We take a deep dive into the finances behind the agricultural and food beverage sector with Brad Mooney, Director of FP&A at California Dairies. FP&A drives success at California Dairies which produces 40 percent of California’s milk (300 family-owned and operated members ship 17billion pounds of high quality milk annually) and is a manufacturer of quality butter, fluid milk products, and milk powders (including Challenge and Danish Creamery and milk powder brand, DairyAmerica). In this episode former Marine Corps turned FP&A leader Brad Mooney talks:

• Building the plane as we flew it building FP&A
• The metrics of “Timing yield and supply” at California Dairies
• The Four Ps in finance building
• Effectiveness of planning and forecasting in a supply-driven business
• My view of FP&A Development
• FP&A as therapist

In our first FP&A Today episode to cover the shipping, ports and haulage sector, we look at the FP&A powering Peel Ports Group, the second largest port operator in the UK, which manages the vital gateways powering the UK. Alex Roche has built the FP&A team at Peels Ports, based in Liverpool, England, which generates £800M spread across 10 divisions. The group has invested over £1.5 billion over the past decade in advanced logistics, cranes, warehouses, and terminal upgrades. Highlights of his nearly decade time at Peel Ports include Co-building the Group's FP&A function for a £400m-EBITDA multi-site, and developing formal evaluation models for two major commercial deals totalling £100m+, enabling better-informed investment decisions and a £7.5m increase in realised deal value

In this episode:

• The importance of volume in ports and how KPIs revolve around the metric
• M&A at Peels Port and setting up the FP&A team and building models
• FP&A recommendations around vertical integration with a new haulage business
• The power of teaching others coming up in finance and accounting
• Why Simon Sinek was right and FP&A should start with why
• Board on Peace Brigades International UK as a finance trustee
• Two favorite Excel functions

Dan Newman

heads FP&A at RingCentral, a $2.5B public SaaS company (a platform for business phone, SMS, contact center, workforce engagement management, video collaboration, and messaging) , where he has overseen a period of 10X growth. Discussing a career comprising consulting, being a financial analyst at Salesforce, private-equity-backed startups, Dan discusses building financial models towards a sale, navigating the shift from 30% growth to efficiency, and AI processes.

In this episode

• Building the FP&A team at SchoolMessenger and pivoting to a sale

• Joining RingCentral at a $250m run rate and a six-person FP&A team towards $2.5billion

• Why revenue is rarely as simple as it looks

• Business partnering in an age of efficiency in SaaS

Caroline McAuliffe is Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Finance (FP&A and Procurement) at Fannie Mae. In its Q1 2026 results, the government-owned mortgage giant boasted 33 consecutive quarters of profitability and $3.7B in net income in the quarter—delivered by a team of 7,000 employees. In this episode Caroline reveals the FP&A mindset and processes behind this success.

• The career progression from audit to controllership, and FP&A
• Combining procurement and FP&A
• Shifting from an annual budget cycle to a 2-year rolling forecast
• How AI is transforming repetitive low value work including AI “flash reports needed supporting 50 officers at Fannie Mae
• Secrets to being a CTA (Challenging Trusted Advisor) at Fannie Mae

In the third in our series on finance business partnering we are joined by David Manela, who has had the role of CRO and CMO at Fiverr, Ideei, and Vivre. As managing partner and co-founder of Violet Growth he is in high-demand at some of the hottest scaling companies, designing a growth operating system that “speaks the CFO’s language from day one”. It is tailored to companies spending more than $10m annually on marketing and sales - with digital as the main growth channel. “Spending a dollar in marketing is no different than spending a dollar in infrastructure, on say a forklift that you might need for your warehouse. You need a return on a specific schedule, and you need a percentage of returns on that schedule. Don't start with a campaign, start with a financial goal.”

In this episode on the highlights and lowlights of the FP&A relationship with marketing, David talks:

• His background from audit to marketing and P&L responsibility at companies
• Marketing as an “investment” not a “cost”
• The power of getting a marketing forecast based on cohort behavior
• Payback period and capital constraints at Fiverr
• Disconnected and expensive mistakes in business partnering
• The power of AI in marketing and finance

Swati Bagri, head of FP&A for a major global FMCG company was told early in her career: “Either you are sales or you are helping sales”. In this second in our series of finance business partnership Swati, representing finance, is joined by Stephanie Troy, VP of Sales at Datarails, for a candid conversation with host Glenn Hopper about what sales leaders actually need from FP&A, and what great revenue-producing partnerships look like.

In this special episode:

• The dynamics of sales vs finance needs
• Pipeline communication challenges
• The problems with forecasting
• Where lack of communication hurts sales and finance
• What finance needs from sales leaders in budget season
• Dealing with the Office of No

Today on the show, we're launching a special series on finance business partnering - exploring different facets of modern finance business partnering. Today’s special guest is Tunc Tezel VP group FP&A, Ontax, bringing 30-years of lessons from Ontex, Pladis, British American Tobacco, Procter & Gamble, and Gillette - business partnering with marketing, sales, and operations to reach common goals and bringing some of the most popular CPG products to market.

• From “spy” to “strategist” in business partnering
• Secrets to storytelling
• Embedded vs. centralised FP&A business partnering
• Working capital as a partnering tool
• Breaking bad news in business partnering
• When business partnering breaks down

Tom Hinkle, senior leader in data and analytics at TIAA, has built his career at the intersection of finance, technology, and strategy. He also has a budding YouTube channel (Tom's Data World, which includes instructional videos on Excel, SQL, and AI). He's worked extensively with Excel (is a Microsoft MVP) and SQL, as well as Tableau and Power BI, and has worked with major financial institutions, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and TIAA.

"Nobody really gets excited about spending money on data governance. They get excited about machine learning, about AI, about data storytelling — everybody wants seminars on that. But data governance? At the end of the day, you're coming up with something you thought was right anyway, and then you're asking someone to spend more money just to make sure it's right."

• Why data governance is the foundation of AI
• Trust but verify challenges
• The two sides of data governance: master data management vs. data quality and controls
• How FP&A teams should think about their role as downstream consumers of data
• Why domain expertise is still non-negotiable in the age of vibe coding
• Tom's Minesweeper-in-Excel story, and what it taught him about prompting