Welcome to The Diary of a CFO Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

The path to the C suite is rarely linear and the challenges don't stop once you get there. I'm Wassia Kamon and I'm taking you with me on my jo

urney as a newly appointed CFO, sharing the hidden challenges and spoken rules and lessons I wish I had known. So whether you're in finance, Work in finance, or just trying to get your budget approved faster.

There's something here for you. The purpose of this podcast is to make better leaders and help leaders be better at life. Welcome to the Diary of a CFO. Welcome to the first episode of the Diary of a CFO. I'm your host, Wassia Kamon, and I'm so excited to have you here. In this first episode, I want to go over who am I?

Why I'm doing this and what you should expect in the future. I'll go through the multiple hats I'm wearing. My first and obvious one is CFO. I'm the Chief Financial Officer of an organization called ACE, Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs. We are a not for profit lender who provides affordable loans to underserved communities and entrepreneurs.

Another hat I'm wearing is Keynote Speaker. I've been speaking on change management and strategic influence for the past couple years. Another hat I'm wearing is Guest Contributor and Content Creator. Mostly on LinkedIn, I've been featured in publication like the Wall Street Journal, Strategic Finance and Accounting Today.

So writing a lot about finance and accounting. I'm now a guest faculty for Wharton Online for their FBNA certificate program. And these are just the professional hats. Okay. I haven't even gotten into the not professional hats, which is I'm a mom. I have two kids, age 10 and nine. Even though I feel like my 10 year old is.

older than she's acting, but oh well. I'm also a volunteer. I'm a board member for a not for profit organization called HOPE, and we help single parents complete their education degree so they don't have to work two jobs. We help them so that by the time they graduate, they don't have as much debt and they have been able to actually complete an education that will allow them to do better in life.

And also, These are all the hats. And so why am I doing this? Why in the world am I doing this? Um, good question. I'm glad you asked. The first reason is because it's fresh in my mind. Um, I'm launching a podcast about 30 days after starting this new CFO role. I've never been a CFO before. Drinking from a fire hose is an understatement.

I will say that I've been swallowed by the fire hose. That's a better way to say it. When I announced that I became a CFO, a lot of people reached out to me on LinkedIn, and it made me realize that there is so much I want to share with people about my journey, and it's hard to do it by writing posts, because writing is great, but it's Sometimes hard to capture the complexities of how you succeed in the corporate world.

And I realized that podcasting allows for more in depth conversation. I want to be able to provide insights that address that intersection of optimizing a business financially while having a rewarding career and personal life. Why is this needed? Because a lot of managers never received formal leadership training and coaching when they're first starting leading people.

That was my case. I also ran a study on LinkedIn that showed that, yes, I'm not the only one. And so as a result, they often tend to become bad managers before becoming great leaders. If they actually make the shift at some point. And so you realize that managers need help. Leaders need help. It is not easy to lead.

If you go, for example, on Google and you start typing my manager, the suggestions that you will see is. My manager is toxic, incompetent, or gaslighting me. That's what Google. will fill in the blank for you when you stop typing my manager in Google search. So I really hope that through this podcast, managers and leaders alike will learn, have different perspectives, see things differently.

And now the third reason why I'm doing this is because. I haven't seen a lot of people looking like me do this and do it from this angle. And if you are listening to the podcast, you may have not noticed, but I'm a young black woman with an accent. And so I'm in the category by default of least expected to make it, especially in corporate finance at a level where I am now in a C suite for a.

Very well established organization. And so I want to do it, not just to inspire people, but to share challenges I had to overcome so we can all become better leaders, more inclusive leaders, and have different angles and perspective about how we approach business. I do have a fourth reason, and that is. AI.

Deep breath in, oof, out. I'm burned out a little bit about the AI buzz, all the buzz around AI. Because I feel like all this buzz is distracting us from what really matters. What do I mean by that? Yes, you can write a better prompt, but if you're not able to influence a human across from you that's making the end decision, sorry, the end decision makers will always be human.

So you can try one of these tools that say, oh, I'll help you optimize your resume, get AI, you get the interview. But if you are not good at interviewing, it doesn't matter that you use AI or not. You will not get that job. And so what I really want to cover in this podcast is what are those business skills that business will always need and that AI will never replace things like strategic influence, things like leading change, business partnering, things that I really believe that AI is accelerating the need for, that is really what I want to focus in this podcast.

So it doesn't matter whether you're in finance or not, you will gain something from it. Now, I told you who I was. At a very high level, why I was doing this, right? Because it's fresh. I haven't seen somebody like me doing this. It's needed. There is AI distracting us. Now, what can you expect in the future episode?

If you're in finance and accounting and aiming for any C suite role, you will learn valuable insight on how to climb the ladder without losing your soul and your sanity in the process. If you're already in the C suite, you will learn different ways to maximize your impact. And if you're working with the C suite or selling to the C suite, you'll have great insight.

into what keeps us at night to better support us and help us make our organization better. Every episode will likely be very different. All right. Some will be long. Some will be short like this one because you know, it's almost like a little teaser so you can come back for more. You know how they do at Costco.

