Path to Becoming a CFO presented by Airbase – Details, episodes & analysis

In our latest podcast episode, Bessemer Venture Partner Jeff Epstein had a discussion with executive recruiters Rhoda Longhenry, Partner and Co-Founder of the Financial Officers Practice at True, and Jenna Fisher, Managing Director and Global Co-Head of the Financial Officers Practice at Russell Reynolds Associates.

Rhoda and Jenna shared their best practices and advice for financial professionals looking to grow their careers in finance. Tune in to learn how to set yourself apart in the eyes of an executive recruiter and how to connect with recruiters, investors, and companies seeking talented CFOs.

Learn more from the recap of the session.

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Join Bessemer Venture Partner Jeff Epstein for a discussion with executive recruiters Rhoda Longhenry, Partner and Co-Founder of the Financial Officers Practice at True, and Jenna Fisher, Managing Director and Global Co-Head of the Financial Officers Practice at Russell Reynolds Associates.

Rhoda and Jenna shared their best practices and advice for financial professionals looking to grow their careers in finance. Learn how to set yourself apart from the pack in the eyes of an executive recruiter and how to connect with recruiters, investors, and companies seeking talented CFOs.

Learn more from the recap of the session.

Path to Becoming a CFO | Airbase
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Howard’s path to CFO is unlike any other we have seen over the two years this series has been running. Until becoming CFO at PagerDuty, Howard had not held a traditional finance or accounting position. With a formal education in Information Systems and Computer Science, Howard began his career supporting the Sales operations at Oracle. 

His career moves included positions as Chief Commercial Officer and General Manager of Digital Experience Management until he stepped into the finance leadership role at PagerDuty serving as CFO in the years up to and including the company’s IPO. This session offers a glimpse into an alternate path to the more often observed Big Four or investment banking backgrounds.  

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Join us for this conversation between two top CFOs turned investors. Jeff Epstein, Partner at Bessemer Ventures and former CFO at Oracle, will interview Alan Black, who is the founder of Surfspray Capital. 

Alan served as the CFO at Zendesk in the years leading up to and following its IPO. Before Zendesk, he served as President and CEO at Intelliden, an IBM company, and as Managing Director and CFO at Openwave Systems. Alan sits on the Board of Directors at Looker and as an advisory board member to McGill University. We’ll get the inside story on the choices Alan made on his career path and how they might help inform your decisions.

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Steve Sordello has spent nearly three decades working for some of the most iconic technology companies in Silicon Valley. Steve brings a diverse background in strategy, operational and financial management, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate leadership. Steve has served as the CFO of LinkedIn Corporation (LNKD), the online business networking service.

During his tenure at LinkedIn, he oversaw LinkedIn’s successful IPO, scaled the company from $10M to over $8B in revenue, raised critical capital and completed multiple private and public acquisitions, including LinkedIn’s $26.2B merger with Microsoft where Steve has since continued to play a key leadership role in its success.

Prior to LinkedIn, Steve served as CFO of TiVo, Inc. (TIVO), a manufacturer of digital video recorders, where he helped drive the company to profitability. Prior to TiVo, he served as CFO at Ask Jeeves, Inc. (ASKJ), an internet search engine company where he drove the dot-com turnaround, building a high-growth, highly profitable business and was instrumental in its sale to IAC in 2005. Steve also held senior roles at Adobe Systems, Inc. (ADBE), the global leader in digital media and digital marketing solutions. At Adobe, he drove the overall planning process and worked on a number of critical projects, including driving the financial analysis behind the acquisition of Photoshop, the launch of the Creative Bundle Suite, and the product launch of Acrobat. Prior to Adobe, Steve started his career on a rotation program at Syntex Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that was acquired by Roche Pharmaceuticals in 1994.

