many of our competitors have technologies and processes that heavily rely on those subsidies, our technology is so efficient, it puts us a leap ahead of the competition. And we don’t need those subsidies to be the low cost producer of hydrogen. And as such, it puts us in a more favorable competitive position relative to other competitors that did rely on it.

Vema’s CEO and many of its executives come from scientific backgrounds. What’s it like working in a business environment with leaders who are trained as scientists?

They may have the title of science officer, but they’re commercially savvy individuals who understand the strategic goals of the company. This is not the mad scientist cooped away in some lab that you just shove food and water under the door. We talk every single day to our scientific group about all the issues of the company and where we’re going commercially and how what the lab is doing fits into that. So it’s been very seamless.

There has been some recent discussion of an oncoming recession. How are you as CFO preparing for that?

We’re in a different position a little bit because we are a pre-revenue organization, so in a recession you’re worried about your cash flow and revenue streams. Obviously, we don’t have those yet. We are effectively a cost center until we’re generating revenue. So we have a little different view.

We believe that we are going to be producing a product that is not as impacted by recessionary trends. There is a need for clean fuels that we don’t think is going to go away, and notwithstanding the potential downturn of the economy, there is going to be a demand for those clean fuels, but they must be in the form of a reliable supply and at an acceptable cost…We’re not seeking the green premium. We are seeking to be competitive with alternative forms of energy.

Life as the CFO of a pre-revenue startup 

As energy costs increase, this hydrogen energy company CFO sees opportunity. 

Once, getting off the highway for gas meant a quick detour, with maybe a stop at a convenience store with hot dogs of 

 and facilities that weren’t all that sanitary. But that side-of-the-road experience has changed in recent years. Convenience store chains like Wawa, Sheetz, and Buc-ee’s have garnered 

 with made-to-order food, branded merchandise, and, yes, 

, and many of them offer subscriptions. And gas pumps now share the same stretch of asphalt with EV chargers.

Anshooman Aga, CFO of Fortune 500 company Vontier, told CFO Brew that his company is well positioned to capitalize on these trends. The subsidiaries under its umbrella address many different aspects of what’s called the “mobility ecosystem,” he said, and Vontier’s people and processes give it a leg up as well.

A multifaceted view on the mobility space: 

You might not recognize the name Vontier, but if you drive, you’ve very likely encountered the hardware and software it manufactures and supports. Its subsidiaries include gas pump manufacturer Gilbarco Veeder-Root; car repair tools maker Matco Tools; EV charging station business EVolve; car wash software provider DRB; and Invenco, which produces point-of-sale systems and software for convenience stores. They have a broad reach: Vontier technology is used at some 250,000 fueling sites, 65,000 convenience stores, and 17,000 car washes.

Having a foothold in so many different parts of the industry gives Vontier an advantage, Aga believes.

“All our businesses are tied together by the mobility ecosystem, and what we’re doing is driving productivity and automation in this space,” he said.

The company’s solutions can address one of the biggest “pain points” convenience store owners face: a lack of integrated payments, Aga said. For instance, a customer who stops to fuel their vehicle and then also gets a car wash and buys a snack from the convenience store will make three separate transactions. “That’s not a great consumer experience,” he noted. The business will also be charged swipe fees three separate times. But if a client has set up Vontier devices and software, customers can finalize payments at any location or terminal, inside or outside the store. The tech can also draw on data to incentivize customers to buy more with coupons, discounts, and product recommendations, Aga said.

Vontier’s software, and the wealth of data it has accumulated, is helping it solve another pressing issue in the mobility space: 

. Its Driivz EV charging and energy management software uses an “AI-based self-healing algorithm” that can diagnose and resolve many EV charger problems remotely, Aga said.

You can’t spend much time with Vontier executives without hearing about the Vontier Business System. The system takes much of its inspiration from Japanese “Kaizen” lean manufacturing principles, but it’s also a “mindset” around how the company solves problems and tracks performance, Aga said.

Aga was intrigued by the Vontier Business System even before he joined the company as its CFO in 2022.

“The VBS is something that had always fascinated me,” he said. “When I was at other companies, I tried to replicate it. So being part of the original was something that was very appealing.”

, in which cross-functional teams, often representing all levels of the organization, come together for a week of intense brainstorming. The Kaizens allow teams to “experiment quickly,” Aga said. “And within a week, not only have you understood why you’re having an issue,” he said, “but you’ve also experimented on solutions.”

One Kaizen helped change a production methodology, he said by way of example. “And by the end of the week [the teams] had the production line re-set up, and they already had a solution that was implemented and tested,” he said. The process also works for non-manufacturing problems, he said, noting that he’s used it to improve finance processes as well.

Time and again, Aga emphasizes the importance of having good relationships with your coworkers. “When you spend a significant part of your work week…with a bunch of people, you want to enjoy the people,” he said. The company encourages hybrid work, and Aga says he’s usually in the office whenever he isn’t traveling. “It’s hard to build culture remotely,” he said, “especially when you have bigger teams.”

The friendships built upon things like sharing space and getting lunch with coworkers matter, he said. After earnings calls or SEC filings, his team has a tradition of walking to a bar near company headquarters and having a drink together before going home. “It’s become so popular that one quarter, we forgot to schedule it and we got multiple reminders!” he said.

The camaraderie “also helps with retention,” Aga said. “When you feel part of your team, you think twice before you pick up a recruiter’s call,” he noted.