AFP Conversations

In this episode of AFP Conversations, AFP President and CEO Jim Kaitz chats with Shawn Kanungo, innovation strategist, on how financial professionals can be disruptors.  Kanungo was the MindShift keynote speaker at AFP 2021.

In this episode of AFP Conversations, AFP's Glenn Douglas chats with Brooke Lazizi, senior destination services manager for the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. Ahead of AFP 2022, October 23-26 in Philadelphia, we wanted to hear about all the fun things to see and do in the city. Philadelphia is full of life—from the murals painting the sides of buildings, to the cutting-edge research...

The notion of creating digital payers out of B2B buyers can be intimidating to corporations. But as many companies learned the hard way during the pandemic, steering their B2B buyers away from paper checks and other outmoded payment methods, although challenging, is necessary for survival.   In this episode of AFP Conversations, Tom Hunt, AFP's director of Treasury and Payments Services, speaks wi...

Treasury departments grapple with RTP, or Real-time Payments, every day. How are your fellow treasury professionals dealing with RTP now, and what will the landscape look like in the future? In this episode of AFP Conversations, Tom Hunt, AFP's director of Treasury and Payments Services, speaks with payments industry expert Steve Ledford from The Clearing House. Steve has advised leading banks, fi...

Kevin Belli thinks that great data is only great when it adds value, improves decision-making and resource prioritization, and enhances an organization's financial health. The ability to promote the FP&A discipline and partner with internal customers are among a host of skills that are key to the development of that next finance rockstar. In this edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Kevin Bel...

LIBOR is set to be discontinued by the end of this year, and it's important that corporates are ready for the transition. Libor is written into over 220 trillion dollars in contracts around the world. Most of those are set to mature before mid-2023. That being said, the Alternative Reference Rates Committee has estimated that about a third won't mature by that timeframe. In this edition of the AFP...

LIBOR has been at the forefront of our attention since 2012, when it was revealed that financial institutions were manipulating the rate for their own gain. The UK Financial Conduct Authority is set to discontinue LIBOR by the end of 2021, and it's important we are ready for the transition. In this edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Tom Hunt, director of Treasury and Payments Services at AF...

Since March 2020, many of us have been operating in crisis mode, leading to quick pivots to embracing new policies and processes on the fly. In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, John Gibson, director of Education and Content Strategy at AFP, sat down with Jennifer Moss , who is speaking at the AFP 2021 Wellness Keynote, sponsored by RBC. Moss is globally recognized as an exper...

In order to be successful, every leader must develop a game plan that accounts for the politics and personalities of everyone involved. In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP, speaks with DeMaurice Smith , who will kick-off the AFP 2021 Executive Institute, sponsored by PNC. Smith has served as executive director of the National Football Leagu...

Being a "backable" person means you are able to rally others around a new idea in a way that inspires action, and great leaders invest in backability because it makes their people more adaptable to addressing complex problems. In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP, sits down with Suneel Gupta , who is speaking at the AFP 2021 Certification Ke...

A leader's ability to manage difficult conversations can determine their success, whether its dealing with resource allocations, negotiating with a bank or disagreeing with a colleague. In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Tom Hunt, CTP, director of Treasury Services at AFP, speaks with best-selling author Sheila Heen, who is one of the keynote speakers at the AFP 2021 Executi...

In order to position employees for career advancement and build a better workforce, organizations must invest in talent development strategies that capitalize on the strengths and abilities of employees. In this edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP, speaks with Dennis Carey, vice chairman of Korn Ferry. Carey recruits board directors, CEOs and their direct...

In a fast-paced world driven by complex and diverse factors, the ability for finance professionals to connect the dots is often more important than developing the dots. In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Bryan Lapidus, FPAC, director of FP&A Practice at AFP, speaks with Vikram Mansharamani, who will appear at AFP 2021 as the FP&A Keynote , sponsored by OneStream Software and...

The importance of this question should be clear—the normal operating environment is full of volatility and uncertainty. CFOs and FP&A seem to have been on every corporate leader's speed dial and phone favorites list as the need to know where we are now matters, and the need to know where we are going matters more. This is an opportunity for CFOs and their teams to lean into the challenge, and in t...

In today's competitive job market, it is now more important than ever to recognize that learning itself is a skill. In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Jim Kaitz, president and CEO of AFP, speaks with Matt Smith, McKinsey and Company's chief learning officer. Matt is responsible for developing the firm's learning-and-development strategy and for the execution of learning-and-...

In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Jim Kaitz, President and CEO of AFP, speaks with Shawn Kanungo, who will appear at AFP 2021 as the MindShift Keynote speaker. Kanungo is a globally recognized innovation strategist who works closely with leaders to better plan for the opportunities and threats associated with disruptive innovation. In this interview, Kanungo provides a prev...

In this special edition of the AFP Conversations Podcast, Jim Kaitz, President and CEO of AFP, speaks with Amy Edmonson, who will appear at AFP 2021 as the Tuesday Keynote speaker . Edmonson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and author of the book The Fearless Organization , which offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are seri...

SkyStem is a leading provider of month-end close automation platforms. Its solution, ART, helps CFOs and controllers shorten the month-end close cycle and time to issue financials by automating balance sheet reconciliations, managing month-end tasks, performing flux and variance analysis, and providing insightful reporting. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Tom Hunt, CTP, AFP's Director of Tre...

The common term "implicit bias" refers to attitudes or stereotypes that adversely impact or influence one's understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious way. But how are these implicit biases manifested and what are their impact on an organization's culture? In this episode of AFP Conversations, Jenny Okonkwo, president of Transform Consulting and founder of Black Female Accountants Netw...

What if financial professionals could have access to information that has previously been unknown, like what others are thinking and feeling? Dan Seidman, Managing Director of Read Emotions, believes that reading hidden emotions is a behavioral science that can be applied to managing, coaching and business partnering. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Bryan Lapidus, FPAC, AFP's Director of FP&...

In 2020, AARP was awarded the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest recognition for performance excellence that a U.S. organization can receive. Specifically, the Baldrige committee praised AARP's Enterprise Dashboard, which enables leaders to sustain a focus on achieving the organization's key objectives: grow impact, grow relevance, grow revenue and engage workforce, driv...

Traditionally, finance has been about creating numbers and capturing data for a business. But how can we share that insight to stay relevant to business stakeholders? In this episode of AFP Conversations, Bryan Lapidus, FPAC, AFP's Director of FP&A Practice, is joined by Jesper Sorensen, co-author of Implementing an Analytics Culture for Data Driven Decisions , to discuss the changes required with...

In this episode of AFP Conversations, Jim Kaitz, President and CEO of AFP, is joined by Erica Dhawan, globally recognized leadership expert and AFP FinNext 2021 Virtual Closing Keynote , to preview her keynote: "Leading Digitally: Foster Human Engagement at Work." As the founder and CEO of Cotential and co-author of the bestselling book Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence ,...

In this episode of AFP Conversations, Jim Kaitz, CEO of AFP, is joined by author, lecturer, and AFP FinNext Virtual Conference Opening Keynote , Hal Gregersen to preview his keynote: "Navigating Uncertainty Through the Power of Inquiry." Ranked as one of the world's 25 most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50, Gregersen has dedicated his career to finding out what kind of skills, corpora...