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Senior Product Marketing Manager, Workiva
Dominick works exclusively with controllership and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) organizations to identify and support simplified internal financial reporting approaches that reduce risk and drive efficiency. Prior to joining Workiva in 2018, Dominick spent seven years at General Electric, holding various positions across finance, including operational finance, global and operational controllership, internal audit, and corporate FP&A. Dominick has been involved in all aspects of finance, including entity and segment accounting, consolidation, strategic planning, earnings, investor, and board reporting. Dominick was a member of GE’s prestigious leadership programs, including the financial management program and corporate audit staff.
Thursday, February 25 | 2:15-3:30 pm ET
Concurrent Roundtable Discussion: Why Everything You Know About Financial Transformation is Wrong—And What to Do About It
Financial transformation has been the talk of CFO roundtables for years – but why are so many skeptical about the subject? Other than lacking time, what’s really standing in the way of that high-performing, highly automated, analytics-driven office of finance? It starts with the definition. Financial transformation should not be synonymous with another giant capital expenditure or large undertaking. Finding the right place to start and starting small is everything. This roundtable will help you take the lead on financial transformation. Join other finance executives to discuss:
Vice President of Customer Success, Finance, Nutanix
Steve Kaplan is Vice President of Customer Success Finance at Nutanix where he heads a team of business value analysts who use a financial framework (ROI/TCO) to help enterprise customers and prospects quantify both on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure options. Prior to joining Nutanix in early 2013, Steve started, ran, and sold two internationally awarded IT consulting firms. Along with writing hundreds of articles, blogs and white papers, he has co-authored 8 books on VMware and Citrix technologies, and in 2019 completed his first solo book, The ROI Story: A guide for IT leaders. Kaplan has held positions on the advisory boards of several industry manufactures and was a Microsoft MVP for 4 years. Kaplan has a patent pending on a financial modeling methodology and an associated algorithm. He holds an MBA from Northwestern with emphases in both finance and marketing as well as and a BS in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.
Thursday, February 25 | 2:15-3:30 pm ET
Concurrent Roundtable Discussion: Finance and Technology: Driving Innovation Together
How do financial leaders partner with IT to build a stronger culture of innovation in their organization? The pandemic accelerated the rush to digital transformation, and IT’s broad perspective gained from working with every department throughout the organization combined with a deep technology understanding ideally positions it to drive both the transformation and innovation throughout the organization. But, unfortunately, in many companies IT struggles from a lack of trust within the business due to spending the majority of their effort and money just “keeping the lights on” — a position they cannot change on their own. Building the muscle to truly transform—and keep transforming—your company requires a new approach, one that brings the innovation of technology such as hybrid cloud with the business rigor of the CFO. Join this peer-to-peer roundtable with other financial leaders from a range of industries to tackle one of the most critical tasks facing financial leaders: Building a stronger culture of innovation that’s ready to meet both technological—and financial—objectives.
Director, Oracle NetSuite
Before joining NetSuite Tom founded T-Edward, a strategic & operational Cloud consultancy providing Cloud expertise & CXO services from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups. Prior, Tom held a variety of executive positions with large cap companies including PepsiCo, eFunds & Deluxe Corporation, as well as small cap, privately held entities such as eBenX, FullContact & PeopleNet Communications.
Thursday, February 25 | 12:15-12:55 pm ET
The Future of the Finance Function
As finance teams look to scale their financial systems and improve their forecasting abilities, progressive CFOs are redefining their data analytics agenda. This evolution positions the finance team to play a more strategic role throughout the organization. We’ll look at the other elements that play into forecasting beyond financial metrics, how to prioritize those metrics and which ones should dictate future business decisions. And, we’ll help you evaluate the technologies that will enable your finance department to move from descriptive to predictive analytics to deliver more value and respond faster to the needs of the business.