Maybe Costco was not a good example. Anyway, you got the point, right? What I can guarantee you is that there will always be something valuable. You will always find something of value to walk away with. Now I could stop here, but it wouldn't be right. I need to dive a little deeper, right? Dive a little deeper into who I am.

Let's do it. That's a great idea. Yes. I'm an extrovert. If you haven't noticed that I'm an extrovert. So, uh, having worked remotely, I definitely need an outlet and a friend and a friend to talk to. So this mic here is going to be my friend. I will probably should give him a name. So if you have ideas, please send me a message.

I would like to know how I should call my new friend here. You know, extroverts need, need company. All right. So you probably hear in my voice, I have an accent and that is because I'm originally from Avery coast. Avery coast is located in West Africa in between Ghana and Liberia. We are former French colony, and that's why the official language there is French.

So I grew up speaking French. From kindergarten, all the way to high school, when I graduated, I came to the United States. I could read, I could write, but I couldn't understand. And out of all places, when I graduated, I came to Georgia, in Atlanta, in the South, y'all. So yes, my accent, my voice will be switching throughout because of my heritage.

I've been in the state for over two decades. It's hard to believe, but yes, I've officially spent more time living in the United States Then in the Ivory Coast, I originally came to be working in actual science. After that first statistic course, I was like, no, we're not doing that. So I'm moving to accounting.

I took my first accounting course. I loved it. And then I took this personality test. I say, yes, you'll be a great accountant. And I believed it. OK, I was just 19 years old by that time. So I went all in accounting. I interned first at a not for profit. Funny enough, my first role was bookkeeper at a not for profit.

So it's almost like a full circle moment to be now. My first CFO role ever is in a not for profit. I then went to work for a CPA firm. Um, I learned a lot about high net worth individual tax strategies for LLC, S corp and all that stuff, but it was boring to me. Okay. So I decided to, Hey, let's try audit, especially in college.

It was all about the big four. And I got an internship at PwC, PricewaterhouseCoopers. Hated it. It didn't fit my personality. I didn't realize in college that, uh, when you're an auditor, the minute you step in, people want you out. And I like people. I like being around people. And that feeling of daily rejection, I was like, uh, no.

So I was fortunate enough to land a role as staff accountant in a manufacturing company that was also a technology company. I stayed there for almost nine years. Actually, I stayed there for nine years. And that's where I really, um, learned the world of corporate accounting and finance. The company grew tremendously, almost doubling.

If not tripled in size while I was there, um, when I started, the department was just five, barely five people. By the time I left, I was controlling that overseeing over 15 direct and indirect report. The reason I left there was one, because I had started the financial planning and analysis department, FPNA, and loved it, but it was only 25 percent of my job, so I wanted to do more of that.

And the second reason was because I didn't speak Greek. Yes, that company was Greek owned. It was, uh, traded on the Greek stock exchange, but we're private here in the U. S. And they really like the CFO to speak Greek and be able to conduct business in Greek and present budget in Greek. And this African woman now, I just learned English.

Should I learn again? Another language. Wow. Okay. So I left. And so from this role, I went into full 100 percent FBNA. And a pharmaceutical company, great culture, their COVID hit, COVID hit me when I was there. And COVID, like many other things, well, that time of the great resignation, looking for more, looking for better, wondering what are we doing in this world?

And that's how I started building my brand on LinkedIn, starting speaking. And wanted to see more of the world. And I took this role as VP of finance and accounting at a chemical manufacturer. And then I fell in love with not for profit because at about the same time I had joined the board of a not for profit called Hope.

And what we do at Hope, because I'm still with Hope, I'm the treasurer, is that we help single parent complete their education degree so people can actually go to college, go from. Being maybe at a McDonald to becoming a nurse. And while they're doing it, they're required to have a full time job. They're also required to be at school at a part time with a certain grade point average.

And so it's been an amazing experience. And that's when I started that journey of, Ooh, I really want to work for impact. And I got a great opportunity to join a CDFI called the low income investment fund that is also in the same space as ACE. So after I left the low income investment fund, I became now chief financial officer here at ACE.

And what we do is helping entrepreneurs in areas that. Banks like Bank of America, the Wells Fargo may not be able to give because of some of their regulations, but we able to have such an impact here in the state of Georgia. It's amazing. I will probably have a whole episode about the work that we do, but it's, it's been an amazing journey and being an impact lending, working for not for profit, I will say, doesn't mean that, The accounting is easier.

Uh, if not, I think it's even more complicated. It doesn't mean that, oh, uh, we're not paying bills or we're not meeting with funders or investors. No, it's all accounting and finance is the same, is the same people. It is the. Same is just as hard, just as demanding. The hours can be crazy. We need better systems.

We need to upscale. So the needs are really the same, and I'm really looking forward to us having better decisions on how we can do better. How should we be doing a better job as finance and business leaders? This is it for today. I know you want to hear more, so watch the next episode. Thanks for tuning in.

If this episode resonated with you and you are just as excited as I am for what's to come next, don't forget to subscribe and share it. I'm Wasi Akamu and I will see you next in an episode with more insight to help you be a better leader and be better at life.