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The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s is as good a place in time as any for Gregg Clevenger to use to begin explaining the mix of professional and personal circumstances that made Rochester, New York, his port of entry into the CFO office.

At the time, Clevenger recalls, he was a vice president for Goldman\u2019s Sach\u2019s media entertainment and technology group in Singapore and observed $100 million of recently raised funding \u201cgo up in smoke.\u201d

Having been recruited to join Goldman while overseas, Clevenger returned to the U.S. as something of an unknown. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t really know me in the U.S. context,\u201d he remembers. \u201cSo it was going to be a very tough row to hoe.\u201d

What\u2019s more, the travel to which Clevenger was accustomed was no longer a great match for his young family.

\u201cMy first two children\u2014one born in Singapore and the other in Hong Kong\u2014I never saw them,\u201d comments Clevenger, who began commuting daily to Goldman\u2019s Manhattan office from a new home in Connecticut.

It was at about this time that Clevenger began accepting calls from a number of recruiters, one of whom he believes likely brought him to the attention of a publicly traded, midsize telecom located in Rochester.

\u201cThat whole Rochester thing: I never would\u2019ve thought \u2018Hey, let\u2019s move to Rochester,\u2019 but it was kind of a personal reset as well as a career one\u2014to live, work, and have our kids go to school in a community,\u201d explains Clevenger.

Having joined the company as head of corporate development, within 3 years he found himself entering the CFO office, where he remained for 4 more years while helping to lead the business through a major restructuring brought on by the telecom sector\u2019s crash.

Looking back on his decade as an investment banker, Clevenger says that he has few doubts about his move to the operations side of things: \u201cI\u2019ve now been doing this for 20 years\u2014it\u2019s hard for me to imagine being an investment banker for 30 years.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney

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