AFP Conversations

In this podcast, Pat Culkin talks with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar about her upcoming closing keynote at the AFP FP&A Forum, "Rewire Your Brain to Reset Burnout and Stress." Dr. Nerurkar shares practical, science-backed strategies to combat stress and burnout, such as using a healthy media diet, prioritizing sleep as a tool, monotasking for focus and cognitive reframing to enhance resilience. Her insights provide a clear, step-by-step approach to help FP&A professionals protect their mental health and boost productivity.

During this podcast, Bryan Lapidus talks with Paul Epstein about his opening keynote session at the AFP FP&A Forum. Paul shares his three-step "Head-Heart-Hands" process, a practical framework designed to help leaders make better, faster decisions on key issues like strategy, hiring and prioritization. Attendees will gain confidence and clarity to drive action and results for their teams and organizations.

Alison Levine, the Tuesday Keynote at AFP 2024, knows what it’s like to survive (and thrive) in the world’s toughest environments. She served as team captain of the first American Women's Everest Expedition, scaled the "Seven Summits," and skied to the North and South Poles. In her New York Times bestseller, On the Edge: Leadership Lessons from Everest and Other Extreme Environments, Levine asserts that the principles that apply to the world of extreme adventure also apply to demanding business environments. A former adjunct professor at West Point, Levine understands what it takes to lead teams through challenging situations. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Alison discusses how leadership principles that apply in extreme adventure sports also apply in today’s extreme business environments and gives listeners a sneak peek of what treasury and finance professionals can expect during her keynote in Nashville.

Malcolm Gladwell, the Sunday Keynote at AFP 2024, is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, has been named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996 and has won a national magazine award and been honored by the Ameri­can Psychological Society and the American Sociological Society. He is also the host of the Revisionist History podcast, where he re-examines overlooked or misunderstood aspects of past events. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Malcolm discusses his new book, "Revenge of the Tipping Point" and what finance professionals can expect during his keynote at AFP 2024.

AFP 2024 is headed to Nashville this October 20-23. To give us a preview of the city, we invited Heather Middleton, Chief Marketing Officer for the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp., onto the AFP Conversations podcast. During the podcast, Heather shared what makes Nashville such a popular destination, her must-visit spots within the city, and where to get the best Nashville eats. Learn more about AFP 2024.

Adam Kruis, Senior Vice President, Manager, Working Capital Consulting, at U.S. Bank, and Anu Somani, Head of Global Payables and Embedded Payments, at U.S. Bank, discuss why real-time payments are becoming important, common use cases for real-time payments, and how to stay current on developments in the real-time payments space. This episode is sponsored by U.S. Bank.

Erica Orange, speaker for the AFP 2023 MindShift Keynote, sponsored by Capital One, is the Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of The Future Hunters, one of the world’s leading futurist consulting firms. She analyzes emerging sociocultural, technological, economic, geopolitical and environmental trends and identifies the strategic implications (the “So what?”) of those trends for several of the most influential Fortune 500 companies, trade associations and public sector clients. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Erica explains what a futurist is and how she became one, shares her perspective on what the future holds, and gives advice to help organizations future-proof.

Fotini Iconomopoulos, the speaker for the AFP 2023 Monday Executive Institute Keynote, sponsored by PNC, is an expert communicator with a passion for helping organizations and individuals get what they want. For over a decade, she has been helping Fortune 500 clients and their teams achieve their business goals, increase profitability, and create a competitive advantage. She is also the author of the best-selling book Say Less, Get More: Unconventional Negotiation Techniques to Get What You Want. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Fotini shares what to do — and not to do — when negotiating and how people with a risk minimization and certainty mindset need to adapt to succeed in negotiations.

Olivia Fox Cabane, the speaker for the AFP 2023 Tuesday Executive Institute Keynote, sponsored by PNC, is an expert in charisma and leadership. In addition to co-founding KindEarth.Tech, Olivia Fox Cabane has taught at Harvard, Yale, MIT and the United Nations and has spoken to countless leaders in Fortune 500 companies. Her best-selling books, The Charisma Myth and The Net and the Butterfly, have been translated into 32 languages. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Olivia talks about what led her to study charisma and leadership, what it means to be charismatic and the biggest inhibitor to charisma.

