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THE NEW CFO.


New, as in into-the-trying-pan. Smart, energetic, ground-breaking - and sometimes downright fun - define today's winners of the chief finance title. Here, five of the chosen show why they made it to the top.

Most people wouldn't think of a career in finance as a ticket to adventure. But the new CFOs profiled here have most unstereotypically challenged the quotidien, and found adrenalin-pumping challenges behind the numbers. All have stretched the definition of financial management past any reasonable expectation of elasticity. For quorum's Terry Allison Rappuhn, the proper practice of finance is part of the practice of medicine; she speaks of billing almost as a healing art. Warren Ligan ligan (lī`gən): see flotsam, jetsam, and ligan. , of Chiquita Brands, found the broadest understanding of multinational operations A collective term to describe military actions conducted by forces of two or more nations, usually undertaken within the structure of a coalition or alliance. See also alliance; coalition; coalition action.  through a function generally considered to be the narrowest - corporate tax. Longaberger's Stephanie Imhoff learned to craft financial controls that preserve an entrepreneur's dream. The Home Depot's Dennis Carey blazed a career at the top of two of America's most financially successful companies. And our cover CFO See Chief Financial Officer. , William Chiasson of Levi Strauss
This article is about the clothing manufacturer. For the anthropologist, see Claude Lévi-Strauss and for the company of the same name, see: Levi Strauss & Co..


Levi Strauss, born Löb Strauß
, has a habit of seeking a challenge whenever he finds himself getting comfortable.

It is a commonplace now that the role of the CFO is changing. Michael Flagg, a partner in the CFO practice of Heidrick and Struggles, defines the new CFO as "primarily a strategic business partner who happens also to manage the financial function." The new CFOs profiled here - four of the five have earned the CFO title within the past 18 months - find their new jobs are part media relations, part human resources The fancy word for "people." The human resources department within an organization, years ago known as the "personnel department," manages the administrative aspects of the employees. , part marketing, part strategic planning Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. , part technology pioneer and only part finance. Think of it as cross-training in the extreme sport of business.

Out of His Comfort Zone, Again

William Chiasson, Levi Strauss & Co.

William Chiasson, Levi Strauss

Turned CFO at LS & Co. August 1998

Up from sr. vp of finance/information systems and CFO, Kraft Foods Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) is the largest food and beverage company headquartered in North America and the second largest in the world after Nestlé SA.

The Philip Morris Company (now known as Altria Group), a company that produces tobacco products, acquired Kraft for
 

Bill Chiasson joined Levi Strauss & Co in August 1998, and six @ months later chief operating officer Chief Operating Officer (COO)

The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president.
 Peter Jacobi resigned. "To be honest, what really made me think seriously about leaving was watching Bill Chiasson, our new chief financial officer," Jacobi told the San Francisco Chronicle The San Francisco Chronicle was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young.[2] The paper grew along with San Francisco to become the largest circulation newspaper on the West Coast of the . "I said to myself, 'There really are new ways to be looking at things.'"

Chiasson wasn't looking for Looking for

In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with.
 a job when he was approached by the San Francisco-based LS&Co. in the summer of 1998. But he was going to a wedding in California anyway, so he agreed to stay a little longer to talk about the offer. "I spent some time with some of the management team and a few board members and got excited by the notion of a company trying to redefine itself into a real consumer products company," he recalls.

LS&Co. had long dominated the blue-jeans market, but by the mid-1990s the firm had lost touch with its customers - and saw its sales decline. Chiasson was CFO of Kraft Foods at the time. His jump from a powerhouse of brand management to a company in a vortex of change would hardly be a conventional recipe for career management. But Bill Chiasson has never been very conventional. He grew up with seven brothers and sisters. His father, a zoologist on the faculty of the University of Arizona (body, education) University of Arizona - The University was founded in 1885 as a Land Grant institution with a three-fold mission of teaching, research and public service. , packed the family off to Africa when Bill was about to enter his senior year of high school. While kids back home were entertaining conventional expectations for the senior prom For the formal end-of-school-year dance, see .

Senior Prom is a still-classified U.S. Air Force program to develop a stealth unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle (and possibly as a cruise missile), designed to be launched from a DC-130, B-52, or B-1.
, Chiasson was hitting the books at the University of Science and Technology in Ghana. He came back to the States with an unconventional educational objective, at least among financial careerists. "I wanted to get the best damn liberal arts liberal arts, term originally used to designate the arts or studies suited to freemen. It was applied in the Middle Ages to seven branches of learning, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.  education I could," he says.

