In this episode of The Diary of a CFO: Live in Atlanta, I sat down in person with Donna Cohen, Chief Financial Officer at CarMax Auto Finance. Donna is a board-ready qualified financial expert with deep expertise in M&A, spinoffs, corporate restructurings, and large-scale technology and automation initiatives. She has been at CarMax for almost 14 years.
We talked about why she believes every finance leader should spend time in operations before stepping into the CFO seat and how it changed the way she reads numbers, allocates capital, and leads her team. The PE experience that destroyed her faith in corporate America and the "liberation day" she gave herself when she walked away. How CarMax brought her back and why the culture made her feel like she was coming home. Her approach to making change stick inside a large organization, including the seed-planting strategy she uses to influence decisions months before they need to happen. How she introduces AI to teams that are skeptical, starting with something as simple as asking ChatGPT for a recipe. The breaking point where she realized she had nothing left for herself and how she rebuilt from there. And why she says she had no idea she was capable of being a CFO.
This episode is brought to you by Fispan. By embedding banking services directly into ERP and accounting software, Fispan streamlines financial workflows, reduces costs, and enhances efficiency for businesses of all sizes. Learn more at fispan.com.
This is part of The Diary of a CFO: Live in Atlanta, a limited in-person series where I sit down with CFOs and senior finance leaders right here in Atlanta.
Connect with Donna Cohen: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-b-cohen-a019314/
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