From Finance Specialist to AI-Enabled Generalist with Chris Garber, CFO at Guild

In this Greatest Hits episode of CFO Weekly, Aaron Levine, Chief Financial Officer at Prophix, joins Megan Weis to discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a CFO at a company whose technology is built for CFOs. Aaron shares insights on the evolving role of the CFO in today's tech-driven landscape, the importance of data stewardship, and how innovative financial solutions can enhance collaboration across teams.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Patrick Villanova, Chief Financial Officer at BlackLine, joins Megan Weis to explore how agentic AI is shifting the office of the CFO from binary, "yes/no" automation to autonomous decision-making. Drawing from a decade of leadership at BlackLine and deep experience in SEC reporting, Patrick discusses the critical need for "deterministic" AI, systems where perfection is the only allowable outcome and how these agents act as a strategic "fifth person in the room". He shares why the future of finance belongs to "data-savvy" professionals who embrace technology to transition from manual doers to high-impact reviewers.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Hari Sankar, Senior Vice President of Applications Development at Oracle, joins Megan Weis to explore how AI, automation, and cloud technology are transforming finance from a reactive, manual function into an automated, insightful, and connected strategic force, drawing from his fifteen-year journey at the intersection of finance and technology and Oracle’s mission to embed AI directly into core finance platforms.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Sara Daw, CEO of The CFO Centre Group Limited, joins Megan Weis to talk about the role of a fractional CFO in the growth of modern entrepreneurial businesses. Learn when growing companies should consider bringing on a fractional CFO, how experienced executives can successfully transition to fractional work, and why this flexible model is reshaping the future of executive leadership.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Todd McElhatton, COO and CFO at Zuora, joins Megan Weis to explore how the CFO-CEO relationship has evolved from reporting history to engineering outcomes, drawing from his three decades of experience leading finance and operations at SAP, Oracle, VMware, HP, and his role guiding Zuora through its $1.7 billion acquisition by Silver Lake and GIC.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Chris Garber, Chief Financial Officer at Guild, joins Megan Weis to explore how AI and automation are transforming finance leadership from technical specialists to cross-functional business generalists, drawing from his experience leading diverse teams across FP&A, analytics, sales ops, IT, and his fifteen-year journey with a transformational mentor who consistently pushed him into new functional areas to drive company impact.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Mark Dempster, Founder & Chief People Officer at The Circle by Founders Circle Capital, joins Megan Weis to explore how peer community has become essential infrastructure for CFOs navigating pre-IPO pressure, drawing from his experience building The Circle, a private leadership community serving 350 venture-backed CFOs, and his background as the first non-investor role at Sequoia Capital.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Kevin Appleby, Head of Partnerships at GrowCFO and host of the GrowCFO Show podcast, joins Megan Weis to explore how new CFOs can successfully navigate their critical first hundred days, drawing from his extensive experience mentoring finance leaders through the challenging transition from technical finance roles to strategic enterprise leadership.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Evan Schwartz, Chief Innovation Officer at AMCS Group, joins Megan Weis to explore how modern CFOs can avoid the Gartner-cited 70% ERP failure rate through strategic vision setting, vendor partnerships, and proactive change management, drawing from his 30+ years of experience driving digital transformation across resource-intensive industries and his Amazon best-selling book on ERP implementation.

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Devin Weil, Chief Financial Officer at ShipMonk, joins Megan Weis to explore how modern CFOs are transforming operational finance by embedding themselves directly in warehouse and logistics operations, drawing from his experience building field finance organizations at XPO and leading finance for one of the fastest-growing tech-enabled fulfillment platforms managing 1,600 employees across 12 global locations.