The anthropology department was the star of the liberal arts program at the University of Arizona, so it was a logical choice. After getting a broad understanding of how people behave, he tightened his focus on business, taking an MBA MBA
abbr.
Master of Business Administration

Noun 1. MBA - a master's degree in business
Master in Business, Master in Business Administration
 from the University of Southern California The U.S. News & World Report ranked USC 27th among all universities in the United States in its 2008 ranking of "America's Best Colleges", also designating it as one of the "most selective universities" for admitting 8,634 of the almost 34,000 who applied for freshman admission . He launched his career in 1976 with three years of public accounting at Andersen & Co. "It was a good training ground, because it exposed me to a lot of different businesses and types of problems," he says.

The key to understanding Chiasson is knowing that he likes problematic, uncomfortable situations so much that he goes out of his way to find them. After his stint with Andersen & Co., he joined a West Coast division of American Hospital Supply, a company that was acquired by health-care heavyweight Baxter during his 10-year tenure. Chiasson moved through financial posts in several divisions and has high praise for the company's ability to keep challenging and developing high-potential financial types. But in 1988, he went to Kraft, because "I was getting too comfortable and wanted to get out of my comfort zone."

This was the high water mark of the junk-bond era. Chiasson joined Kraft as corporate vice president of analysis and planning. A big, independent company in a consolidating industry, Kraft would be an obvious target. So one of Chiasson's first projects was to develop contingency plans A plan involving suitable backups, immediate actions and longer term measures for responding to computer emergencies such as attacks or accidental disasters. Contingency plans are part of business resumption planning.  for a takeover attempt Noun 1. takeover attempt - an attempt to take control of a corporation
bear hug - a takeover bid so attractive that the directors of the target company must approve it or risk shareholder protest
. A few months after he joined, Philip Morris made a bid for Kraft. Negotiations proceeded more or less according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 Chiasson's plan, and Kraft became part of the tobacco giant's empire.

"The merger with Philip Morris was a terrific time," he says. "Heads were spinning at the changes Philip Morris was looking for." His star rose, as he found ways to "create a finance organization that could partner with the business side to create powerhouse brands." But by 1998, after 10 years, he found himself getting comfortable again. Then the call came from LS&Co., and he'd found another uncomfortable, problematic challenge.

As CFO of the apparel firm, Chiasson has two main jobs: leading the finance function, and helping to develop and implement strategy for the overall company. He has moved fast on both fronts in his first year there.

His first priority as leader of the finance function is to make finance serve the needs of the business. "In the past, we've focused on traditional, historical financial measures. The business managers said GAAP GAAP

See: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles


GAAP

See generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
 reporting is nice, but it isn't linked to what they were doing. We attacked that immediately, and defined 16 different metrics, a blend of leading and lagging Leading and lagging

Refers to timing of cash flows within a corporation.
 indicators, financial and nonfinancial measures, predictive and reporting results, to measure our achievement of company strategy with the ultimate expectation that it drives shareholder value," he says. As a result, Chiasson helped the company create a "balanced scorecard Balanced Scorecard

A performance metric used in strategic management to identify and improve various internal functions and their resulting external outcomes. The balanced scorecard attempts to measure and provide feedback to organizations in order to assist in implementing
" to track brand equity metrics, operational effectiveness and product development as well as financial performance.

Another priority has been to make the financial function more cost effective. To this end, Chiasson has centralized cen·tral·ize  
v. cen·tral·ized, cen·tral·iz·ing, cen·tral·iz·es

v.tr.
1. To draw into or toward a center; consolidate.

2.
 payroll, receivables, collections, payables and similar transaction processing Updating the appropriate database records as soon as a transaction (order, payment, etc.) is entered into the computer. It may also imply that confirmations are sent at the same time.

Transaction processing systems are the backbone of an organization because they update constantly.
 work in a "shared services center Shared Services Center is the entity responsible for the execution and the handling of specific operational tasks Accounting, human resources, payroll, IT, legal, compliance, purchasing, security. " in Eugene, Ore. Chiasson is careful to distinguish these shared services shared services,
n.pl the administrative, clinical, or other service functions that are common to two or more hospitals or their health care facilities and used jointly or cooperatively by them.
 from the kind of strategic financial activity that makes a difference at the business level. "We're pushing even stronger to empower individual brands with high-caliber people," he says.

