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Pete Tantillo recalls being somewhat surprised when he discovered that his career path could be leading to the CFO office. \u201cI\u2019m sort of an accidental CFO,\u201d explains Tantillo, who first arrived inside the finance function in the mid-1990s, when his employer tasked him with making a promising new ERP application meet the needs of finance.

The successful implementation led to a job offer from then little-known SAP\u2013which was busy launching the next great technology wave, known as the client server. Tantillo loved the work (he stayed at SAP for 13 years) and eventually ran SAP\u2019s services\u2013the role that would ultimately become his career game changer.

Having helped to grow a profitable services business alongside SAP\u2019s software juggernaut, Tantillo was hired away from SAP by a former mentor who believed that Tantillo\u2019s services smarts could help her to turn around a struggling software unit.

However, Tantillo\u2019s responsibilities went well beyond services, as he became tasked with organizing, monetizing, and supporting the company\u2019s finance and business operations. This would the first in a number of CFO tours of duty that from a career experience point of view would appear to have been anything but accidental. \u2014Jack Sweeney