Principal Economist, The Conference Board
Erik Lundh is a senior economist at The Conference Board. Based in New York, he is responsible for much of the organization’s work on the US and Chinese economies. He also conducts research on geoeconomics, international trade, and global value chains. Lundh previously worked for Evercore ISI where he spent five years generating top-down research on China for institutional investors. Earlier in his career, Lundh was an economic analyst at the US-China Economic & Security Review Commission and spent several years working at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the US-Taiwan Business Council. He earned his BA in economics and international relations at the University of California, San Diego and his MBA from Thunderbird. He has lived, worked, and studied throughout the Asia Pacific, Africa, and Europe.
Thursday, February 25 | 11:25 am-12:05 pm ET
Economic Outlook and Scenario Planning
CFOs that business performance is intrinsically linked to the broader global economy. While much is known about the future—interest rates are low, taxes are likely to increase, there are also large uncertainties—when will the Covid-19 threat dissipate, what will be the impact of the U.S. Elections, how will the global balance of power shift. Leaders need to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and develop plans for most likely scenarios with contingency plans in place. We’ll look at how the global economy is faring and what the leading indicators say for the future. Gain insights to help you plan for 2021 and beyond and take advantage of economic opportunities to best position your company for the future.
Founder and CEO, Align Business Advisory Services
Dena leverages nearly 20 years of success in building, scaling, and buying and selling businesses to accomplish her clients’ goals. A CPA and MBA, her career experience spans many years in “Big 4” public accounting and consulting firms, in addition to holding executive positions with Fortune 500 and hyper-growth middle market companies. As an M&A expert, Dena has facilitated over $1.5 billion of buy and sell-side transactions, including acquisitions involving companies such as Visa, Bank of America, Hewlett Packard and Google. Dena has been recognized as a leader in her field, earning distinction as a rising star of M&A by M&A Advisor Magazine and one of the top 25 Women in Mid-Market M&A by Mergers & Acquisitions Magazine. She and the firm have been featured in top-tier publications such as Fast Company, Inc, and Entrepreneur, and Align was named the best mid-market M&A consultancy in the Southeast in 2019. Align is headquartered in Winter Park, Florida, and serves clients nationwide.
Thursday, February 25 | 2:15-3:30 pm ET
Concurrent Roundtable Discussion: Acquisitions and Integrations – How to Ensure Positive ROI
Buying a company is easy – integrating it is an entirely different story. This session will provide information and tools to help company leaders successfully acquire and integrate companies into their organization. Join this peer-to-peer discussion to explore the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them so you can protect your future deals and ROI.
Chief Executive Officer, Navint
Jim Martindale is the CEO and driving force behind Navint’s vision to help companies modernize their revenue operations to meet the demands of today’s radically transforming and digitally-driven business models. Jim works closely with clients and teams to advise and implement lead-to-revenue business improvements that connect operations, process and technology – significantly impacting efficiency and growth for global enterprise companies including Indeed, Microfocus, Splunk, Diligent, and NBC Universal, Univision, NFL and Nike.
With 25 years of Management Consulting experience, Jim has expert understanding of business strategy, operations and technologies. He specializes in revenue and monetization models across industries, and has deep expertise in Media & Entertainment, Retail, SaaS, Manufacturing, and Professional Services.
Thursday, February 25 | 2:15-3:30 pm ET
Concurrent Roundtable Discussion: The CFO’s Role in Driving Customer Success and Top-Line Growth
The rapid shift to digital and XaaS business models has had an outsized impact in shaping both company-wide growth initiatives and the CFO transformation agenda. This roundtable will focus on the issues and implications surrounding this shift, and the CFO’s central role within it. Join a conversation with your peers to explore how the CFO is now at the forefront of driving customer success and top-line growth via critical digital initiatives. This robust conversation will help you evaluate:
Deputy Director, Economic Research; Committee for Economic Development, The Conference Board
Thursday, February 25 | 11:25 am-12:05 pm ET
Economic Outlook and Scenario Planning
CFOs that business performance is intrinsically linked to the broader global economy. While much is known about the future—interest rates are low, taxes are likely to increase, there are also large uncertainties—when will the Covid-19 threat dissipate, what will be the impact of the U.S. Elections, how will the global balance of power shift. Leaders need to make decisions in the face of uncertainty and develop plans for most likely scenarios with contingency plans in place. We’ll look at how the global economy is faring and what the leading indicators say for the future. Gain insights to help you plan for 2021 and beyond and take advantage of economic opportunities to best position your company for the future.
EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Marriott International
Kathleen (“Leeny”) K. Oberg was appointed as Marriott’s Chief Financial Officer, effective January 1, 2016. Most recently, Ms. Oberg was the Chief Financial Officer for The Ritz-Carlton since 2013, where she contributed significantly to the brand’s performance, growth, and organizational effectiveness.
Previously, Ms. Oberg served in a range of financial leadership positions with Marriott. From 2008 to 2013, she was the company’s Senior Vice President, Corporate and Development Finance, where she led a team that valued new hotel development projects and merger and acquisition opportunities, prepared the company’s long-range plans and annual budgets, and made recommendations for the company’s financial and capital allocation strategy.
From 2006 to 2008, Ms. Oberg served in London as Senior Vice President, International Project Finance and Asset Management for Europe and the Middle East and Africa, and as the region’s senior finance executive. Ms. Oberg first joined Marriott as part of its Investor Relations group in 1999.
Before joining Marriott, Ms. Oberg held a variety of financial leadership positions with such organizations as Sodexo (previously Sodexo Marriott Services), Sallie Mae, Goldman Sachs, and Chase Manhattan Bank. She currently serves on the Adobe Board of Directors.
She earned her Bachelor of Science in Commerce, with concentrations in Finance and Management Information Systems from the University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce and received her Master of Business Administration from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Thursday, February 25 | 10:40-11:20 am ET
Leading Beyond the Numbers: Marriott’s Dynamic Duo
CEOs increasingly are looking for finance chiefs willing to step up and be strategic partners, helping to guide the company toward sustainable success—and there’s no better example than the dynamic duo who lead Marriott. Marriott’s CFO Leeny Olberg will talk about her unique partnership with CEO Arne Sorenson running one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated companies through the most challenging time in its history—together. From day-to-day operations to how her CFO role has evolved over time, this will be an extraordinary session on strategic finance leadership with invaluable insights and advice on how you can become an indispensable asset to your CEO and board.
Chief Financial Officer, Aimbridge Hospitality
Tom joined Aimbridge Hospitality as Chief Financial Officer in January 2021. As a member of the Executive Team, he is responsible for leading Aimbridge Hospitality’s overall financial management and driving the Company’s financial strategies. He also plays an integral leadership role in guiding data driven investment and business development strategies. Tom overseas Aimbridge Hospitality’s debt and equity capital sourcing, acquisition structuring, hotel development and redevelopment, finance management, cash management, and real estate and partnerships.
Tom most recently was CFO of Dine Brands Global, Inc., one of the world’s largest full-service dining companies with 3,600 restaurants, including Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar® and IHOP® brands. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Innovation of Choice Hotels International, Inc., one of the largest lodging franchisors with more than 7,000 hotels, where he led global M&A, real estate, and strategic partnerships.
Thursday, February 25 | 1:45-2:15 pm ET
Leading Through Disruption
If you can’t predict what will happen, you can’t plan for it. Perhaps no industry saw as much disruption in 2020 as the hospitality industry. In an industry rocked by the shattering impact of Covid-19, Aimbridge Hospitality was fortunate to have already put in place a scenario planning process, in the aftermath of 9/11, predicting the adverse effects of different crises on revenue, working capital, the balance sheet and liquidity. Although this form of planning didn’t deter the carnage caused by the pandemic, it positioned Aimbridge (the world’s largest hotel management firm whose brands include Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt) to rapidly respond to the crisis. Aimbridge CFO Thomas Song will share how his finance team has driven a centralized approach to scenario planning to find a path towards resilience.