A third priority is to recruit and develop the kind of talent that LS&Co. needs to turn itself around, and then keep going. Centralizing cen·tral·ize  
v. cen·tral·ized, cen·tral·iz·ing, cen·tral·iz·es

v.tr.
1. To draw into or toward a center; consolidate.

2.
 the transaction activity will generate savings that can be used to put more analytical and strategic talent to work at the brand level. Chiasson is defining clearly what kind of background each key financial position requires. "We've taken people we consider high-potential and formally tried to identify development opportunities that can help them to be successful," he explains. "This makes the development process more proactive, instead of just sticking up our heads when a job opens and asking who's ready for it."

But leading the finance function is only half, at most, of Chiasson's job as CFO of LS&Co. The other half is, in his words, "to build strong linkages with operating management and leaders of other functional areas." So, he's worked with the human resources area on a thoroughgoing thor·ough·go·ing  
adj.
1. Very thorough; complete: thoroughgoing research.

2. Unmitigated; unqualified: a thoroughgoing villain.
 review and revision of the company's compensation programs. He's also gotten deeply involved with the "Levi Strauss, the Americas" unit to "build and strengthen areas with strategic value." Generally speaking, the emphasis is to put more resources behind operations that directly affect the customer, and less behind operations that don't. By this standard, supply chain management and retail execution will get a bigger slice of the budget pie, while some logistics, human resources and finance areas will be cut back.

"These are all partnerships," he stresses. "It would be misrepresenting to say Bill Chiasson made these happen. It is my role as a business partner I take pride in. We've also had to make hard decisions on manufacturing infrastructure, so we've shifted the manufacturing base to other parts of the world where we can be more cost effective and more responsive to consumer demands. We have announced closure of 11 U.S. plants and four facilities in Europe. I like to think I've been a catalyst in some of these areas, but there is a lot of strong leadership in the organization."

If some of these initiatives seem like plain, common-sense business management - they are. LS&Co.'s well-known aspiration statement, which stressed diversity and promoted decision-by-consensus, was in large part an effort to get away from a business-as-usual model. The statement made truly inspirational reading, and Chiasson bristles at the suggestion that bringing basic business sense to the company marks a reversal of course. "Our values are incredibly important," he argues. "We're very much committed to the aspirations of the company. But some people would hide behind their interpretation of values and aspirations. That's why we have to clarify them. We must recognize that, in the context of our values, our goal is still commercial success."

There are, he says, sound reasons for optimism about Levi Strauss & Co.'s prospects, not least the fact that the Levi's brand is one of the world's top 10. But turning the company's focus outward to the customer instead of inward to its own culture is only the first item on the turnaround agenda. For Bill Chiasson, it's the kind of challenge that should keep him happily uncomfortable for some time.

Bleeding Orange

Dennis Carey, The Home Depot The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) is an American retailer of home improvement and construction products and services.

Headquartered in Vinings, just outside Atlanta in unincorporated Cobb County, Georgia, Home Depot employs more than 355,000 people and operates 2,164 big-box
 

Dennis Carey, The Home Depot

Turned CFO May 1998

Up from vp-corporate productivity and M&A, AT&T

The first day Home Depot's new CFO arrived for work, they handed him an orange apron and turned him loose in a hardware aisle. For the next month, he spent his days helping customers and his nights studying plumbing, painting and home-repair manuals. He remembers with a still-vivid frisson the fright he felt when a customer came down the aisle with a broken gadget (1) Slang for any hardware device, typically small. Synonymous with "gizmo."

(2) A mini application that resides on a computer desktop or personal home page, typically found in the Windows environment.
 he didn't recognize. This initiation is required for all new Home Depot hires, no matter what level they come in at. Notwithstanding Dennis Carey's three decades of experience as a top-level finance and operating strategist for companies like GE and AT&T, he had to "yessir" small-time small·time or small-time  
adj. Informal
Insignificant or unimportant; minor: a smalltime actor.



small
 contractors and Sunday handymen just like everyone else.

