Her Story
About Jennifer
My main area of expertise is being able to go into an environment where it's a financial environment and easily assess whether we are in a good position to actually make money and see profitability. I work in transitions and do transformation services. When I start, most of the times there's a bit of chaos in terms of not being able to do reconciliations properly, or not closing the books on time, not understanding cash forecasting. I come in and do transformative work, establish good baselines, policies, as well as workflows for all of those core activities that improve productivity. I identify loopholes, where expenses are too high, where we're leaking money, and where we can't see our cash. Revenue is high, but we can't see our cash. So what I do is I come in and I do transformative work for finance teams. Today, I come into an organization, do a financial review, diagnostic, and help them to streamline their processes. I also do fractional CFO work, so if a company, small business, can't afford a full-time CFO, I come in and do the monthly reporting for them. I'm working with AI as well. I actually built a CFO agent where if companies can't afford even a fractional CFO, they can use the agent to analyze their data and give them CFO level responses.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jennifer
01What do you attribute your success to?
My faith is definitely number one. And then just having that tenacity to just not give up and being able to overcome obstacles. I see myself as an overcomer. Anything that's kind of thrown my way, if there's a bridge there, I'll figure out how to go under it or jump over it. People see a bridge, and they turn around. I see a bridge and I try to cross it.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would tell young women to believe in themselves. I would tell them to trust their voice. I would tell them to be their true self, understand who they are and what they bring to the table, and know that they have value. And then go forward. Always show up, and show up as your best self. Make sure your voice is heard. Don't sit back quiet and listen, because you have something to say. You have something to say, you're just too scared to say it. So make sure that when you go into the room, say what you need to say. Let them hear who you are and where you stand, and come with your authentic self.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think one of the biggest challenges is the speed of things now, the speed of needing to understand the numbers, the speed of needing to make decisions. Because of AI, because of all of the changes that we're in, we're in a different era now. One of the biggest challenges I see for organizations that have not made that shift, or even recognized that we're in a new shift now, is that we can't operate the way that we used to operate before. We need to start to utilize the tools that are available, because everyone is doing it. That's just like having a basketball team where all of the guys are still only 5 feet tall, well the rest of the teams have people who are 6'5". So you can't compete anymore. As for opportunities, I believe some of the opportunities is definitely coming out with being able to understand the finance side, the kinds of workflows, the structure, the SOPs, the people, and also understanding the technology. That's definitely where I think would be a good niche, because oftentimes organizations have the tools that they need, the pretty shiny tools, and it's often just that, just a pretty tool. They're not able to utilize it because the tool was not created for the organization. It was created for the manufacturer. If your department does not run like the person that created the tool, then you just have a faster tool, but you have faster chaos. I see the gap, and because I understand the accounting function from every aspect of accounting operations, I've sat in that seat. Having someone that can help to bring that information to an IT company, or engineer, whoever is working on building a new system for AI, I think that's where the gap is, and I think that's one of the biggest opportunities today.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say that certainly integrity and honesty is most valuable to me, and just being a steward. That's one of the things I look at when it comes to business, and with numbers and with finances. Being a steward, because there's people that rely on the data to be accurate. If we're meeting with dishonest numbers, we don't have the right numbers, we're kind of running with what we think we have, and then at the end of the day, we end up filing bankruptcy, or end up needing to be sold off and displacing a ton of people. So just having that stewardship and that integrity and just honesty, those are some of my values.
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