As founding member and co-chair of the Orange County CFO Leadership Council, Guita Sharifi has help build the foundation and growth of the Southern California local chapter of a leading professional association whose mission is to empower senior financial executives.  In her important role, she has acted as a mentor to many other CFO members of this burgeoning organization. Guita also works to develop effective executive programming annually to assist CFOs in bettering their businesses. This year, the Orange County CFO Leadership Council congratulates co-chair Guita Sharifi on her 6th consecutive-year nomination for CFO of the Year from Orange County

During the last decade or more, the business world has officially moved into a new and exciting digital age. With intelligent or “extreme” automation on the forefront of many company’s agendas, CFOs have to be prepared for this shift that has already begun taking place. Ash Noah, CPA, CGMA, from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants connects with CFOs globally to understand the changing role of finance. He recently spoke to us about how technology coupled with competency can fuel business agility and the success of finance as a whole. Why Agility? So what can CFOs and their teams

An acquisitions attorney took a rather frustrated call from his client following the completion of an acquisition, with the awkward question regarding a particular operational surprise: “Why didn’t you think of that?”  It’s easy to imagine that the client had earlier asked for a comprehensive due diligence checklist, expecting more wisdom from such a list than is warranted. Of course, diligence checklists can be invaluable to assessing a potential target.  However, a CFO is well-advised to look beyond checklists when evaluating a potential company for acquisition.  Even the most “complete” checklists are typically limited, to facts and figures, legal documents,

Divide & Conquer An excerpt from the book The Transition Game, written by CFOLC member Greg Olney. For more information on Olney, scroll down. The “Divide & Conquer” strategy can be a good thing if you’re talking about an algorithm set in recursion to divide a problem into sub-problems. A big problem can be answered in an expeditious fashion this way. But when the “Divide & Conquer” approach is used on right relationships, it’s seldom good. Most of the time, people in positions of power will use this technique to stay in power by using: Meaninglessness – When people in

Coming up on December 11th in our NYC chapter, we are holding a discussion that I know will be quite interesting – the topic is on The Indispensable CFO.  This title made me think to myself, what does a CFO ( or financial executive headed toward this position) have to do to be recognized as indispensable; how does one develop h/herself to be Indispensable in this current culture? While CFO’s across all organizations demonstrate strong financial acumen and functional expertise, the most successful CFO’s acknowledge the need to leverage competencies beyond financial oversight that align with the tenets of their organization’s strategy,

“It wasn’t so many years ago that pre-acquisition assessments of a company’s technology were limited to check-the-box activities”, reflected Patrick Moroney, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Central States Funds and previously CIO of several private equity-backed industrial and healthcare companies.  “Meantime, the level of connected-ness among a company’s operations, financial results, and its information systems has completely changed that.  Acquirers must consider the increasing dependency of all organizational functions on technology as digitization and a globally-pervasive internet raising competitive standards.  The thoughtfulness of a target’s technology strategy (or its absence) can provide leading indicators of post-closing surprises that could make-or-break