AFP 2023 Tuesday Keynote speaker Ian Bremmer is a political scientist who helps business leaders, policymakers and the general public make sense of the world around them. He is president and founder of Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk research and consulting firm, and GZERO Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Ian talks about geopolitical trends to watch for and how treasury and finance professionals should account for geopolitical risks in their work.

The speed of business and disruption means that we need to do more than simply run our planning routines faster, we need to change how we deliver planning services. Pietro Castelli, Head of Product Marketing at Board, talks through his research paper on “Creating Value Through Planning” and offers five ways to improve finance processes and add agility to the business. This episode is sponsored by Board.

Business school education is changing to keep up with the rapidly evolving finance profession. Jim Washam, Dean of the Neil Griffin College of Business at Arkansas State University, and DJ Masson, Clinical Professor of Finance at Indiana University's Kelly School of Business, discuss the state of business school education and how business schools are evolving to meet the needs of students, as well as those of employers who can't seem to find enough talent. This episode is sponsored by AARP.

It’s not just about reporting on the data. CFOs who leverage data-driven insights are serving as strategic advisors by shaping business strategy and driving the organization forward. Bryan Hipsher, CFO of Dun & Bradstreet, explains data strategy, getting data right, and how his department transforms data into analytical insights, yielding smarter decisions that benefit every function at the company.

Welcome to a special three-part series of AFP Conversations, The Road to Treasury Optimization, where we take a deep dive into how the treasury landscape is transforming in the Asia-Pacific region. What should you consider when you’re looking to enhance liquidity management? How has the pandemic accelerated finance and treasury transformation? And what does the future of digital treasury look like? We answer these questions and more. This series is a companion to the Executive Guide: A Treasurer’s Guide to Centralization, as underwritten by Standard Chartered. If you want to learn more about the topics covered in this series, visit AFPonline.org/TreasuryCentralization. In this podcast we discuss how the pandemic has accelerated finance and treasury transformation. We explore challenges encountered during transformation projects and processes that had to be re-engineered.

In this podcast we address how MUFG's clients are responding to a very complex operating environment. From Covid, to High Inflation, Interest Rate increases and Strained Supply chains, we discuss how companies can best operate their working capital to be resilient, maintain the course and help the company using a multitude of tools available. We also discuss how companies can see an increased return on cash by using their own balance sheet for payables processing.

What do you do when you’re tasked with solving a big problem using only the resources you already have? Dr. Simone Ahuja makes the case that with a growth mindset and a simple toolkit of strategies you can generate high-value solutions. Dr. Ahuja is the founder of Blood Orange, a global innovation and strategy firm headquartered in Minneapolis, and the co-author of the international bestseller, Jugaad Innovation. During the AFP 2022 Certification Keynote Breakfast, sponsored by PNC, Dr. Ahuja will share her five-step process to innovation that will help you gain support for new ideas and create greater impact. Want to hear more? Register for AFP 2022, October 23-26, in Philadelphia: https://conference.afponline.org/registration

Effective leaders need to be able to see the big picture. Chloe Demrovsky, president & CEO of Disaster Recovery Institute International, is a globally recognized thought leader. She has been a commentator for national news outlets, presented on global risk at events across five continents and conducted on-site briefings for government officials. During the AFP 2022 Monday Executive Keynote, sponsored by PNC, Demrovsky will leverage key findings from Disaster Recovery Institute research to review the decisions leaders must make in a post-COVID world. She will also provide tactical insight on how to strengthen and improve enterprise-wide business continuity practices to address various risks. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Demrovsky shares how she became a resilience professional and why resilience should be a strategic investment for organizations.

An organization’s greatest asset is its people. Dr. Lisa Bélanger is an award-winning researcher who helps leaders and teams optimize performance, productivity, and innovation through leading-edge scientific research. With a PhD in behavioral medicine, Bélanger is the CEO of ConsciousWorks, a consulting firm that supports leaders and teams in maximizing their mental capacity and performance. Dr. Bélanger is the AFP 2022 Wellness Keynote. Drawing on psychology, behavioral science, and neuroscience, she will empower attendees to take control of their behaviors and offers daily practices to think more clearly, make better decisions, be more productive, build resilience, and have more energy. In this episode of AFP Conversations, Dr. Bélanger shares practical ways to incorporate mindfulness into our everyday lives. She also shares the most effective ways to manage short-term and long-term stress while providing practical exercises and strategies that require little time but offer significant gains in mental strength.