Register

Fall 2026

Agenda
Monday, October 12

2:00 – 4:30 pm MT

CFO Tech Automation Challenge
SOLD OUT

Please email events@chiefexecutivegroup.com if you would like to be added to the waitlist. 

A curated workshop experience built entirely from real CFO-submitted finance technology challenges.

Before the conference, CFOs submit their most pressing automation and systems issues. Those anonymized challenges shape a focused, executive-level agenda featuring a thought leader keynote, two rounds of structured tech challenge responses from five solution providers, and moderated Q&A designed to surface practical insight—not product pitches.

The workshop concludes with CFO peer roundtables led by industry thought leaders, where finance leaders engage in candid discussion around automation tools, implementation strategy, ROI, and change management.

The result: exposure to multiple solution approaches, independent strategic framing, and peer-to-peer clarity in a tightly structured format.

Learn More

Tickets $95. Offered exclusively to Fall CFO Conference attendees. 2 CPEs offered.

5:00 – 6:30 pm MT

Registration, Welcome Reception, & Exhibit Hall Open
Tuesday, October 13

8:00 – 9:00 am MT

Registration & Networking Breakfast

9:00 – 9:10 am MT

Opening Remarks

9:10 – 10:00 am MT

KEYNOTE: What Elite Military Teams Teach CFOs About Performance, Accountability & Growth

Speaker: Michael Sarraille | #3 Globally Ranked Leadership Speaker, Bestselling Author, Retired Navy Seal, Chief Talent Officer at Overwatch Mission Critical

Mike Sarraille has led at the highest levels of both elite military operations and high-growth businesses—commanding special operations units authorized directly by the President and later building and exiting companies as a CEO. In this powerful keynote, Sarraille will translate lessons from SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, and special mission units into a practical framework for how leaders build teams that perform under pressure, adapt faster than competitors, and consistently deliver results.

Drawing on two decades of combat leadership and hands-on experience scaling and restructuring businesses, Sarraille challenges conventional thinking about hiring, performance management, and leadership development. For CFOs—who sit at the intersection of talent decisions, operational discipline, and financial outcomes—the message is clear: talent strategy is not an HR issue; it is a value-creation lever. And these principles have never been more critical amid tighter capital, flatter organizations, and the need to do more with fewer resources—without sacrificing performance

You’ll hear how elite teams:

  • Select for resilience, judgment, and adaptability—not just credentials
  • Pressure-test leaders before the stakes are high
  • Build accountability without bureaucracy
  • Align performance management to speed, trust, and execution
  • Create cultures that perform in volatile, high-expectation environments

10:00 – 10:50 am MT

VISIONARY SESSION: Smarter Spend, Healthier People: The Employer Healthcare Playbook for What's Next

Speaker: Marybeth Gray | Senior Vice President, Health & Welfare Benefits Consulting, Marsh McLennan Agency

Our presentation tackles the questions your organization is already wrestling with: 1. How will we afford to continue the current healthcare benefits into the future?  2. Are your health investments actually working? 3. What does the data tell you?   We will discuss – what does it take to build a strategy grounded in evidence that your workforce trusts and your leadership will fund? And what would it mean to walk into your next budget conversation with the confidence to back every decision? We need to build clinically integrated healthcare ecosystems that improve access to care, help members navigate to higher quality providers, drive engagement with our expensive point solutions, and deliver measurable outcomes across members health.  Many point solutions have not yielded a ROI for employers, and they are not working together as an integrated program. 

Our session highlights include:

  • Understanding the top cost drivers for employers in the US
  • How Leading Employers Are Modernizing Benefits with Medical Innovation and Precision Medicine
  • The Precision of Proactive Intervention: Targeted Health Strategies and new clinical programs to raise quality and lower cost
  • Avoiding the Hidden Cost of Fragmentation: The Power of Integrated Healthcare point solutions


We want you to leave with tangible strategies to consider that will lower current and future healthcare costs for plan sustainability.