Chief Financial Officer, Quatris Healthco
Cari Thomas has more than 20 years of financial and management experience, with a key focus on aligning organizations and managing risk in high-growth sectors. She is currently CFO at Quatris Healthco, where she oversees HR and the finance functions. There she prioritizes growing the people needed to thrive in a tumultuous healthcare environment, leveraging the most suitable technology to operate in a fast paced and ever-changing market, and maintaining a fiscally sound firm. Within her first year, she co-led a NetSuite migration that has positioned the firm for continual growth and set up financial reporting systems to help the company optimize resources. Previously, as the CFO of Jibe Consulting, Cari played a key role in establishing an Indian subsidiary that allowed for local- and offshore-market growth. She also implemented an Oracle ERP system that transformed finance from a back-office player to a strategic front-office partner for our workforce. In her CFO capacity at Jibe, she won the 2013 CFO of the Year award, given by Portland Business Journal. Cari earns the trust of executives, tell compelling stories behind data, and move levers through lean teams; she honed these traits as a she built her “CFO for Hire” practice, working on projects for online retailing, electronics, high-tech, and professional services firms.
Outside of work, Cari supports her senior finance peers as a board member and the Past President of Financial Executive International Organization in Portland.
Thursday, February 25 | 12:15-12:55 pm ET
The Future of the Finance Function
As finance teams look to scale their financial systems and improve their forecasting abilities, progressive CFOs are redefining their data analytics agenda. This evolution positions the finance team to play a more strategic role throughout the organization. We’ll look at the other elements that play into forecasting beyond financial metrics, how to prioritize those metrics and which ones should dictate future business decisions. And, we’ll help you evaluate the technologies that will enable your finance department to move from descriptive to predictive analytics to deliver more value and respond faster to the needs of the business.
Managing Partner, The Cromwell Harbor Partnership; Author, The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
Will Thorndike is the Managing Partner of The Cromwell Harbor Partnership, a private investment company with a variety of long-term holdings. Prior to Cromwell Harbor, Thorndike founded Housatonic Partners, a leading private equity firm with offices in Boston and San Francisco known for exceptionally long investment holding periods.
At Housatonic, Thorndike was the pioneering institutional investor in the search fund asset class and played a central role in refining its acquisition criteria.
Thorndike is also a Founding Principal at TTCER, a private investment partnership, a co-Founder at Compounding Lab, an investment collaboration focused on long term consolidations, and a lead investor at Banyan Software, a related platform in the vertical market software industry. He is Chairman of the Board at CNX Resources, a publicly-traded (NYSE) energy company, and the Co-Chairman of EverArc Holdings, a London-based acquisition vehicle publicly traded on the LSE.
Thorndike is Research Advisor to Wellington Management’s Public Permanent Capital investment strategy and Co-Founder of Sun Mountain Partners, a public market investing partnership. He is also a Director of several private companies, including QMC Telecom.
Finally, Thorndike is a Founder and Jury Member for The Singleton Prize for CEO Excellence, serves as a Trustee for The Cromwell Harbor Foundation, WGBH, College of the Atlantic, and the Land and Garden Preserve.
He is a frequent lecturer at the Stanford GSB and the Harvard Business School and speaks often on both capital allocation and search funds. Thorndike is the author of The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success, which has been translated into twelve languages.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he lives in Boston with his wife, Genie, and two children, Charlotte and Nick.
Thursday, February 25 | 1:00-1:40 pm ET
Cash and Capital – A Blueprint for Optimizing Long-Term Value
Companies that outperform their industry groups over long periods of time take different approaches in terms of strategy, leadership and innovation but the outlier performers shared one commonality – they are good allocators of capital. Learn the secrets of Warren Buffett and other outstanding CEOs and create a checklist for capital allocation.
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