A prouder, lesser man would have been shocked or offended by such treatment. But Carey had never been picky pick·y  
adj. pick·i·er, pick·i·est Informal
Excessively meticulous; fussy.


picky
Adjective

[pickier, pickiest] Brit, Austral & NZ
 that way. He grew up in a paper mill town in Maine, bred to hard winters and hard work. When he was 16, he started spending summers on Long Island, N.Y., working for his uncle's landscaping business in affluent Great Neck. He cut grass, trimmed trees, planted, drove a truck and managed a crew of 12 grown men. "I learned to motivate people," he says. "This wasn't the liveliest bunch when I arrived, but I was able to turn that around, and we were rockin' and rollin' by the time I left." He also learned about a standard of living he'd never imagined, one he determined to experience for himself. He went back home to the University of Maine "UMO" redirects here, but this abbreviation is also used informally to mean the Mozilla Add-ons website, formerly Mozilla Update

Should not be confused with Université du Maine, in Le Mans, France
The University of Maine
, where he studied business and played wide receiver on the Black Bears team that went to the Florida Citrus Bowl This article is about the football stadium. For the bowl game of the same name (1983-2002), see Capital One Bowl.

    [
 in 1966. They lost the game, but Carey won strength and discipline, and he had a sheaf of job offers to think about on graduation; he took the one from General Electric.

Carey was a star in GE's financial management training program, but he and his wife were feeling claustrophobic claus·tro·pho·bic  
adj.
1.
a. Relating to or suffering from claustrophobia.

b. Uncomfortably closed or hemmed in.

2.
 in their tiny Stamford, Conn., apartment. So they moved into a 37-room mansion in Greenwich - as caretakers. Neighbors included Victor Borge This article is about the Danish humorist and musician. For the Cape Verdean politician, see Víctor Borges. For the Norwegian musician, see Victor Borge (bassist).

Victor Borge
, the entertainer. "We lived on the third floor - it was terrific. Even though I was cutting the lawn and pruning pruning, the horticultural practice of cutting away an unwanted, unnecessary, or undesirable plant part, used most often on trees, shrubs, hedges, and woody vines.  trees, the family allowed me to go to parties with their friends, and I realized that even though these people all lived in beautiful mansions, they weren't any smarter than me."

Carey's colleagues at GE kidded him about his side job, but it didn't hurt his visibility in the company. "I thought I'd be stronger at GE if I could not only do very well both in the financial management program and on the job, but also do this. I thought it would be viewed as a little different and it was - everybody knew what I was doing and got a kick out of it," he says. Visibility is a good thing in an organization, and almost any way to get it is a good way. Carey's boss's boss asked him to come over to his home and help cut down a big tree in his backyard.

That's not the only reason, or even the main one, that his career progressed so rapidly, but it is worth noting that Carey is the sort of man who doesn't flinch flinch  
intr.v. flinched, flinch·ing, flinch·es
1. To start or wince involuntarily, as from surprise or pain.

2. To recoil, as from something unpleasant or difficult; shrink.

n.
 from stepping down the ladder a rung or two in order to climb higher. He had moved through several promotional levels when his mentor, Larry Bossidy, recommended that he spend some time on the corporate audit staff. Everyone who joined the audit staff came in at the same level - and Carey had already been promoted several levels above that. But the experience he could gain as an auditor was unique. "The GE audit staff isn't like others; it's not all accounting and finance," he explains. "Half of it is operational auditing, trying to improve efficiency and wring wring  
v. wrung , wring·ing, wrings

v.tr.
1. To twist, squeeze, or compress, especially so as to extract liquid. Often used with out.

2.
 costs out of manufacturing, engineering, warehousing and so forth." It was a dilemma, but not a very hard one to solve, given Carey's priorities - he dropped back several levels and joined the staff.

GE had a system of managing its auditors similar to that used by football teams, or the U.S. Army Rangers. "Every year," says Carey, "they'd take 10 people and force-rank you in the group. Some people progressed, and some didn't." He rose to second from the top in eight years. GE had a rule that no one could go to the top audit job without rotating back into the corporation for a while, so Carey asked for and got a general management job running a small GE auto leasing business in Illinois. "We really grew that business, and I was promoted to vice president for automotive financial services The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page.
. We had a ball with that business, started an auto auction chain, grew it, positioned it well, and then I got a call to come back to the number one position on the audit staff."

He demurred, understandably. The Kidder Peabody derivatives trading scandal had just broken and, like other defense contractors, GE was also under pressure for cost accounting practices that led to such headline-grabbing line items as $500 toilet seats. "They wanted me to work on both those things," Carey says. He decided to take the job when he learned that he could implement a program to turn the audit staff into a sort of SWAT team to help business units solve a range of problems. After a few years as auditor, he was tapped to run GE Capital Corporation's LBO LBO

See: Leveraged buyout


LBO

See leveraged buyout (LBO).
 business. Then the call came from AT&T.