10:50 – 11:20 am MT

Networking Break in the Exhibit Hall

11:20 am – 12:10 pm MT

Breakout Sessions

Presented by Brex

Kevin Moore | VP, Controller at Brex 

CFOs are under pressure to tighten spend — but blunt cost-cutting often damages growth, morale, and execution. This session explores how finance leaders are building smart spend governance that protects margins without slowing the business. Discussion topics to include:
  • Where cost discipline often breaks down
  • How CFOs distinguish “bad spend” from strategic investment
  • Creating accountability without bureaucracy

Presented by Tipalti

Clyde Calhoun | Founder & CEO, Root Idea
Rob Israch | President, Tipalti
James Thomas | Director of Growth Strategy, Tipalti

Finance organizations are being asked to do more than ever before: deliver greater insight, support faster decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and help the business navigate constant change. The challenge isn’t simply adopting AI; it’s building a finance organization that’s equipped to evolve alongside the business.

Rather than focusing on transformation for transformation’s sake, this discussion will highlight practical lessons from leaders who are helping their organizations modernize how finance operates—from balancing innovation with operational discipline to leveraging AI and automation to enable faster, more confident decision-making.

Key Takeaways

  • Leadership strategies for modernizing finance while managing continuous change
  • Practical ways to strengthen finance’s role as a strategic partner across the enterprise
  • Turn AI and automation into meaningful outcomes rather than technology for technology’s sake

Presented by Capstan

Caleb Avery | Founder and CEO, Tilled
Mike Breeze MBA | Partner and CFO, Capstan Tax Strategies
Ben Jones | Business Development Manager, Capstan
Jacob Wood JD | Partner, Capstan Tax Strategies

Most CFOs think about tax compliance, not strategic tax incentives. But when you treat incentives like a value lever instead of an afterthought, you introduce a new competitive advantage.
 
In this session, a panel of CFOs will break down how they help their clients identify, evaluate, and leverage specialty tax incentives — like R&D Tax Credits, Energy Incentives, and Cost Segregation — in ways that meaningfully improve cash flow.  Facilitated by a specialty tax expert, this conversation will explore the CFO’s decision-making process – including practical screening questions for all industries.
 
Expect true stories, real numbers, and a candid look at how CFOs use incentives to scale operations, offset payroll, and unlock strategic initiatives
 
Plus – it’s easier than you think.

Presented by Planful

Natalie Quan | Chief Financial Officer, CalCPA
Marina Ureche | Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Planful

The window to answer has closed. Boards want the re-forecast this week. Budget owners want their variance today. And every CFO is now expected to have a position on AI, often well before the finance team has the foundation to support one.CalCPA runs finance for a 45,000-member professional association across three entities with a small team. Natalie Quan, CFO, joins Planful for a candid conversation about what the job actually demands now and what she rebuilt to meet it.

Discover:

  • Where finance time really goes, and which part of the delay is structural rather than habit.
  • Ways to close the gap between a question and a defensible answer without adding headcount.
  • What it takes to know whether your organization is ready for AI, and what governance has to be in place first.
  • How to stay honest about AI’s limits while your CEO is asking finance to lead on it.

12:10 – 1:45 pm MT

Networking Lunch in the Exhibit Hall

12:10 – 1:00 pm MT

Industry Networking Lunch Tables

Connect with finance leaders who understand the unique opportunities and challenges of your industry. During lunch, attendees can choose an industry-specific table to engage in peer-to-peer discussions, exchange best practices, and build relationships with professionals facing similar business realities.

Whether you’re navigating manufacturing, healthcare, technology, private equity, nonprofit, financial services, or another sector, these informal conversations are designed to help you expand your network, share practical insights, and continue the discussion beyond the conference sessions.

Why participate?

  • Network with finance leaders from your industry
  • Exchange ideas and best practices with peers
  • Discuss industry-specific challenges and emerging trends
  • Build lasting relationships within the CFO Leadership Council community

1:00 – 1:45 pm MT

Mentorship Roundtables: The First Year as CFO

Step into focused, peer-driven conversations designed for immediate impact. During this interactive lunch session, experienced CFOs and senior finance leaders will host small-group roundtables centered on navigating the critical first year in the CFO role. Each table is led by a seasoned operator who brings real-world perspective on stepping into enterprise leadership, influencing key stakeholders, and driving early wins. 

