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Jim Calabrese recalls that when he began to climb the corporate ladder early in his finance career, an executive mentor told him, \u201cNever be afraid to make the coffee.\u201d

This curious advice caught Calabrese\u2019s attention, so the up-and-coming executive listened carefully as the mentor added: \u201cAs an executive, you need to be able to get dirty\u2014to roll up your sleeves. You don\u2019t want to be the person who can\u2019t do a mundane task because you\u2019re in love with your title.\u201d

Today, as a CFO, Calabrese serves up his own bite-size mentoring verbiage in this way: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more valuable when you\u2019re the CFO than understanding how the widgets are made\u2014and being the person who\u2019s willing to take on the challenging projects.\u201d

Calabrese tells us that he reached the CFO office by aggressively pursuing projects outside the traditional finance realm while also signing up for long stretches on strategic planning teams, where he guided re-engineering projects in the energy and software sectors.

His strategic work\u2014along with his operational \u201cgrinding and tinkering\u201d\u2014positioned the CPA/MBA hybrid to thrive as a finance leader, especially in his current role as CFO of Finalsite, a private equity\u2013backed SaaS developer serving the education sector.