He'd been declining calls from headhunters for years, but when Larry Bossidy left to run AlliedSignal, he decided that it might be time for him to check out the wide world, too. AT&T offered the challenge of helping turn around a vast, lumbering monopoly, but the opportunity looked better from afar than close up. "I thought it was going to be terrific," Carey says. "It was, from a 'wow, this is really different' standpoint but ... I saw an opportunity in a culture I could get really excited about at Home Depot. People are so committed, so focused on the values. Here, they really walk the talk."

His first initiative as CFO was to "close the gaps" between headquarters support people and the stores. Through a program called "Building Bridges," he is working to make sure the culture at headquarters mirrors that in the store aisles. The key is making headquarters people "bleed orange," that is, feel The Home Depot passion for customer service and recognize their customers in the faces of the store staff. "When people come here from the stores now, we put up banners, welcome them, make arrangements to greet them, ask how we can help them," he says. More substantively, Carey beats the drum for keeping all reports and analyses relevant and readable - making sure the "so what" question is answered.

In addition to finance and systems, his job responsibilities include mergers and acquisition, store construction and store planning. At present, Home Depot has 800 stores. Carey's goal is to double that in the next three years, and maintain bottom-line growth at 20 percent per year.

"I'm not interested in a pure finance role," Carey says, "I really enjoy a variety of things. I consider myself a businessman." His advice to early and mid-career financial types is straightforward: Take risks, and reach for breadth. "You can always go back to your specialty, but it can be so much more fun and so much more rewarding if you go outside your area of comfort," he says.

Bedside Manners bed·side manner
n.
The attitude and conduct of a physician in the presence of a patient.


bedside manner Medtalk A popular term for the degree of compassion, courtesy, and sympathy displayed by a physician towards Pts
 

Terry Allison Rappuhn, Quorum A majority of an entire body; e.g., a quorum of a legislative assembly.

A quorum is the minimum number of people who must be present to pass a law, make a judgment, or conduct business.
 Health Care

Terry Allison Rappuhn, Quorum Health Care

Turned CFO June 1999

Up from controller, Quorum Health Care

In the fall of 1998, Brentwood, Tenn.-based Quorum Health Care was rocked by a U.S. government lawsuit alleging that the company had systematically cheated Medicare by filing false cost reports. The stock market reacted violently to the news, dumping Quorum shares so aggressively that the company lost $700 million of capitalization in a single day.

Terry Allison Rappuhn had joined Quorum just five years before the crisis broke, and she was devastated dev·as·tate  
tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates
1. To lay waste; destroy.

2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark.
. "It was a complete shock to hear such allegations about a company I thought I knew well," she says. "The only way you can keep your sanity in that kind of situation is to do what you know to be right."

Rappuhn had been sensitive to doing what is right at least since sixth grade, when news of Martin Luther King's assassination Assassination
See also Murder.

assassins

Fanatical Moslem sect that smoked hashish and murdered Crusaders (11th—12th centuries). [Islamic Hist.: Brewer Note-Book, 52]

Brutus

conspirator and assassin of Julius Caesar. [Br.
 was greeted with cheers by some in her native Chattanooga. "I remember a lot about the civil rights movement, though I was still quite young," she says. "I think growing up in those years gave me a real sense of fairness and a commitment to treating people with respect. You saw some people behave admirably and some behave poorly, and it was easy for me to see what kind of person I wanted to be."

Rappuhn worked in a restaurant to put herself through high school and college, graduated from Middle Tennessee State University Middle Tennessee State University (founded September 11, 1911, and commonly abbreviated as MTSU) is an American university located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  in Murfreesboro, and then spent 16 years in Ernst & Young's health care practice. She joined Quorum in 1993, in no small part because of the company's well-publicized commitment to ethics and integrity. She started out as head of the audit function, rose to controller in 1996, and was in that position in October 1998, when the Department of Justice sued Quorum for alleged violations of the False Claim Act and sent the stock south. In April 1999, Quorum's president resigned. When the CFO left "to pursue other areas" in July, the company announced that Rappuhn would be replacing him.

Rappuhn dismisses any suggestion that the departure of Quorum's top executives so soon after the government sued might lend some credibility to the allegations. She believes the allegations are false, and motivated by greed and self-interest. A former employee of a hospital that Quorum had managed set the court action in motion, and Rappuhn says that this person, referred to in court papers as the "relator The individual in whose name a legal action is brought by a state; the individual who relates the facts on which an action is based.

The relator is the individual upon whose complaint certain writs are issued.
," would receive a share of any recovery made by the Justice Department.

