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Asked to recall the experience of stepping into a CFO role for the first time, Nicole Anasenes doesn\u2019t mince words.

"It\u2019s a very lonely, scary moment,\u201d comments Anasenes, as she considers her early days at technology company Infor\u2014a CFO appointment that preceded more recent CFO engagements at Squarespace and now technology firm Ansys.

\u201cIf only someone would have told me how lonely it feels to make certain decisions\u2014you can bounce ideas off people, but you are the ultimate decision-maker,\u201d continues Anasenes, who says that, looking \xa0back, she may have been able to ease some of the decision-making concerns if she had had a broader professional network to which to turn.

\u201cI happened to have been lucky that Charles Philips, the CEO of Infor, was a financially savvy person, but since then, I\u2019ve built a much broader network of people and a framework for how to have these type of conversations in which you don\u2019t divulge the specifics concerning your company but get the mentoring and support that you need,\u201d remarks Anasenes, who prior to entering the CFO office at Infor spent more 14 years at IBM Corp., where she last served as CFO of the tech giant\u2019s middleware group.

\u201cI learned very quickly after leaving IBM that you need to be open to networks and different types of networks,\u201d explains Anasenes, who adds that her appetite for networking has grown along with her CFO talent development responsibilities.

\u201cYou are only good as the talent you attract, retain, and are able to keep engaged, so my relationship with the executive search community is quite broad,\u201d she notes. \xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney

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