Finance leaders at OpenAI, Bumble, and Alphabet’s Wing on how they got doors to open throughout their careers

As the year comes to a close, you may be reflecting upon your career. 

I had the opportunity to have conversations with three finance leaders who are navigating the always fast-paced tech industry, especially this year with the AI explosion—OpenAI VP of finance Janine Korovesis, Wing CFO Shannon Nash, and Bumble CFO Anu Subramanian. From overcoming imposter syndrome to investing in continual learning, to working in different areas of finance before becoming a CFO, these leaders share useful advice from their varied experiences.

Shannon Nash, CFO at Wing, the on-demand drone delivery company, an Alphabet subsidiary

“Earlier on in my career, it was really about getting the technical skills and making sure that I spent a lot of time with mentors. I wanted to get a better feel of how people navigate their career, so I could see a pathway.”

“Then, I really started investing more in myself as I wanted to become a CFO. I invested time in leadership classes because a big part of being successful in your career journey is not just the technical skills; it’s also managing people in a team and showing that you can do that in a way that helps a company accomplish its goals. There were several times when I invested my own money and time in joining organizations.”

“I remember one leadership group in particular in the Bay Area called Hipower. They brought together roughly 20 women in a year-long leadership cohort and talked about how you can go from important to relevant or significant. There were leadership lessons, but the cohort also focused on questions like, how do you develop your platform? And, once you’re in this network, how do you help others? It’s easier for a company, I think, to invest in someone who’s willing to invest in themselves.” 

“To be an effective CFO, you have to be a lifelong learner. I don’t actually think that’s new for CFOs. But the reality is, maybe the pace of how things are changing is a lot quicker, as with AI. I take a lot of continuing education classes. I have a CPA license and a law license, so I am required to take a certain number of hours on a yearly basis. But even if I weren’t, I would still do continuing education hours.”

Janine Korovesis, VP of finance at OpenAI, an AI research and deployment company

“The best career advice that I’ve ever gotten is that no one knows your area of work better than you do. It took me a long time to step into that ownership. In a previous role, I was talking with someone that I worked with about how I was nervous to give a presentation to our controller in that particular month. And she said: ‘Are you nervous? No one knows what you’re working on more than you do.’ And something clicked for me.”

“The first thing it did was help wipe away some of the fear of the imposter syndrome that somebody else knows more than I do. The second thing that it did was instill a real sense of responsibility in me. So, as the shepherd and owner of this information, what is the level of care that I need to work with every single day to make sure that I can speak about it in a way that drives business value, and helps people make better decisions?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever had a super formal mentorship or sponsorship relationship. But I’ve always made sure that I’m standing next to someone who was willing to teach me, and they weren’t worried about my success impeding their own. The biggest thing is just making sure that the person you’re standing next to is not closing any doors for you.”

On providing mentorship: “I think that, honestly, the best thing I can do is just be candid. I’m the executive sponsor of our women and nonbinary resource group. What I try and do for them is answer questions very honestly about factors I’ve seen in my own career that have kind of formed who I am.” 

Anu Subramanian, CFO at Bumble Inc., a dating and networking app

“Growing up, my dad was a banker. I was surrounded by a lot of people who worked in business and finance. I was always very motivated to be in the sector because I grew up hearing about the stock market.”

“I’ve been fortunate in the sense that I’ve seen various aspects of finance in my career. I started my career as an accountant. I moved on to being a banker, and then I sort of progressively moved into more operational CFO-type roles. And in some ways, my current role allows me to put together everything that I’ve done over the course of the last 20-plus years.”

“The role of the CFO is very different from what it used to be 20 years ago. You are often the person that has the most purview over everything that happens in the company. I definitely think the role of the CFO is really about how you connect the dots. The ability to be a storyteller and to communicate the vision of the company and how that ties to the strategy of the company is very crucial. I learned a lot of that in my career, both as a banker when all my clients were media companies, and as a CFO working in the media business.”

“The first thing I insist for anybody who joins the finance organization is you have to understand how the business works. I tell all my teams that it doesn’t matter if you’re a junior accountant, if you’re an accounts payable person, or if you’re a senior FP&A person.”

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

Leaderboard

David Sailer was promoted to EVP and CFO at Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CCO), effective March 1. Sailer will succeed Brian Coleman, who will become a consultant to the company until April 15, 2025. Sailer has been the EVP and CFO of the Americas since August 2014. Before joining Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings in 2013, he was the CFO of the NBC News Digital Portfolio. 

David Lyle was named CFO at Mitek Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: MITK), a digital identity and fraud prevention provider, effective Jan. 2. Fuad Ahmad, Mitek’s current interim CFO, will remain with Mitek for a transition period. Lyle brings 28 years of technology industry experience, 16 of which were spent at public companies as CFO, including Surgalign Spine Technologies and Airgain, Inc. 

Big deal

Datarails, a financial planning and analysis platform for Excel users, has released an analysis of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings by 1,639 of the biggest U.S. Listed companies. This included complete filings for 2022 and partial filings for 2023. 

The study finds that the CFOs in the sample group received an average annual total compensation of about $3.5 million, putting them into fourth place for C-suite compensation at the largest 1,639 publicly listed companies—including salary, bonuses, stock awards, and options. The highest paid is the CEO ($9.7 million).

However, CFOs have seen an average increase of 1% in compensation in 2022, compared to a 6% decrease for CEOs, Datarails found. The analysis also looks at the tenure for C-suite roles and the path to the CEO seat.

Going deeper

Older Workers Are Growing in Number and Earning Higher Wages, a new report by Pew Research Center, finds that about one-in-five Americans ages 65 and older (19%) were employed in 2023, which is almost double the share of those who were working 35 years ago. Earning power for older workers has also grown in recent decades. In 2022, the typical worker age 65 or older earned $22 per hour, up from $13 in 1987, according to Pew.

Overheard

“My perfect meeting starts with a crisp document…and a messy meeting. I don’t keep to a strict schedule. My meetings often go longer than I plan for them to because I believe in wondering.”

—Amazon’s cofounder Jeff Bezos said on the latest episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast, Coins2Day reported.