What you will gain:

  • How to build credibility with the C-suite and board
  • What separates effective board communication from noise
  • The most common first-year mistakes, and how to avoid them
  • Strategies for elevating from financial operator to strategic business partner
  • Straightforward advice from CFOs who’ve done it

1:45 – 2:35 pm MT

VISIONARY SESSION: Protecting What You've Built: A CFO Conversation on Competitive Advantage Under Pressure

Charlie Tice | Private Equity National Practice Lead, Travelers
Gail Feeder | CFO, SageWater
Dan Rohr | Head of Equity Research, Morningstar

Drawing on findings from Travelers research with Morningstar, this fireside chat brings the perspectives of two leaders who know competitive advantage from the inside out. Dan Rohr, Head of Morningstar Institutional Equity Research, will join Gail Feeder, CFO at SageWater, for a candid conversation moderated by Charlie Tice, Travelers’ Private Equity National Practice Lead.
 
Together, they’ll examine what really protects deal value under pressure and why some of the most trusted sources of competitive advantage may be more fragile than they appear. Drawing on insights from over 700 CFOs and risk professionals, the discussion will surface a striking disconnect: CFOs and risk managers inside the same organization often aren’t diagnosing the same threats, meaning capital gets directed at the wrong problems.
 
This session is about closing that gap and translating strategic insight into confident execution and measurable results, with an eye toward what it means for valuation and exit readiness in an environment where buyers are scrutinizing durability, not just growth.

2:35 – 3:00 pm MT

Networking Break in the Exhibit Hall

3:00 – 3:50 pm MT

Breakout Sessions

Presented by Brex

Kevin Moore | VP, Controller at Brex 

CFOs are under pressure to tighten spend — but blunt cost-cutting often damages growth, morale, and execution. This session explores how finance leaders are building smart spend governance that protects margins without slowing the business. Discussion topics to include:
  • Where cost discipline often breaks down
  • How CFOs distinguish “bad spend” from strategic investment
  • Creating accountability without bureaucracy

Presented by Tipalti

Clyde Calhoun | Founder & CEO, Root Idea
Rob Israch | President, Tipalti
James Thomas | Director of Growth Strategy, Tipalti

Finance organizations are being asked to do more than ever before: deliver greater insight, support faster decision-making, improve operational efficiency, and help the business navigate constant change. The challenge isn’t simply adopting AI; it’s building a finance organization that’s equipped to evolve alongside the business.

Rather than focusing on transformation for transformation’s sake, this discussion will highlight practical lessons from leaders who are helping their organizations modernize how finance operates—from balancing innovation with operational discipline to leveraging AI and automation to enable faster, more confident decision-making.

Key Takeaways

  • Leadership strategies for modernizing finance while managing continuous change
  • Practical ways to strengthen finance’s role as a strategic partner across the enterprise
  • Turn AI and automation into meaningful outcomes rather than technology for technology’s sake

Presented by Capstan

Caleb Avery | Founder and CEO, Tilled
Mike Breeze MBA | Partner and CFO, Capstan Tax Strategies
Ben Jones | Business Development Manager, Capstan
Jacob Wood JD | Partner, Capstan Tax Strategies

Most CFOs think about tax compliance, not strategic tax incentives. But when you treat incentives like a value lever instead of an afterthought, you introduce a new competitive advantage.
 
In this session, a panel of CFOs will break down how they help their clients identify, evaluate, and leverage specialty tax incentives — like R&D Tax Credits, Energy Incentives, and Cost Segregation — in ways that meaningfully improve cash flow.  Facilitated by a specialty tax expert, this conversation will explore the CFO’s decision-making process – including practical screening questions for all industries.
 
Expect true stories, real numbers, and a candid look at how CFOs use incentives to scale operations, offset payroll, and unlock strategic initiatives
 
Plus – it’s easier than you think.

