A Message from our President
Dear FEI SF Bay Area members, strategic partners, and friends,
As the program year ending May 31, 2024 comes to a close, we want to thank everyone for their support of the chapter, and also look back on event and other highlights over the last ten months.
CFO Bootcamps
We held our virtual
Fall 2023 CFO Bootcamp in October & November, and our
Spring 2024 CFO Bootcamp in May - with approximately 40 senior finance and accounting executives attending each cohort. It was a pleasure to collaborate with the members of our CFO Bootcamp Committee, and thank you to the committee members for all their hard work with planning and executing each three-hour session – Rob Bonner (Robert Half), Rebecca Colman (SOAProjects), Kristin Mauer (Baker Tilly), Bob Miller (CFOs2Go), Matthew Ritthaler (Aon), Dan Sanchez (Wells Fargo), Glenn Snyder, Shannon Tatum (Robert Half), and chapter administrator Dalyte Kodzis. For further information on the CFO Bootcamp program, see our LinkedIn posts related to the most recent Spring 2024 CFO Bootcamp, including posts for each session, from our first session on
Communications and Culture through our final session on
Journeys to Becoming a Successful CFOs.
On a go-forward basis, the chapter will be offering Bootcamps in the Fall and Spring, with a set of five different topics covered for each cohort. The Fall Bootcamp is scheduled to start on Wednesday, September 11 – with further details on sessions and speakers to come.
Local Pod and In-Person Events
To continue to build community and connections, we hosted 18 in-person events, which included our
Local Pod socials which rotated among four different locations – San Francisco, the East Bay, just South of SF, and the North Bay. Our Local Pod socials enabled more intimate networking (without a formal speaker or program) in locations convenient to our members and partners.
Our in-person events also included panel discussions covering various topics, including the one-year anniversary of the SVB Collapse and an update on current implications, and the last session of our three-part
Your Business Plan to a Dream Career series which focused on CFO success factors. We also held two
Ask the Pros events – interactive sessions where members had access to professionals to answer questions on a variety of topics.
Thank you to Dan Sanchez (Wells Fargo) for organizing the SVB Collapse event, Kristin Mauer (Baker Tilly) for spearheading the
Your Business Plan to a Dream Career series (further details on other sessions of the series are below), and the CFO Bootcamp committee as well as Adam Prescott (JP Morgan) for collaborating on the
Ask the Pros events.
Check out the links below for photo albums associated with our Local Pod socials and other in-person events:
San Francisco In-Person Events and Local Pod Socials
East Bay Local Pod Socials
South of SF Local Pod Socials
North Bay Local Pod Socials
Virtual Sessions
Our programs also included various virtual events which provided insights and education, as well as offered CPE credits. These included two virtual sessions related to the
Your Business Plan to a Dream Career series which focused on
Creating Your Business Plan and
Branding and Your Story – led by Julia Holian (Career Transformation Partners) and Lynette Stolarzyk (Baker Tilly), respectively.
Career Services Group
Led by Bob Miller, the chapter’s Career Services Group supports finance and accounting executives who are interested in finding a new position which fits their personal values and with their overall professional purpose. Over the year, the group met once a month to share: (i) services, resources, and events which supported their job searches as well as general career development and (ii) new job opportunities and prospects. Thank you Bob Miller for your leadership and mentorship of the group!
Closing and Future Plans
While we will take a short break through most of July to recharge, our programming will start in late July and August with several Local Pod socials for members to catch up with each other (South of SF, the North Bay, and the East Bay), and then our kick-off keynote panel on September 10 in San Francisco,
The Impact of AI on Finance – Beyond the Hype. Stay tuned for further details on upcoming events and initiatives!
Josette Ferrer
FEI SF Bay Area President