“The role of the CFO is really evolving ... I spend as much time with my CHRO as anyone in the finance function.”
Gina Mastantuono studied accounting at the State University of New York at Albany because she figured “they always need accountants, even in a recession.”
The chief financial officer of ServiceNow, who was recently named to Forbes’ CEO Next list of leaders likely to lead some of America’s largest companies, then got a job at EY and has been taking risks ever since. She left EY to become international CFO at Revlon, then “a dollar stock going through a big revitalization,” and moved her young family to the West Coast to join IT giant Ingram Micro because it offered an opportunity to work in a business that had scale and “razor-thin margins.”
With ServiceNow, a born-in-the-cloud software company that helps companies manage digital work flow, she was attracted to the challenge of working in high-growth tech and the chance to learn from CEO Bill McDermott. Along the way, Mastantuono says, it’s clear that the role of the CFO is changing. “We’re absolutely being looked at as the strategic partner across the enterprise. connecting the dots across the enterprise,” she says.
That means working more closely with C-suite peers, from collaborating with the CIO on investment priorities to talent leaders on recruiting and retaining people as the company rapidly expands. “I spend as much time with my CHRO as anyone in the finance function,” she says, “looking at how we’re driving purposeful work, how we’re thinking about talent strategy across the board.”
Click on the video above to hear Mastantuono’s thoughts on taking calculated risks, developing empathy, and the power of being uncomfortable as a leader.