Presented by Planful

Natalie Quan | Chief Financial Officer, CalCPA
Marina Ureche | Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Planful

The window to answer has closed. Boards want the re-forecast this week. Budget owners want their variance today. And every CFO is now expected to have a position on AI, often well before the finance team has the foundation to support one.CalCPA runs finance for a 45,000-member professional association across three entities with a small team. Natalie Quan, CFO, joins Planful for a candid conversation about what the job actually demands now and what she rebuilt to meet it.

Discover:

  • Where finance time really goes, and which part of the delay is structural rather than habit.
  • Ways to close the gap between a question and a defensible answer without adding headcount.
  • What it takes to know whether your organization is ready for AI, and what governance has to be in place first.
  • How to stay honest about AI’s limits while your CEO is asking finance to lead on it.

3:50 – 4:00 pm MT

Transition

4:00 – 5:00 pm MT

KEYNOTE: The CFO IPO Playbook for Scaling a Regulated Fintech

Speaker: Macrina Kgil | CFO, Figure Technology Solutions

For many CFOs, leading a company through an IPO is the defining moment of their career—the ultimate test of financial leadership, operational readiness, and credibility under pressure. It is the point at which finance stops being an internal function and becomes a public promise.

In this keynote, Macrina Kgil, CFO of Figure Technology Solutions, offers an insider’s, real-world view of what it takes to guide a company from private growth to public accountability—particularly in a complex, highly regulated business operating at the intersection of financial services, technology, and capital markets. Drawing on senior finance leadership roles across technology, crypto, and high-growth environments, Macrina shares what changes immediately when the ticker goes live: investor expectations, the pace and intensity of reporting, the culture shift toward discipline, and the constant balancing act between speed and control.

A centerpiece of the discussion is the increasingly powerful leadership dynamic of CFO partnering with a CFO-turned-CEO. At Figure, Macrina works alongside CEO Michael Tannenbaum, whose own finance background shapes decision-making, accountability, and what great execution looks like in the first critical months as a public company.

This is a practical blueprint for CFOs who want to lead at the highest level—where performance is measured quarterly, in public, with no margin for error.

Key Takeaways

  • What truly changes for CFOs in the first 90 days after an IPO
  • Capital strategy and financial leadership lessons from the earliest months post-IPO
  • How to balance discipline + speed in a regulated fintech / blockchain-enabled business
  • How the CFO-CFO partnership (CFO + CFO-turned-CEO) reshapes influence and ownership

5:00 – 6:30 pm MT

Networking Reception
Wednesday, October 14

7:45 – 9:00 am MT

Networking Breakfast

8:00 – 8:50 am MT

Breakfast Roundtables

Presented by Prophix

Gillian Fischer | Vice President, Customer Success, Prophix

CFOs are under growing pressure from boards, owners, and leadership teams to put AI to work. But amid the hype and rapidly expanding possibilities, many finance leaders are wrestling with a much more practical question: Where do we start?
 
The challenge isn’t finding potential applications for AI. It’s identifying where AI can deliver real, measurable business gains while maintaining the trust, control, and accountability finance requires. Join this roundtable to build a practical playbook for doing just that. We’ll explore:
  • How to identify the right finance processes to target first
  • How to define the business outcomes that matter and measure whether AI is actually delivering them
  • How to progress from experimentation to trusted delegation, expanding autonomy as confidence, controls and capabilities mature
Attendees will leave with a clearer answer to three questions: Where should we start? What should we trust AI to do? And how will we know it’s actually creating value? Don’t miss this practical conversation about putting AI to work in finance in a way that delivers measurable results today while building toward what’s next.

Presented by Robert Half

Angela Lurie | Executive Director, Management Resources Practice, Robert Half
Alicia Holmes | Regional Director and Vice President, Robert Half

Today’s CFOs are expected to do more than manage financial performance. They are increasingly called upon to guide technology investments, oversee workforce strategy and lead enterprise transformation efforts. This roundtable will bring finance leaders together to discuss the opportunities, challenges and leadership skills required to drive business success in a rapidly changing environment.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand how the CFO role is evolving as technology becomes a larger business priority.
  • Explore the CFO’s role in evaluating and governing AI and digital transformation initiatives.
  • Discuss strategies for attracting, developing and retaining future-ready talent.
  • Identify best practices for leading organizational change while maintaining business performance.
  • Learn from peers about balancing innovation, risk and long-term growth.

