When Lisa Cummins Dulchinos joined Ayar Labs, she knew translating deep tech into a business story would be central to her role. At a company where 85% of the nearly 200 employees hold PhDs, Dulchinos found herself among experts fluent in micro-ring resonators and laser physics. To explain what Ayar Labs does, she took a different approach. “It’s basically a computer chip that allows us to open up the bandwidth in a computing system,” she tells us.

That chiplet—named TeraPHY—replaces traditional copper wiring with optics, using lasers to transfer data more efficiently. Dulchinos describes it with a relatable analogy: “There’s traffic on a highway…you open up and add more lanes.” This optical solution not only alleviates the data bottleneck but also delivers measurable benefits: “It decreases the amount of power required by four to eight times, increases the bandwidth almost 10 times, [and] reduces latency,” she tells us.

What drew Dulchinos to Ayar Labs is also what defines her leadership: the intersection of technical complexity and strategic clarity. She frames the customer value in terms of “tokens per second, per dollar, per watt,” highlighting how improved throughput leads to greater profitability. Though the solution may cost more upfront, Dulchinos emphasizes its long-term value: “It decreases their total cost of ownership.”

By making the science digestible and the business case undeniable, Dulchinos reveals not just what Ayar Labs builds—but how finance can illuminate innovation.

When Kevin Wall first stepped into industry from public accounting, it wasn’t by accident—it was through a client he already knew well. The company, in the midst of an ERP conversion and preparing to go public, saw in Wall someone who understood both their numbers and their needs. “They were familiar with me. I was familiar with them,” he tells us.

That early pivot from audit into operational finance set the tone for a career defined by depth over speed. Wall spent 13 years at Alcatel-Lucent and a decade at FIS, climbing steadily while broadening his remit from general accounting to pricing, FP&A, and global finance operations. His longevity at these firms, he tells us, allowed him to “move and see new things under one roof” while growing his leadership footprint.

Today, as CFO of Stax Payments, Wall is again stepping into transformation. The company, which serves over 40,000 SMBs and processes more than $20 billion in volume annually, is preparing to launch its own end-to-end processing engine. Wall’s priorities reflect a blend of commercial focus and operational precision: “It’s the top of the funnel,” he says, referencing lead generation, “and speed to revenue.”

A self-described servant leader, Wall believes in “clearing obstacles” so teams can grow. That mindset also drove a past strategic move—reorganizing finance functions like billing and AP to other departments. It was a bold step, but one grounded in clarity: “Let’s really define what we want finance to be,” Wall tells us.

When Josh Schauer joined Longview, a Toronto-based software company, he had no idea that a transformative chapter of his career was just a few years away. In 2020, Longview was acquired by insightsoftware—a turning point that brought both uncertainty and opportunity. “It’s kind of equal parts fear and optimism,” he tells us. “You wonder: Am I going to have a job coming out of this?”

But his then-CFO advocated for him, making clear to the acquiring company, “they can’t lose you.” That moment, Schauer tells us, “swung the pendulum to the opportunistic side.”

Rather than move on, Schauer leaned in—ultimately rising to become CFO of insightsoftware five years later. Today, he leads finance for a company that has completed 31 acquisitions and delivers AI-powered tools for CFOs—tools Schauer uses himself.

Early in his career, a mentor CFO gave Schauer full ownership of budgeting, board reporting, and strategic analysis. That experience shaped his belief that finance is “a strategic operating partner.” It’s a mindset that drives his approach today, from implementing daily agile forecasting to integrating AI across functions.

“We are an AI-first organization,” he explains, with AI liaisons and company-wide training supporting adoption. Though measuring ROI can be tricky, he sees clear returns in efficiency and insight.

Still, he keeps people at the center: “Is the team taken care of? Do they feel engaged?” For a CFO who’s navigated acquisitions and transformation, Schauer tells us, team satisfaction remains one of his top priorities.

When Nathan Winters led a supply chain team earlier in his career, he noticed something that would shape his leadership style: “The credibility you get by the operating leaders when they see you out in the field… is incredibly important.” Whether visiting customers, walking a manufacturing floor, or sitting in on operating meetings, Winters found that physical presence fostered trust—and that trust gave finance a real seat at the table.

Today, as CFO of Zebra Technologies, Winters continues to emphasize business partnership grounded in proximity to operations. In the four years since he stepped into the CFO seat, Zebra has weathered post-COVID surges, global supply chain disruptions, and enterprise restructuring. The company’s product footprint—often “hidden in plain sight,” from grocery checkout scanners to hospital wristbands—has expanded to include robotics and machine vision, Winters tells us.

