Rutherford Cross’ Hazel Wynn discusses why shining a spotlight on top female talent in the CFO community is essential, and announces the next speaker in our Next Generation CFO series.
At Rutherford Cross we have been running our Next Generation CFO series for the last eight years. Over that time, we have been delighted to gain insight into the career decision making of 26 of Scotland’s inspiring financial leaders as well as showcasing a variety of leading businesses including AG Barr, Aggreko, Robertson Group, Cala, DC Thomson and Iomart to name a few.
The event allows the aspirant CFO community to hear about the varied paths that have been taken to reach the CFO position, gaining insight into common key traits and behaviours that finance leaders possess, as well as hearing how they handle the different situations that can arise when navigating a CFO role in a large company. The last couple of years in particular have presented even greater challenges for Scotland’s’ finance leaders as they have worked through unprecedented situations at times and the discussions have covered some key learnings and skills gained during this.
In 2021, we made the decision to focus our Next Generation CFO events on raising the profile of female CFOs. With there still being a large disparity in the number of females making it to senior leadership roles (recent figures from Deloitte’s Women in the Boardroom report puts the number of female CFOs at 15.2% for the UK) it has been really encouraging to be able to highlight the career paths of some of the female CFOs in Scotland and hopefully provide some inspiration to the next generation of female finance leaders.
Our last three Next Generation CFO events featured Arlene Cairns from Donaldson Group, Lindsay Dixon from STV, and Ashleigh Greenan from Calnex Solutions. At our next event, taking place on Wednesday 28th September we’ll hear from Alyson Donaldson, CFO at IVC Evidencia. Alyson previously worked for Diageo for a number of years before joining Vets Now as CFO in 2021, she recently was promoted to UK & ROI Chief Financial Officer for IVC Evidencia, the global leader in veterinary care across 20 countries.
Over the last two years we switched the series from an in-person event to virtual, initially because it was essential during the pandemic and more recently due to the shift in home working. We have found greater interest due to the ability for people to access the event virtually over lunchtime from home without having to commute into the city centre.
If you would be interested in attending our next session or finding out more about Rutherford Cross events, please contact [email protected]