"We have investigated this with lawyers and accountants, have spent millions of dollars and have simply concluded the allegations are not true," Rappuhn emphatically declares. "If you look at what is alleged, it would have involved hundreds of hospital CFOs and auditors, over more than a decade. It's not possible to do that. We're not afraid We're not Afraid! is a website which was created just hours after the 7 July 2005 London bombings as a place for Internet users from around the world to state that they were not being intimidated by the actions of the terrorists.  of the truth, and we want a full public airing of the case."

Meanwhile, Rappuhn has been moving fast to shape a new role for herself as CFO. She came well prepared for almost every dimension of the job. She has been one of Quorum's main investor relations Investor relations

The process by which the corporation communicates with its investors.
 people since 1996, because her promotion to controller also included treasury responsibilities. She has also been one of the main architects of a financial structure that is about 40 percent equity, 10 percent high-yield debt In finance, a high yield bond (non-investment grade bond, speculative grade bond or junk bond) is a bond that is rated below investment grade at the time of purchase.  and 50 percent in bank credits. Capital structure issues intrigue her - she says she finds it "very interesting" to consider whether, when and in what form Quorum should raise capital, but she knows that one of her disciplines as CFO must be to draw back from the details.

"The biggest challenge is to step out of some of the daily activities I've been spending time "Spending Time" is the first single released by Christian artist Stellar Kart.

The lyrics describe the band members desire to spend "more time with God". "Sometimes it’s a real struggle to spend time with God.
 on and make sure to spend more time thinking about the strategic direction of the company," she explains. "I'm also spending a lot of time thinking about what kind of CFO I want to be, talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to"
lecture, speech

rebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to
 others in and outside the industry about what a good CFO should bring to an organization."

The pat answers - to increase shareholder value, be fair, help people develop - don't go far enough to describe what she has in mind. Rappuhn sees the finance function as an important part of health care - not just because it supports infrastructure, but because the way it is handled can help make patients more comfortable. "For example," she explains, "when somebody is going in for surgery, it is the hospital's responsibility to see what their insurance coverage is, what the patient will have to pay and to structure a payment plan. Our industry has a hard time doing this - they don't want to ask sick people for money - so instead, three months later, the patient gets a bill he's not expecting, and he's not prepared to pay. Explaining things in advance and making whatever monthly payment arrangements are necessary would be a service to the patient." Finance as a stress-reduction therapy - there's a concept to ponder.

Trust and a Dream

Stephanie Imhoff, The Longaberger Company

Turned CFO August 1998

Up from senior manager, Ernst & Young

The assignment: Bring financial discipline to a company inclined to such whimsies as a $35-million headquarters building shaped like a basket, complete with humidity-controlled handles and cherry trim. The company is family owned, the founder a visionary entrepreneur, the product a dream, a softly colored bubble of homey longing. It took an exquisitely soft touch, and a firm hand, to contain this bubble for its own preservation in a network of financial controls, Stephanie Imhoff managed to strike the right balance.

In August 1998, she was named CFO of the Longaberger Company, famous for high-end basket-weaving, and the following March became the first non-family member appointed to the board in a quarter century. "The appointment to the board marked a moment in my career I will forever remember," Imhoff says. "It signified a lot more than just putting me on the board as a finance person - it was a testament to trust in the relationship we had built over the years."

Imhoff grew up in the town of Shady Side
See also:
Shady Side may refer to several things:
  • Shady Side, Maryland, in Anne Arundel County
  • Shady Side Academy, a private school in Pittsburgh and Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania
 on the Ohio River Ohio River

Major river, eastern central U.S. Formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, it flows northwest out of Pennsylvania, and west and southwest to form the state boundaries of Ohio–West Virginia, Ohio-Kentucky, Indiana-Kentucky, and
, surrounded by the rural headland values Longaberger's marketing so successfully evokes. She graduated from Bowling Green Bowling Green.

