Nicole Ortiz

There is a specific point in every finance leader’s career where the value of a formal course starts to tank.   Don’t get me wrong, those technical certifications are your lifeblood early in your career. You need the tools, but there comes a point where the marginal utility of another technical badge on your LinkedIn profile drops significantly. As finance professionals, we’re all tethered to those 40 mandatory hours of CPE. Many of my peers spend that time in webinars or nano-learning...

Like many finance professionals, my career started with a textbook-perfect vision: the beautiful symmetry of a balanced ledger. For every debit, a credit. It was simple, organized, and felt like solving the universe's most delightful puzzle. I thought I was headed for a career in an accounting or audit firm, blissfully crunching numbers.   Then, I actually started working in Finance, and my cozy vision got tossed faster than a line item in a year-end restructuring.   The universal, persistent...

If you’re a finance professional, you know the feeling. The annual budget process often feels like a consuming, compliance-driven task that, ironically, can leave the Finance function feeling less connected to the day-to-day activities of the business. Yet, the budget remains the single most comprehensive record of where every dollar goes and why. It is time for finance leaders to stop viewing the budget as merely a historical tracking document. We must activate its true potential as the...