He’s also broadened his own remit, taking on IT and cybersecurity leadership, including oversight of both the CIO and CISO. In that time, Zebra has reduced China-based production from 80% to 30% and introduced new AI capabilities like “Zebra Companion” to automate shelf management for retailers. Internally, Zebra launched a private LLM instance—“Z-GPT”—to streamline tasks from expense report queries to sales presentations.

“Your job isn’t to just close the books,” Winters tells us. “If you’re not analyzing… finding new ways to think about things… you’re getting passed up.” At Zebra, finance is not just a control function—it’s a strategic force embedded in every operational stride.

Nearly a year into his CFO role at Reltio, James Redfern still feels like he’s catching up. “I’ve made some progress, but I’m definitely not where I… need to get,” he tells us. That steep learning curve was exactly what drew him to the company.

Redfern didn’t find the Reltio opportunity through recruiters. Instead, it surfaced during a casual conversation with a mentor. “I was actually looking at something else,” he recalls. “And he said, ‘Oh, if you’re looking… I’m on the board of a company that’s looking for a CFO.’” That kind of personal connection—what Redfern calls “psychic safety”—has guided his last two career moves. It’s less about who you know casually, he tells us, and more about “people you actually have worked with.”

At Reltio, Redfern stepped out of his comfort zone. After years in application-layer software companies like Workday and PayScale, he shifted into deep IT infrastructure. Reltio’s platform ensures enterprise data is clean and consistent across systems—a need made more urgent by the rise of AI. “You need a reliable, unified view of your data,” he explains. “One customer equals one customer—not three different customers in three different systems.”

With 190 customers and $160 million in annual recurring revenue, Reltio works with some of the world’s largest enterprises. The company’s mission, Redfern tells us, is to replace legacy systems like Informatica and IBM with cloud-native data unification at scale.

For Redfern, the attraction wasn’t the title. It was the challenge. “This is the kind of journey I committed myself to,” he says.

How are finance chiefs steering the AI revolution? In this fast-paced special edition of CFO Thought Leader, host Jack Sweeney spotlights Packer Fastener CFO Brian Hogeland and LinkedIn’s top AI voice Allie K. Miller. Together they unpack why 2023’s “just try ChatGPT” mantra is obsolete, how agent-orchestrated systems will reshape mid-market operations, and where cash-savvy CFOs can safely place AI bets today. Tune in for fifteen minutes of practical insight, provocative foresight, and career-defining guidance.

Amanda Whalen’s first unit CFO role began with a question. “You’re not a finance technical person,” her company’s president told her, “but you’re the strongest leader on my team. Will you be willing to be the CFO and help me transform the finance function?” She accepted.

Over the following year, Whalen tells us, her team tackled three major initiatives: fixing broken cost accounting at a dairy plant, realigning sales incentives to drive margin, and overhauling the P&L reporting structure to match the new parent company’s expectations. The team was skeptical—“They said, ‘You’re crazy. There’s no way we can do that all in a year,’” she recalls. But they did. The business became 10% more profitable.

That experience, Whalen tells us, revealed finance as a powerful lever to drive business transformation—“You get to work with every function… It’s highly quantitative and analytical, and it involves working with a lot of really great people.”

Now CFO at Klaviyo, Whalen brings the same philosophy. In three years, the company more than doubled revenue and improved margins by 20 percentage points. She led Klaviyo’s IPO, expanding the company’s readiness across technical, strategic, and investor-facing dimensions. “It wasn’t just about getting ready to go public,” she says, “but about operating successfully as a public company for a long, long time.”

Whether transforming legacy operations or scaling a fast-growing SaaS firm, Whalen’s approach remains constant: think long-term, go deep into execution, and “be kind to your future self.”

In this Planning Aces episode, Jack Sweeney and co-host Brett Knowles spotlight three CFOs who are advancing their organizations' FP&A capabilities through thoughtful AI adoption. Andrea Hecht of CSAA Insurance discusses aligning generative AI with enterprise strategy and efficiency. Matthias Steinberg of MindBridge explores combining machine learning and LLMs in finance workflows. Brian Hogeland of Packer Fastener highlights how AI training and grassroots adoption can foster a tech-forward culture. Together, these leaders offer a cross-industry view of how CFOs are balancing risk, innovation, and ROI while helping their organizations navigate today’s fast-evolving planning landscape.

Brett Knowles emphasizes three recurring themes: the importance of framing AI narratives carefully to avoid workforce fear, the rising expectation among employees for AI-enabled tools, and the need to align AI efforts with real business value. He also highlights the necessity of risk awareness and the evolving role of FP&A as a driver of organizational agility. Across the board, Brett sees finance leaders striving to balance innovation with caution in a way that positions their teams for scalable growth.