Adam Maclay

The CFO seat looks the same from the outside for a long time. You're delivering. You've earned the trust of your leadership. The function runs clean. And somewhere in there, you stop getting asked what you actually think. Twenty-four years in finance leadership — CFO, divisional finance leader, and internal startup controller at Alcoa, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Honeywell. I've run the seat across early-stage startups, mid-sized organizations, and multi-billion-dollar global divisions. Manufacturing and technology. SaaS and physical products. Teams built domestically and internationally. What I've learned: the skills that make a great Operator don't automatically build what comes next. The technical credibility is table stakes. The leadership presence, the external relationships, the identity that travels — those require deliberate work that most senior finance leaders keep deferring. I've made the Operator→Architect transition twice. I know what it costs to stay too long in execution mode — and what it takes to move. Not from coaching others through it first. From living it myself. I've also built leadership and presence outside the org chart — in finance networks, in community, in roles that had nothing to do with a P&L. That's not biography. It's what I draw on when I work with others on this. If you're a senior finance leader who's starting to think beyond the seat — what the next chapter looks like, what you're building outside the org chart, what options you're actually creating — I'd be glad to connect.