Presented by Highradius

Nick Alvers | Vice President of Sales, HighRadius

Generative AI promises to reinvent entire industries, yet many organizations struggle to move past novelty use cases to realize measurable bottom-line value. This session cuts through the noise to evaluate where GenAI is delivering genuine operational transformation versus where it falls short of expectations. Through real-world case studies, we analyze the structural capabilities, limitations, and ROI timelines of GenAI, equipping leaders with a pragmatic framework to separate transformative tech from marketing hyperbole.

9:00 – 9:05 am MT

Opening Remarks

9:05 – 9:55 am MT

KEYNOTE: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger? The U.S. Economic Outlook in the Age of AI.

Speaker: Michael Pearce | Chief U.S. Economist, Oxford Economics

AI has become the largest swing factor in the US economic outlook. The talk will start with the global backdrop before turning to the key forces shaping the backdrop for US businesses, including growth, inflation, interest rates, the labor market, and policy. We set out how AI adoption could reshape productivity, investment, employment, and economic growth, and which scenarios deserve the most weight in planning assumptions. The session closes on what those scenarios mean for CFOs. We work through the implications for demand, costs, investment decisions, and business planning in an environment where the range of plausible outcomes is unusually wide.

9:55 – 10:45 am MT

VISIONARY SESSION: AI for CFOs: Act, Prepare, or Wait
Sarita Crowley | Senior Manager, Plante Moran
Cole Weinman | Senior Manager, Plante Moran
 
CFOs face growing pressure to act on AI, but not every use case deserves investment. Through audience polling and practical examples, this session will show finance leaders where AI is producing value, why promising pilots fail to scale, and how to evaluate opportunities based on business value, reliable information, responsible judgment, and workforce adoption. Attendees will leave with a simple framework for deciding what to act on now, prepare for first, or consciously defer.
 
Session Highlights:
  • Recognize three practical levels of AI value: individual, workflow, and enterprise.
  • Identify the conditions that distinguish a useful experiment from a scalable capability.
  • Ask five questions before approving an AI investment.
  • Classify an opportunity as Act, Prepare, or Wait.

10:45 – 11:10 am MT

Networking Break in the Exhibit Hall

11:10 am – 12:00 pm MT

KEYNOTE: Leadership, Resilience & The Fast Track to the CFO Role

Speaker: Dorothy Walter | Global CFO, Accel

Few finance leaders rise to the CFO role as quickly as Dorothy Walter. Through a combination of intellectual curiosity, resilience, and a deep commitment to building strong teams, she has established herself as one of the most thoughtful finance leaders in the investment world.

Today, Dorothy serves as Global CFO of Accel, a global venture capital firm that partners with exceptional companies from their earliest stages through periods of rapid growth. Previously, she was CFO of Alpine Investors, where she helped guide the firm during a period of remarkable expansion in assets, talent, and influence.

Her leadership journey has been shaped by an unusually global perspective. Born in Taiwan and raised across several continents—including New York, Singapore, and Beijing—Dorothy developed an early appreciation for different cultures and ways of thinking. That global mindset continued through her education at Vassar College and Stanford Graduate School of Business, and has remained central to how she approaches leadership today.

In this conversation, Dorothy will share what it takes to grow quickly into the CFO role and lead effectively in high-growth organizations. She will discuss the mentors who shaped her journey, the role emotional intelligence plays in building strong teams, and why the best finance leaders combine analytical rigor with empathy and adaptability. Her story offers a candid look at leadership, resilience, and what it takes to succeed when opportunities arrive earlier than expected.

Key Takeaways

• Lessons from Dorothy’s fast-track journey to the CFO role
• Why emotional intelligence and resilience are essential leadership traits for finance executives
• The role mentorship and trust play in developing high-performing teams
• Practical insights for aspiring and first-time CFOs navigating their own leadership journeys

12:00 – 12:10 pm MT

Transition

12:10 – 1:00 pm MT

Breakout Sessions

Presented by Trintech

Kris Decker | Sr. Solutions Consultant, Trintech

Finance teams face pressure to close faster, reduce manual work, and adopt AI—without added complexity or risk. How can you deploy AI you trust and keep it flexible as needs evolve? This session explores how leading organizations approach AI in the financial close, with a focus on trust, adaptability, and real-world results, including key considerations and practical use cases delivering value today.

