CFO of the year nominees: small private company.

FINALISTS (ANNUAL REVENUE LESS THAN $75 MILLION)

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Brent Black

Southern Bancorp

Arkadelphia

Brent Black gets dual satisfaction from his job as chief financial officer at Southern Bancorp in Arkadelphia. Black, 34, helps oversee the profitable operation of a growing $1 billion-asset bank network as well as a philanthropic organization that makes a difference in people's lives.

"Each day, I get to switch back and forth between the two, and I love it," he said.

Southern Bancorp converts about half of its annual profits into grants and donations that are invested in the communities it serves.

Charitable affiliates include Southern Financial Partners in Helena, Southern Good Faith Fund in Pine Bluff and Southern Community Development Corp. in Arkadelphia.

Southern Bancorp is expanding its presence from south Arkansas and northwest Mississippi into northeast Arkansas with the acquisition of First Delta Bankshares Inc., which owns First National Bank of Blytheville (Mississippi County) and the Bank of Trumann (Poinsett County).

Black enjoyed working with numbers and solving math problems while growing up in Benton. With that backdrop, the allure of accounting in high school led to a 1998 bachelor's degree in accounting at Ouachita Baptist University.

"I thought that was something I could be good at," said Black, a certified public accountant. "The rest is history."

His career path steered toward banking while he was doing audit work in Little Rock with the accounting firms of Howland & Norris (1998-2001) and Ernst & Young (2001-03).

Black joined Southern Bancorp in 2003 and was named CFO two years later. Being a 30-year-old CFO provided some initial management challenges.

"Some of my employees have kids older than I am," Black said. "This took some getting used to, but I don't even think about it now."

He serves on the board of directors for the KIPP Delta Charter School in Helena, the Community Development Bankers Association in Washington, D.C., and the Wesley Foundation at Henderson State University/Ouachita Baptist in Arkadelphia. CFO

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Stan Grise

Munro & Co. Inc.

Hot Springs

Start Grise has been chief financial officer for shoe manufacturer Munro & Co. Inc. for 23 years, a period that corresponds with vast improvements in computerized accounting programs.

As a result, hands-on accounting is now "almost none" of his job, and the information technology function that used to occupy a great deal of time has also been dramatically reduced.

"I used to be constantly working on setting IT priorities and programming and constantly wondering whether to change software, constantly having hardware failures," Grise said, sounding not at all nostalgic.

"I do today with one accounting person what we used to do 25 years ago with four. And that's because we're so much more automated, and because of the power of the computer."

So it he isn't accounting and isn't working on IT, what does Start Grise do? He's a volunteer for the Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce, a past president of the Garland County United Way, and has served on the boards of the Hot Springs YMCA, the Hot Springs Country Club and St. Joseph's Mercy Medical Center.

And at the office, "the single biggest part of my job is risk management," he said. "Basically, I am continually monitoring the risks within the company, starting with financial risks. And then it goes from there into all the other kinds of risks."

Munro self-insures its employee health care plan, so that's a significant risk to be managed. Grise also stays on top of risks such as business failures by vendors or customers and typical risk-management functions like property and casualty insurance. He is also in close contact with Munro & Co.'s bankers, "making sure that the bank is comfortable with the company and that the company is comfortable with the bank." Corporate finance, Grise said, is another exercise in managing risk.

And staying comfortable with the finances is a big, big job for a company that has bucked the odds to become one of the last American shoe manufacturers standing.

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Adam Kohler

Welsco Inc.

North Little Rock

Even in high school, Adam Kohler was interested in math and finance. He couldn't have chosen a better career to satisfy that interest. One of the people he most admired in school was a friend's father who was a successful CPA. So off he went to the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1990 with an accounting degree.

His first job was with L. Cotton Thomas & Co., a Little Rock accounting firm, where he worked for eight years, picking up a broad knowledge of business and accounting for different industries. He then spent the next nine years at Arkansas Children's Hospital as vice president of financial operations.

Two years ago, Angela Harrison, CEO of Welsco, persuaded him to make another career switch to the distributor of welding supplies and industrial gases.

As a CFO, "it's important to know every detail," Kohler said. But, he said, he depends on the views of the good, experienced people with whom he works. The true teamwork of working toward a common goal has been a key to his success at Welsco, as well as the company's success, he said.

"I alone do not come close to having all the answers, but with the incredible support and insight of our management team, the right direction is identified and success immediately follows," he said.

When it comes time to make that hard decision, however, Kohler said he always asks, "What's the right thing to do?" and things usually will work out when he does that.

Kohler said the current economic environment has been the biggest challenge of his career, but the company is doing very well. Even though sales are down, he expects the bottom line to increase this year thanks to expense control and new revenue sources.

Kohler has served on the board of the Cathedral School in Little Rock and still volunteers with the Early Childhood Education Program at Trinity Cathedral. He is currently treasurer of the national board of Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY USA).