Andrew Polito is VP, Controller at Go HQ which provides a suite of back office services, including recruiting to delivery companies. The Fort Worth-based company provides back office support for transportation and logistics, seeing 500% growth in five years, earning a spot on the Inc 5,000 list of fastest- growing private companies in America.

In this episode:

• From audit to shifting to a private company finance team
• Building FP&A from the ground up
• Power of the 13 week cash forecast
• How I introduced automation in an initial two-person finance team
• How our finance tech stack delivers the data and insights to succeed

Mariya Guttoh is Director of FP&A and Treasury at PayJoy, a global FinTech company expanding credit access through smartphones to underserved customers in emerging markets. Celebrating 10 years this year , the company has served over 15 million customers and is on track to reach $650 million in revenue and $110 million in profit by the end of 2025.

In this episode Mariya traces her steps from cosmetic marketing in Ukraine to arriving in the US with $300 and working three jobs while earning her MBA to becoming a finance leader.

• My finance journey working three jobs to pay for my MBA
• Becoming an advocate for AI in finance Two finance camps– “excited but clueless” and “cautious but clueless”
• Using AI to automate vendor reporting across 10 countries
• Identifying high impact AI wins (forecasting)
• My ideal magic FP&A solution
• How I turned myself into a self-created extrovert
• Offset in Excel

Akhil Khunger, VP Quantitative Analytics, Barclays, has more than ten years of experience in the field. Akhil develops statistical models to forecast balance sheets, revenue and probability of default. He has experience with time series modeling, statistical modeling, machine learning and building implementation frameworks using Python and other programming languages. Akhil, who has a master’s in Financial Engineering from UC Berkeley and London School of Economics, has worked in CCAR and Bank of England stress testing and know the Basel III/IV framework, SR 11/7, SR 15-18, and SR 15-19. He also has experience managing junior model developers.

In this episode:

• The worst year for modeling?
• Diving into models
• Working with big datasets
• Getting to the real reasons behind trends and data
• The power of stress testing
• What human judgement can bring to the table
• The AI component in forecasting