FEI Podcast

What happens when a finance team lacks the capacity to keep transformation moving? Host Heather Cole talks with Jill Eubank, Executive Vice President of Randstad Professional Talent Solutions, about manual debt – the legacy workarounds, brittle processes, and key person dependencies that hold back AI ROI – and the operational insurance that keeps daily work flowing while teams transform. In this episode: Three ways manual debt shows up: capacity overload, the transformation trap, and tribal knowledge risk Why 88% of CFOs call manual debt their biggest barrier to AI ROI Operational insurance and the discipline to say no The accountant and architect mindsets in finance How a publicly traded solar company removed 28 hours from every monthly close A three-question reality check for financial leaders A “glocal” approach for multinational finance functions Resources mentioned: 2026 Finance Leader Playbook: Capitalizing the AI-Driven Finance Function: https://www.randstadusa.com/business/business-insights/guide/finance-playbook/ 30-second diagnostic tool to benchmark your current operational maturity: https://share.hsforms.com/2_Fp8Hmq8RFOfBDhjrqgEfw29irg Randstad website: https://www.randstadusa.com/ Randstad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/randstad/ Special Guest: Jill Eubank.

Keith Ferrazzi wrote Never Eat Alone, the book that defined modern relationship building. He became chief marketing officer of Deloitte by age 30, and today, as founder and chairman of Ferrazzi Greenlight, he coaches executive teams at some of the world’s largest companies through transformation. In this episode of the FEI Podcast, he turns to the ideas in his latest book, Never Lead Alone, and what they mean for financial leaders in an AI world. Ferrazzi explains why AI success should be measured by results instead of tool usage, using a yellow, brown and black belt model borrowed from Six Sigma. He makes the case for zero-based workflow design, shares how Red Hat mapped its most important workflows to run the business with AI, and describes co-elevation – the practice of teams pushing each other higher through a challenge culture. He also explains how the financial planning process can become an engine for change, why CFOs should get into the weeds and co-create with their partners, and why nobody, including the experts, knows the perfect path forward. Fortune 1000 CFOs can apply to join the Radical Innovators Collaborative at no cost: https://radicalinnovatorscollaborative.org ``Special Guest: Keith Ferrazzi.

If your budget is technically accurate but disconnected from where your company is headed, you don’t have a numbers problem – you have an alignment problem. In this sponsored episode of the FEI Podcast, Ryan Langenbrunner, Worldwide Leader for Planning Analytics with IBM’s Chief Data Office; Bill Primerano, Worldwide CTO for AI Analytics at IBM; and Michael Bernaiche, Director of AI Analytics Software at Lodestar Solutions, draw on decades of experience on both sides of financial planning. They discuss how IBM moved from 120-slide control books and multiweek review cycles to a daily close, why a “single” budget that reached version 1.32 shows the limits of accuracy without timeliness, and why AI in finance should be treated as augmented intelligence with a human in the loop. The panel also explores who should govern AI spending and ROI, the cost of falling behind on planning technology, how to avoid being won over by a shiny demo, and why the best time to start writing your planning requirements is during this year’s budget cycle. `` This episode is sponsored by Lodestar Solutions. Host Heather Cole is the founder and owner of Lodestar Solutions.Special Guests: Bill Primerano, Mike Bernaiche, and Ryan Langenbrunner.

CFO and Member of FEI Dallas Mark Dendle joins the FEI Podcast to discuss the frameworks that have guided his career leading financial transformations across public companies, private equity-backed businesses, and family-owned enterprises. Dendle shares his approach to acquisition integration, his ABC method for prioritizing competing initiatives, why compensation must align with the outcomes an organization wants, and how AI tools like Claude are turning days of work into minutes for finance teams. He also discusses the responsibility financial leaders have to develop their people through periods of rapid technological change. Special Guest: Mark Dendle.

Recorded live at the FEI Financial Leaders Forum in San Antonio, this episode features Jill Nelson, CFO of Texas811, who went from call center representative to the C-suite. Nelson discusses how she blends art and finance through her Wander Workshop program, the neuroscience behind creative practice, and how clear vision and change management help teams move past fear, resistance, and manual work as the profession prepares for AI.Special Guest: Jill Nelson.

This episode explores the reaction tax, a concept describing the hidden costs businesses pay when decision windows close before leadership sees the warning signs. Thomas DeFabrizio, CFO of Impellam Group Americas, walks through the KPIs, shared definitions, and compensation strategies financial leaders can use to move from reactive firefighting to proactive, future-focused leadership, along with how AI and outcome-based business models are reshaping finance.Special Guest: Thomas DeFabrizio.

Dolly Lalvani, a CPA and FEI Central Pennsylvania Chapter Leader, joins the FEI Podcast to share how a promise to her father shaped her path to the CPA license, why she treats mentorship as a two-way commitment rather than a transaction, and what active involvement in FEI Chapters, state boards, and NASBA has taught her about belonging to a profession. The conversation closes with her perspective on staying grounded and building relationships as AI reshapes the way financial leaders work.Special Guest: Dolly Lalvani.

What if your AI strategy is already at risk, not because your team is behind on AI, but because finance is trying to run the future on systems built for the past? In this episode, Alex Curran, CEO of Aptitude Software, discusses why AI success in finance is an architecture issue, a data issue, and a leadership issue. Curran shares her SCALE framework for assessing whether a finance function is ready to support AI, explains the emerging finance ERP category, and offers guidance for financial leaders who feel they are running out of time to modernize.Special Guest: Alex Curran.

What happens when a CFO trades the structure of a traditional corporate finance career for the unpredictability of a startup? In this episode, recorded live at FEI's Financial Leaders Forum in San Antonio, host Heather Cole sits down with Chrissy O'Hara, CFO of SoftLedger, to talk about the real tradeoffs of entrepreneurial freedom: cash flow stress, family members who keep asking when the “real job” is coming, and the discipline it takes to keep pivoting when plans change. O'Hara also shares how she learned to let go of the perfectionism her CPA training instilled, how she and her team use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT day to day, and why she believes more finance and accounting professionals need to step into entrepreneurship and be in the room shaping the next generation of tools, rather than waiting for someone else to make those decisions for them.Special Guest: Chrissy O'Hara.

What happens when a CFO realizes AI could replace her job, and decides to master it instead? In this episode, host Heather Cole sits down with Kevina Purmanund, CFO of the 1826 Group, live from the FEI Financial Leaders Forum in San Antonio. Purmanund shares how a single conversation with an investor sparked her AI journey, how she now runs ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot side by side to compare results, and how a revenue-per-head report that used to take a week now takes 30 minutes. She also opens up about the mistakes AI has caused, the review process she built to catch them, and how she brought a skeptical accounting team along with weekly demos and hands-on projects. Along the way, they cover data security and compliance, what to look for in AI training, and why investing in coaching and peer networks has been just as important to her growth as any AI tool. Whether you are just starting to experiment or already building your own tools, this conversation offers a candid look at what it takes to lead through change.Special Guest: Kevina Purmanund.