1 City (1990 pop. 40,641), seat of Warren co., S Ky., on the Barren River; inc. 1812. It is a shipping and marketing center for an area producing tobacco, corn, livestock, and dairy items.
 University in 1982, interned in·tern also in·terne  
n.
1.
a. A student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training.

b.
 with Arthur Young Arthur Young is the name of several notable people
  • Arthur Young (writer) (1741-1820), 18th century English writer and economist
  • Colonel Sir Arthur Edwin Young (b.
 in Toledo, then moved to Houston for a few years spent auditing oil and gas companies. But Houston was far away in every sense from the rolling green hills and calico calico, plain weave cotton fabric in one or more colors. Calico, named for Calicut, India, where the fabric originated, was mentioned by historians before the Christian era and praised by early travelers for its fine texture and beautiful colors.  curtains of Ohio, and as soon as she could come home, Imhoff did, transferring to Columbus to work with small, privately owned client firms. Longaberger became her client in 1988. It was then a $40-million firm, just 15 years old, but poised for growth and looking for strong but gentle financial guidance. After four years as her client, Dave Longaberger David H. "Dave" Longaberger (1934 – 1999) was a businessman and the founder of The Longaberger Company, makers of handcrafted maple wood baskets and accessories. Dave has two daughters, Tami Longaberger, who is CEO of The Longaberger Company, and Rachel Longaberger Stukey,  asked Imhoff to join the company.

"I was quite happy at Ernst & Young, and I wasn't looking to leave, but I believed in Dave Longaberger's vision, a vision shared by his two daughters. I liked them and believed in them and decided to go for it," Imhoff says.

The fifth of 11 children, Dave Longaberger had founded the company in 1973 to keep a basket-making tradition alive - his grandfather had taught the craft to his father, who had passed it along to Dave. In 1978, he started to sell baskets through home presentations. By the end of the 1990s, Longaberger's sales staff consisted of 50,000 independent part-timers selling to friends at basket parties. Most of the company's growth explosion happened after Imhoff joined in 1992, including construction of a tourist village and world-class golf course drawing half a million visitors a year.

Imhoff came into Longaberger on the sales, not the financial side, in order to gain a better understanding of this unique business. "Our representatives are motivated by their love for the product, and they want to share it with their neighbors, friends and family," Imhoff says. "They tell the story of the aura around the product, who Dave Longaberger was, how the baskets are made, why they're made that way. It's a relationship business."

Imhoff moved into a financial role after a few months in sales, where she found that the nature of the business made a delicate situation downright ticklish tick·lish  
adj.
1. Sensitive to tickling.

2. Easily offended or upset; touchy.

3. Requiring skillful or tactful handling; delicate: a ticklish matter.
. "Budget discipline was the first challenge. How could we build financial controls and maintain the entrepreneurial spirit? For vision and fortitude Fortitude
See also Bravery.

Fratricide (See MURDER.)

Asia

despite torture, refuses to deny Moses. [Islam: Walsh Classical, 35]

Calantha

fulfills wifely and queenly duties despite losses. [Br. Lit.
, I'd match Dave Longaberger against any entrepreneur." Successful entrepreneurs don't get that way by taking "no" for an answer, but Imhoff had to find a way to impose financial controls on the dream.

"I had a very strong and trusting relationship with the Longaberger family," Imhoff says, "We talked about growth plans, where we wanted the company to be long term, and how we could get there while keeping ownership private. Eventually we agreed on some financial benchmarks, and I was able to say if we want to get to this level of financial stability, here is where we have to be along the way."

Privately owned Longaberger met its growth objectives in large part through cash flow, but Imhoff recalls a lot of time spent convincing bankers that this extraordinary-looking business made sound financial sense. The company does not publish its financials, but its financial underpinnings have been strong enough to support two long-term private placements of debt in the insurance market, the most recent (in 1997) for $50 million.

Imhoff was already pivotal in the company's financial and strategic affairs when she was named CFO last year, so the move up did not change her responsibilities, but confirmed her role in the company, as the appointment to the board endorsed her relationship with the Longaberger family. Sadly, Dave Longaberger died in March after a long bout with cancer. Imhoff says that his daughters share his dream, and thanks to his mentoring, will be able to carry it forward. "He knew, as do Tammy and Rachel, that I always have their best interest 100 percent at heart," she concludes.

Tour of Duty

Warren Ligan, Chiquita Brands

Turned CFO January 1998

Up from vp of taxation, Chiquita Brands

Hardly anyone who has ever talked with a tax attorney or tax accountant came away impressed by the tax person's breadth and perspective. "It's true that, as a profession, we are not very good at communicating, bridging and forming relationships so other disciplines can understand and appreciate what we do," Warren Ligan concedes. "But I went into tax because I thought it was one of the more complicated and comprehensive disciplines in a company, and I had a goal of totally understanding the operations of a major multinational. The best financial people are good tax people, because if they're vigilant about doing their jobs, tax people develop a great understanding and appreciation of all areas of the business. And if you don't understand tax, what you do financially may hurt more than it helps."

