She spent her entire career in accounting and finance. Public accounting, FP&A, financial reporting, corporate accounting. Then she made a move nobody expected. She went into operations. And when she came back to finance as a CFO, everything was different.

In this episode, I sit down in person with Donna Cohen, Chief Financial Officer at CarMax Auto Finance. Donna has been at CarMax for almost 14 years and is a board-ready qualified financial expert with deep expertise in M&A, spinoffs, restructurings, and automation initiatives.

We talk about what operations taught her that finance never could and why she recommends every finance leader try it. How she uses a different part of her brain now that she has seen both sides. The PE experience in the hotel industry that broke her faith in corporate America, including the downsizing, the restructuring, and the day she negotiated her exit and called it her "liberation day."

How she ended up at CarMax after thinking she was done with corporate forever. Her strategy for making change stick inside a large organization, including finding champions, planting seeds, and being comfortable with not getting credit.

How she introduces AI to teams that have never even used ChatGPT at home. The mentor who gave her an engagement to run after just one year and wrote her a letter about growth over perfection that changed how she leads to this day.

The breaking point where she realized she was giving everything to work, her kids, and her husband with nothing left for herself. And why she says she never even knew she was capable of being a CFO.

This episode is brought to you by Fispan. Learn more at fispan.com.