Steve also serves as an independent director and audit committee chair at publicly traded Atlassian (TEAM), a leading provider of collaboration, development, and issue-tracking software, as an independent director at publicly traded Compass (COMP), a real estate technology company, and as a non-profit board member, trustee, and audit committee chair at Santa Clara University. Steve also served as an independent director and audit committee chair at publicly traded Cloudera (CLDR) up to its merger with Hortonworks in 2019.

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Kelly Steckelberg brings extensive leadership and finance experience to her role as CFO at Zoom. Most recently, she was CEO at Zoosk, where she previously held positions of CFO and COO. Prior to Zoosk, Kelly was the Sr. Director of Consumer Segment Finance at Cisco. Kelly has also held various roles in finance at Cisco Webex, Epiphany, and PeopleSoft. She began her career in tax and audit at KPMG and has a MA in accounting from The University of Texas at Austin.

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This episode features Jeff Epstein, Partner at Bessemer Ventures, and Twilio CFO, Khozema Shipchandler. Jeff Epstein brings his own unique perspective as a former CFO at Oracle and Nielsen to the conversation with Khozema Shipchandler about his career path. Most of that career was built in-house at GE Digital, the venerable U.S. corporation with a reputation for innovation and leading-edge management practices. We’ll hear about Khozema’s decision to make the jump from GE to modern communication juggernaut Twilio just a few years after it went public.

Khozema brings over 20 years of experience in finance, most recently serving as GE Digital’s Chief Commercial Officer. In addition to his role as CFO, Khozema also oversees Twilio’s trust and security teams. Khozema previously served in a variety of positions within GE, including as the CFO and EVP of Corporate Development, and the Vice President of Corporate Audit Staff. Khozema earned his bachelor’s degree from the Indiana University Bloomington and graduate coursework at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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This episode features Matt Murphy, Partner at Menlo Ventures. Learn what investors and board members look for in a CFO, hear how Matt built companies and his career,

Matt is a partner at Menlo Ventures and invests multi-stage across AI-first SaaS (apps, DevOps, API platforms) and robotics. Since joining Menlo in 2015, Matt has led investments in Alloy.AI, Benchling, 6 River Systems (acquired by Shopify), Canvas, Clarifai, Carta, Envoy, Firehydrant, Harness, Heap Analytics, Hover, Netlify, Scout RFP (acquired by Workday), Upstart, Usermind (acquired by Qualtrics), Veriflow (acquired by VMware), Vivun, and Zylo. He also serves as a board member at Egnyte and a board observer at Datastax.

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As Chime’s Chief Financial Officer, Matt Newcomb focuses on shaping Chime’s corporate and financial strategy, driving business model improvements, and scaling operational functions. Matt has played a key role in securing more than $2B in venture capital financing to fund Chime’s growth plans, solidifying the company’s role as the largest consumer fintech in the US.

Matt started his career in financial services, serving as VP in BlackRock’s Financial Markets Advisory and Fintech practices where he advised some of the world’s largest financial institutions on their most complex capital markets exposures during the Great Recession. While working with these large incumbent financial institutions, Matt saw the opportunity to improve traditional banking models and developed a passion for consumer fintech. 

Matt earned his MBA with Honors from the Wharton School and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University. Matt earned a BA in International Relations from Brown University, graduating magna cum laude, and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Jason Child brought his expertise in scaling high-growth organizations to Splunk as Senior Vice President and CFO in 2019 following ten years of CFO experience at Opendoor, Jawbone, and Groupon, Inc. 

Before his executive leadership roles, Jason spent more than 11 years leading various global finance teams at Amazon and learning the growth opportunity of cloud technology-centric organizations. Considering cloud-first a top priority for Splunk, its customers and the technology industry, Jason uses his CFO lens to drive financial strategies that deliver a return in business transformation through the adoption of cloud-first strategies. 

Jason is an avid bicyclist, reader and podcast fan, and he holds a B.A. from the University of Washington. Jason’s favorite career advice is that, “No one will care about your career as much as you do. If there is an opportunity you want, don’t wait for someone to tap you on the shoulder; go pursue it on your own.”

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