Chiquita recruited Ligan as vice president of taxation in 1993, and when CFO Steven Warshaw was promoted to president last year, Ligan stepped into the CFO's job. The only thing a career in tax did not prepare him for was dealing with "the Street." Ligan says if he had been thinking ahead to being CFO, he would have spent more time learning how equity and credit analysts make their calls. "Part of the job of the CFO is to let people on the outside understand how the company views itself, its markets and its opportunities. As CFO, you get a lot of their questions directed at you and you have to be trained in how to handle them, particularly in public forums where, when you open your mouth, it's fair game," he says.

Ligan's first year as CFO has given him ample opportunity to come up to speed on investor relations, though. A $200-million bond offering concluded in the summer of 1999, and several small acquisitions have kept him very much in the public eye.

If Ligan's route to the top seems unusual, it's not the first time he's gone against the grain. In 1970, at the height of the Vietnam War Vietnam War, conflict in Southeast Asia, primarily fought in South Vietnam between government forces aided by the United States and guerrilla forces aided by North Vietnam. , he volunteered to join the Army. An understandable move for someone with a military career in mind, but Ligan didn't want a military career. Nor did he want to go to Vietnam. His wasn't the case of a young man sure to be drafted making the best of a bad situation by volunteering. Ligan's number in the great draft lottery Draft lottery could refer to:
  • NBA Draft Lottery, a lottery determining the order of the teams for the first fourteen selections in the NBA Draft
  • Sports draft
  • Draft lottery (1969) - the system whereby the United States conscripted soldiers during the Vietnam War.
 was 250, so he would not have been conscripted until the supply of eligible draftees born on the 249 dates of the year drawn before his had been exhausted.

He joined the Army to see the world, and to get some career training, and Ligan volunteered for service with the understanding that he would be trained in electronic surveillance. "I didn't think they'd spend all of the time and money it took to train me, and then put a rifle in my hands," he says. People who know the Army might marvel at Ligan's simple faith - but his bet paid off. He never went to Asia. He got to go to Europe, instead. He liked the Army so much, he stayed for six and a half years and came back to civilian life in 1976, with a remarkable degree of self-discipline and a commitment to a career in international business.

He took a BA at a small, private college, then a law degree at the Detroit College of Law, working at various jobs to earn while he learned. He then went to Coopers & Lybrand for what he calls "the obligatory two years of public accounting." He had already decided to make a career of the inevitable, and (having cheated death) specialized in taxes. After his stint with Coopers & Lybrand, Ligan joined Upjohn in Kalamazoo, Mich., as a tax guy. In the evenings, he commuted 167 miles to Chicago, where he earned a masters of law in taxation at DePaul University Coordinates:  DePaul University[1] is a private institution of higher education and research in Chicago, Illinois, USA. . Searle lured him away with an offer to become director of international tax. Overseeing preparation of Searle's consolidated tax return Consolidated tax return

A tax return combining the reports of affiliated companies, that are at least 80% owned by a parent company.
 gave him exposure to such treasury activities as borrowing and hedging and made him more keenly aware of the impact of tax on financial strategy.

As CFO of Chiquita, he's a strategic partner in one of the most influential companies in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . Chairman Carl Lindner has long been a power in Washington and a lightning rod lightning rod, a rod made of materials, especially metals, that are good conductors of electricity, which is mounted on top of a building or other structure and attached to the ground by a cable.  for criticism - most recently for his role in the "banana war" that may result in U.S. trade sanctions Trade sanctions are trade penalties imposed by one or more countries on one or more other countries. Typically the sanctions take the form of import tariffs (duties), licensing schemes or other administrative hurdles.  on a broad range of European exports, and perenially for his influence on Latin American governments with less than salubrious salubrious /sa·lu·bri·ous/ (sah-loo´bre-us) conducive to health; wholesome.

sa·lu·bri·ous
adj.
Conducive or favorable to health or well-being.
 records on human rights.

Ligan staunchly defends the company's record. "It's always easy for a large agricultural company to be in the crosshairs of activist groups," he says. "But we're doing things right. Folks are going to take indiscriminate in·dis·crim·i·nate  
adj.
1. Not making or based on careful distinctions; unselective: an indiscriminate shopper; indiscriminate taste in music.

2.
 shots, that's going to happen, but you have to keep your focus on corporate responsibility, and community responsibility, and not let other things sideline you."

Gregory Millman is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Financial Executives International
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1999, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Author:Millman, Gregory J.
Publication:Financial Executive
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Sep 1, 1999
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