From 6x National Champion to Fortune 500 Chief Audit Officer - Lori Kaczynski on Leadership and Resilience

From 6x National Champion to Fortune 500 Chief Audit Officer - Lori Kaczynski on Leadership and Resilience

She won six Canadian national championships in speed skating and was training for the Olympics. Then, had a car accident at 18. Four knee surgeries. Three years of rehabilitation. Today Lori Kaczynski is the Senior Vice President and Chief Audit, Risk, and Compliance Officer at Graphic Packaging International, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Atlanta. She leads global internal audit, compliance, and enterprise risk management. In this episode, I sit down in person with Lori. We talk about what competitive athletics taught her about discipline and resilience that she carries into the boardroom today. How she moved from a small Canadian town of 5,000 people to building a career in Atlanta with no coaching and no roadmap. Why she hires internal auditors based on soft skills and culture fit before technical ability. The difference between leading audit with an enforcement mindset versus a business partner mindset and why one gets people to call you with their problems and the other makes them hide. The Von Mises framework she uses when people resist change. How a network of 60 Fortune 500 women chief audit executives became her most valuable career resource. What her husband accidentally taught her about networking. And why she is building what she calls a "portfolio career" for what comes next. Whether you are in audit, risk, compliance, or any finance leadership role, this conversation will challenge how you think about what it really takes to lead at a high level.

How Finance Teams Should Be Using AI Right Now, with Chad Gold, CFO of Fullstory

He started at Ernst & Young, moved to Home Depot where he had a front row seat to one of the most operational CFOs in the country, then jumped into high-growth startups and never looked back. In this episode, I sit down in person with Chad Gold, 2022 CFO of the Year by the Atlanta Business Chronicle and current CFO of Fullstory. Chad drove 10x growth in enterprise value at SalesLoft to over $2.3 billion and was the first CFO at G2. We talk about why he left the stability of Home Depot for startups and what his wife thinks about that risk. His "lines not dots" principle for building relationships that actually shape your career. His playbook for the first 90 days in a new CFO role and why most leaders make the mistake of trying to tackle everything at once. How to get the business to bring finance in early instead of after the fact. Why the CFO, not the CTO, should be leading AI adoption inside the company. How his team cut the close process by 50% using AI and is going for another 50%. The SEC agent they built that reviews contracts in minutes. How they automated daily cash reporting with Claude in five minutes. Why he thinks the finance org chart is shifting from a triangle to a diamond. And the whiteboard lesson from his Home Depot boss that changed how he thinks about success forever. Whether you are a CFO trying to figure out where AI actually fits, a finance leader navigating high-growth, or someone thinking about making the leap from big company to startup, this conversation covers it.

Former Starbucks IR SVP: How a Homeless Teenager Ended Up Managing $130 Billion Market Cap on Wall Street

In this episode of The Diary of a CFO: Live in Atlanta, I sit down in person with Tiffany Willis. Tiffany is a global investor relations executive who recently served as Senior Vice President at Starbucks, where she managed nearly $130 billion in market capitalization. She is a Wharton graduate, an Adjunct Professor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, a CPA, a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and a former Miss Black Georgia USA. Behind that bio is a story most people would never expect. Tiffany was pregnant at 14, dropped out of school in the 9th grade, and was homeless. She kept her baby's milk on a windowsill because she had no refrigerator. We talk about what carried her through that chapter and into boardrooms with Howard Schultz and Mellody Hobson. How she transitioned from public accounting into investor relations and why that shift required a completely different way of thinking. The art of storytelling as a finance leader and why most finance professionals struggle with it. Her swimming pool analogy for how to make numbers feel real to non-finance people. The WIFM framework she uses to get buy-in across every function. How being Miss Black Georgia USA gave her the communication foundation she uses in boardrooms today. And why she wrote her book Own Your Narrative to help leaders stop hiding from their story and start leading from it. Get Tiffany's book, Own Your Narrative: https://www.amazon.com/Own-Your-Narrative-Resilience-Restored/dp/1918077835/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0 [https://www.amazon.com/Own-Your-Narrative-Resilience-Restored/dp/1918077835/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0]

The Unlikely Journey of a $3 Billion CFO, William Washington III

He dropped out of high school. He was a single father. He started his career at a cottonseed company. Now he oversees $3 billion in annual revenue across 76 offices in 45 countries as the Global CFO of Baker McKenzie, one of the largest law firms in the world. In this episode, I sit down with William Washington III. William brings a rare combination of financial acumen and operational expertise shaped by senior roles at Hogan Lovells, Accenture, and Fannie Mae. He is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt and a Bloomberg New Voice on the future of finance. We get into what it actually looks like to lead finance across 45 countries and how he adapted his communication style for teams that speak different languages and operate in different cultures. How he evaluates a finance organization when he walks in on day one. The executive coaching session where a 360 review showed him something about his leadership he did not want to see. Why the drive that made him a great director was the same thing holding him back from becoming CFO. How he leads as a self-described introvert, including how he sets boundaries to recharge. Why he went back to school for a Master's in Law Firm Management just to understand his industry. And his philosophy on the three books every finance professional should always be reading. Whether you are a finance leader trying to grow into the CFO seat, already in it and figuring out how to lead at scale, or building resilience through a chapter that feels impossible, this conversation will meet you where you are.

How to Cut Your Board Reporting Process From Weeks to Days (with Fabian Ferrada)

Most finance teams spend two weeks building a board report that gets reviewed in ten minutes. The formatting alone could take days. And if one number changes, the entire approval cycle restarts. In this episode, I sit down with Fabian Ferrada, Senior Solutions Engineer at Insight Software. Before moving to tech, Fabian spent over a decade in financial and operational leadership for a publicly traded company, carrying P&L responsibility on major projects across South America and the Middle East. We break down what a great board presentation actually looks like versus what most teams are delivering. Why three out of four manual disclosure processes contain at least one number appearing differently across documents. The real cost of broken reporting, and it is not just overtime. How to present bad news to a board and keep their trust. The difference between board reporting and investor reporting and why most manual processes can barely handle one. And a real case study where a company with 12 subsidiaries across 6 countries cut their disclosure process from weeks to days. If your team dreads reporting season or your board deserves better than what you are currently delivering, this episode will show you what the fix actually looks like. Brought to you by insightsoftware's Certent Disclosure Management (CDM). Visit insightsoftware.com/board-reporting [http://insightsoftware.com/board-reporting] to learn more.