Presented by Zenskar

Apurv Bansal | Co-founder & CEO, Zenskar
Chirag Desai | CFO, Cyflare

A live fireside on how finance leaders should think through build vs. buy for AI-powered finance tools. It shares the experience from the finance leader of a high growth company that chose to buy the underlying revenue automation engine rather than build it in-house. The conversation covers how that decision got evaluated, what the team insisted on testing before signing, and the concrete results since going live.

Learning Objectives:

  • A practical framework for deciding when to build a finance capability in-house versus buy an existing platform
  • How to weigh the hidden costs of building internally against the real risks of buying
  • How to stress-test a vendor’s complexity claims before committing, and why the team that will actually use the tool should test it first, not just finance leadership
  • Real-world results from a build vs. buy decision in a highly complex, multi-partner billing environment, including invoicing turnaround and visibility into partner-level pricing
  • What questions CFOs should be asking internally, not just of vendors, before greenlighting either path

Presented by SoftCo

Adam McDonagh | AP & P2P Specialist, SoftCo
 
CFOs have spent years driving down cost per invoice, higher touchless rates, faster cycles, fewer people on exceptions. It’s real progress. But cost per invoice measures processing efficiency, not financial integrity, and the biggest dollars leaking out of most organizations today aren’t sitting in the invoice queue, they’re in the vendor changes, contract terms, and payments that pass every control check and still shouldn’t have gone out. This session looks at what happens when a finance function optimizes the metric it can see and misses the exposure it can’t.
 
Discussion topics to include:
  • Why “efficient AP” and “safe AP” aren’t the same thing & how to tell which one you actually have
  • Where the real leakage hides: vendor fraud, contract non-enforcement, and payments that clear every workflow step correctly and still shouldn’t clear
  • What changes when AI is doing more of the matching and reconciliation, and a person is reviewing less of it
  • A practical self-test CFOs can run this quarter to see what their current dashboard isn’t telling them

1:00 – 2:30 pm MT

LUNCH KEYNOTE: Finance Rewired: Building the AI-Enabled Finance Team

Speaker: Valen Tong | CFO & GM, MasterClass and author of Finance Rewired

Valen Tong is an AI “super user.” While AI has dramatically expanded her own capacity, individual productivity is only the beginning. The bigger opportunity—and challenge—is building a finance organization that can work differently: identifying where AI genuinely improves the work, bringing teams along, creating the data foundation to support it and putting the right guardrails in place as AI becomes increasingly autonomous.

Drawing from her experience at MasterClass and her book, Finance Rewired: A Field Guide for Finance Leaders in the Age of AI, Valen will share a practical approach to moving from experimentation to everyday adoption. She’ll explore how CFOs can develop AI “super users” across their teams, turn early wins into new ways of working and maintain the governance, judgment and trust that finance cannot afford to lose.

Key Takeaways

  • How to move from individual AI experimentation to meaningful adoption across the finance team
  • Where AI can expand the capacity and impact of finance—and where human judgment still matters
  • The data, governance and security foundations needed as AI becomes more embedded in workflows
  • Practical ways to overcome resistance and build enthusiasm for new ways of working
  • Where CFOs can start immediately to make their teams more AI-enabled

2:30 pm MT

Closing Remarks

10 CPEs offered pending NASBA approval on final agenda. 

The CFO Leadership Council is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be addressed to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors, 150 Fourth Avenue North, Suite 700, Nashville, TN, 37219-2417. Website:  www.nasba.org

Instructional method: Group-Live
Recommended CPE Credits: Up to 12 Credits
Experience Level: Basic
Prerequisites/advance preparation: None

For CFOLC CPE credits, one credit hour equals 50 minutes according to NASBA guidelines. Some state boards may differ on how many minutes constitute a credit hour. Contact your state board for more information. Questions or comments? Contact Nancy at nancy@cfolc.com