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It was near the end of her 9 years with Intel Corp. that Yevgenia Fink received a bit of advice that today she credits with having helped her to blaze a path that would ultimately lead to the CFO office. \xa0

As Fink recalls, \u201cLeave Intel before you forget how to open an Excel spreadsheet\u201d was the brief but memorable comment that a respected manager opined.

\u201cI felt that I had a lot of influence at Intel, but most of my function became leading and managing people, and I still didn\u2019t feel confident in my pure finance skill set,\u201d says Fink, who at the time was a group controller for the chip maker\u2019s mobile platform team.

Fink\u2019s future finance career path would involve a string of start-ups where she got to demonstrate her FP&A skills and along the way acquire broader finance responsibilities that made her a candidate for VP of finance positions and eventually the CFO office at HOVER, an application that helps users to design and estimate home improvement projects.

\u201cThe experience gave me exposure to what it is like to be part of a public company on a much more intimate scale than what Intel could have ever given me,\u201d observes Fink, who at the same time credits the giant chip maker with offering its finance professionals a wide berth of opportunities to pursue.

Comments Fink: \u201cThere was a realization at Intel that to be a strong finance professional, you needed to be well-rounded across all disciplines, so it wasn\u2019t about hoarding employees and keeping them in a finance box but really about providing people with opportunities that an organization the size of Intel can offer.\u201d

At HOVER, Fink\u2019s attention these days is migrating from Excel spreadsheets back to people.

\u201cWhen I joined, I built a financial model, and now, as the company is scaling, it\u2019s about hiring people who can improve on what was built,\u201d explains Fink, who says that the transition from \u201cleader and doer\u201d to \u201cpeople leader\u201d requires a sense of timing.

She adds: \u201cIf the transition feels a little premature, it\u2019s probably the right time to do it.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney\xa0 Signup for our Newsletter