T
here are a number of avenues that IROs take on the journey from investor relations officer (IRO) to chief financial officer (CFO). There are different starting points and disparate experiences, some routes are carefully planned, others accidental, and some paths
more frequently traveled than others. At a breakout session at the NIRI 2023 Annual Conference, four
investor relations experts shared what they have learned about putting up your hand, building relationships and making your skills and knowledge indispensable to reach the highest financial position at an organization.
The First Steps Katie Royce, CFA, Chief Financial Officer at ZenBusiness (and current NIRI Board Chair), started her career on the buyside as an equity research analyst. She then spent more than a decade handling investor relations and also gained some some treasury experience. “At my previous company I was fortunate to get a lot of exposure to think outside of the straight and narrow investor relations lane, and I really started to enjoy it,” Royce recalls. “So, I stuck up my hand and spoke to our CFO that I’d like to try something in addi- tion to IR. And when a divisional CFO role came my way, I took it.” Last year, Royce says she made the leap to a venture capital-
backed company as CFO, thinking, “Hopefully, we will become public one day and my IR-heavy background will have been a good fit for companies looking to go public.” Similar to Royce’s career, Ramesh Shettigar, MBA, CTP, IRC,
Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer at Glatfelter, had a background primarily in corporate treasury for more than a decade. He also raised his hand to try something outside of the treasury sandbox. Shettigar joined his current company in its treasury division, and after a couple of years, the CEO and CFO offered to involve him in IR. “It seemed like an exciting opportunity, and it was the first time I’d had any exposure to the IR side,” Shettigar says. “I did that for seven years, picked up responsibility for ESG corporate development along the way, all leading up to last year when the CFO role became available.” Shettigar says his company sent him for formal IR training to the
IR public relations firm Dix and Eaton. “I received my formal training and since then, it’s been a great ride. I combined all the treasury, financial planning and analysis, and communication skills I attained along the way to share our message both internally and externally.” Lee Ahlstrom, IRC, President of Viasat Energy Services, took a bit of a different path to CFO. He started out as an engineer, and he is not a finance guy. He spent seven years in engineering and
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then transitioned into strategy consulting before coming back into industry. “I got into IR by accident when the company was looking for somebody who could speak to Wall Street about the technical side of our business and what we did,” Ahlstrom explains. A decade later, a board decided to make a leadership change in the midst of a restructuring and asked him to be CFO. Ahlstrom recalls, “I told them I didn’t know if I was quite ready for that, and they said they didn’t know if I was ready either, but if I wanted the job …” Ahlstrom says they made it through the restructuring, and it
was a great experience. “I knew all the debt holders and I knew the equity side of the business so it was a really good opportunity to be able to influence negotiations when we later sold that company.” Peter McDermott, Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry, has conducted a lot of executive searches in his career yet he also fell into specializing in investor relations by mistake. He worked in executive search and financial services until the
recession prompted him to transition into communications. “One day our partner firm in London called and said you’re the person in our global firm that has financial services experience and financial acumen. Come this weekend, manage our IR searches, we’ll train you on what IR is, but you’ve got to come and do searches for us,” McDermott says. “And I was like, alright, London, sounds great. I had no idea what investor relations was.” McDermott moved to London and learned investor relations
from Dame Heather McGregor DBE FRSE, who had an earlier ca- reer as a sell-side analyst and in IR and would write about career and life advice under the name Mrs. Moneypenny in the Financial Times. A few years later, Korn Ferry recruited McDermott back to the United States. Te firm was looking for an investor relations and communication specialist to join its New York office as partner and manage much of its investor relations work. Tat was eight years ago. “Te timeline is important because that’s the point at which
we were noticing a shift from the prior rotational model of investor relations where you get a taste of it and move on to another function or division,” McDermott recalls. “Suddenly investor relations was being seen as a career track. People were falling in love with this function and deciding that it was going to be their career.” McDermott says the investor relations function was attracting unique people with strong left brain and right brain skills. Tey had solid financial acumen but with relationship building, messaging and communications, and presentation skills as well. “Tey had the executive presence to go in front of a board and talk about every aspect of an organization, from the financials to the communication strategy to ESG,” McDermott says. “Tey
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