CFO THOUGHT LEADER

1157: From Deal Advisory to Operator: Learning the Hard Parts | Toby Driver, CFO, Ideagen

At 18, while many of his peers were heading off to university, Toby Driver made a different choice. He joined an accounting practice through an apprenticeship, a decision driven by his desire for a “quick learning curve” and real exposure to business, he tells us. From the outset, he was less interested in credentials than in understanding how organizations actually work.That instinct carried him through years in audit and into transaction services, where he learned to dissect businesses at speed. In deal advisory, Driver was tasked with getting “under the nuts and bolts” of companies, performing financial health checks with significant value at stake, he tells us. The work sharpened his ability to spot value drivers—but it also revealed a blind spot he wouldn’t fully appreciate until later.That realization came after he moved into operations at Ideagen. Leading M&A integrations end-to-end meant sitting with the CEO and C-suite to align sales, product, technology, and culture. Bringing two organizations together was far more complex than it ever appeared from the advisory side, Driver tells us. The experience reshaped his mindset, pushing him to think “business first, rather than necessarily finance first.”As Ideagen scaled from roughly £50 million in ARR to five times that size, Driver faced another inflection point. The company reorganized into regional operating units to restore accountability and clarity, a change finance helped design, he tells us. Today, he carries those lessons forward as CFO—focused on structure, transparency, and creating an environment where people surface issues early. “Bad news never gets better with time,” he says, a principle that now defines both his leadership style and his approach to scale.

1156: From Turnaround CFO to Enterprise-Scale Strategist | Kevin Rubin, CFO, Zscaler

When Kevin Rubin arrived at Zscaler in May 2025, he joined an established organization following the retirement of the company’s longtime CFO, taking responsibility for continuing the work of a finance leader who had already built a strong foundation. Rubin describes stepping into a business with scale, experienced leadership, and a customer base that included some of the world’s largest enterprises, he tells us.In explaining what Zscaler does, Rubin walks through the company’s core idea: zero trust. Traditional cybersecurity, he says, relied on network-centric “castles and moats,” requiring large amounts of equipment to connect people, applications, and data. Zscaler challenged that model by treating the internet as a “superhighway” and applying a principle of minimal access. If an employee wants to use Salesforce or email, Rubin explains, the system first authenticates the user and then limits access to only what that person is authorized to see, he tells us.Zscaler was founded in 2007 and went public in 2018, Rubin tells us. Today, roughly 40 percent of the Global 2000 and about 45 percent of the Fortune 500 use the company’s platform. Rubin attributes that adoption to a model that delivers security with less overhead and infrastructure than traditional approaches, he tells us. At its core, he says, cybersecurity comes down to two problems: stopping malicious activity from entering the network and preventing sensitive data from leaving it.Reflecting on his first 100 days, Rubin says the transition was shaped by continuity and people. He describes a welcoming executive team and an organization already positioned for growth. Cybersecurity, he notes, remains a dynamic market, with new vulnerabilities constantly emerging, and staying ahead of those threats continues to define the work ahead, Rubin tells us.

1155: Scaling Growth Without Sacrificing Outcomes | Bruce Schuman, CFO, Universal TechnicalInstitute

At Intel, Bruce Schuman remembers walking into a meeting as a controller, proud of a product change his team had worked on “for months.” Then CFO Andy Bryant asked one question—one that reframed the proposal around customer impact. “Nobody had thought about (it),” Schuman tells us, and that question “completely changed the entire conversation,” leading to a “10 times better” outcome.That moment captures why Schuman spent “two decades plus 27 years” at Intel, he tells us. Rotational roles pushed him into new challenges every few years, while leaders modeled what influence and partnership looked like in practice. Intel even had a term for it—“constructive confrontation,” Schuman tells us—encouraging finance leaders to put difficult issues on the table in service of better decisions.When Schuman later moved into CFO roles outside Intel, he carried that mindset with him. FP&A, he says, should not simply “report the score of the game,” but act like “people on the field literally changing the outcome of the game,” Schuman tells us. That expectation shaped how he built finance teams and approached decision-making in smaller, faster-moving organizations.Today, as CFO of Universal Technical Institute, Schuman applies those lessons to a mission-driven business focused on workforce development. UTI works with “about 35 OEM partners” and “about 6000 employer partners,” Schuman tells us, and measures success through “70% graduation rates” and “about 85% placement rates,” Schuman tells us. Growth remains disciplined: “We’ll never sacrifice student outcomes,” he tells us, even as the company plans to build “anywhere from two to five campuses a year for the next five years,” Schuman tells us.

1154: When Finance Becomes the Company’s Storyteller | Drew Laxton, CFO, Outreach

When Drew Laxton looks back on the past year at Outreach, one moment stands out—not a transaction, but a plan. The company set its annual targets, executed against them, and then exceeded expectations. “When you see green numbers at every quarterly all-hands,” Laxton tells us, “it’s amazing how that little bit of momentum just builds the company.” What surprised him most was the cultural impact: morale rose, confidence compounded, and belief followed performance.That belief didn’t happen by accident. Laxton’s career has consistently positioned him at the intersection of numbers and narrative. He began in investment banking, where he learned early that finance only matters if people can retain the story behind it. “If you can’t tell the story, it just stays there,” he tells us. That mindset carried him from banking into operating roles, and later to Apptio, where he experienced nearly the full corporate lifecycle—from IPO preparation to public markets and eventually a private-equity take-private.Serving as Chief of Staff during Apptio’s Vista ownership pushed him beyond traditional finance. The role, he explains, was about making sure the CEO “didn’t run into a locked door,” anticipating decisions and asking the questions leadership would need answered. That experience sharpened his instinct for alignment.Today, as CFO of Outreach, Laxton applies those lessons through planning discipline, FP&A embedded in the business, and storytelling that connects strategy to execution. Finance, in his view, is not a back-office function—it is the force that helps people understand why the company is moving where it is going.

The New FP&A Feedback Loop - A Planning Aces Episode

In this Planning Aces special episode, CFO Thought Leader brings together three finance executives operating in very different industries—but facing remarkably similar planning challenges. David Lee of WEBTOON, Cristina Kim of Octaura, and Zane Rowe of Workday share how FP&A has evolved from a periodic planning function into a continuous decision system. Across global consumer platforms, fintech infrastructure, and enterprise software, each CFO explains how they use leading indicators, forecasting discipline, and real-time data to guide resource allocation. The conversation highlights how modern FP&A enables faster learning, sharper prioritization, and disciplined adaptability in an environment defined by rapid growth and accelerating change.