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It was the type of role that any recent business school graduate could envy\\u2014not because of the position\\u2019s title (Chief of Staff) or how much it paid, but because of its proximity to management decision-making.

The job is one that Bennett Theimann remembers well as he looks back on the days when he served as chief of staff for the president of Gruner + Jahr\\u2019s German magazine division.

\\u201cIt exposed me to that sort of very-high-level strategic thinking. We launched magazines, we sold magazines, we bought magazines,\\u201d says Theimann, who very often found himself finalizing some of the documents that Gruner + Jahr management ultimately used to brief its board.

\\u201cMy job was to help senior management translate their investment proposals, budget requests, or whatever they needed to get done, and very often they needed money,\\u201d explains Theimann, who adds that while the position was not officially a finance one, this early experience of being a \\u201cbusiness case builder\\u201d later helped to propel him into a number of FP&A and senior business development roles.

Theimann, who would step into his first CFO role in 2005, has now occupied the CFO office for several early-stage companies, the latest being Applicaster, a SaaS developer specializing in app development and\\xa0content distribution. \\u2013Jack Sweeney\\xa0