BROADCASTS.com

b'

Bill Zerella\\u2019s path to the CFO office began at a company whose customers largely belonged to a bygone era. At the time, Simplicity Patterns was the largest pattern company in the world, and its most devout customers were sewing machine owners across the United States and Canada who enjoyed making clothes for themselves and their families. \\xa0

For Zerella, a 20-something-year-old auditor, the critical career decision to join Simplicity was a no-brainer not because of the business opportunity being presented or the position being offered but because of the source of the proffer. The company had recently hired a former\\xa0Fortune\\xa0500 finance leader by the name of Bill Lewis, who was looking to throttle up the company\\u2019s business model. Zerella was ready to climb on board. \\xa0

\\u201cI probably learned more from him during the 5 years I was with that company than I\\u2019ve learned in the past 25 years,\\u201d comments Zerella, who today is a seasoned tech finance leader who has served in a string of CFO roles, including one with Fitbit, where in 2015 he oversaw the company\\u2019s $841 million initial public offering (IPO).

Still, when asked about the consequential experiences that allowed him to advance upward, Zerella is drawn back to his years at Simplicity.

\\u201cIt was a low-tech company that basically just printed sewing patterns\\u2014which might not sound interesting to most\\u2014but it was incredibly lucrative and probably one of the most profitable that firms I\\u2019ve ever been part of,\\u201d reports Zerella, who started in an auditing role but quickly found himself reassigned to FP&A as CFO Lewis looked to beef up the company\\u2019s performance measurements. However, Zerella\\u2019s arrival in the FP&A planning realm coincided with Simplicity\\u2019s adoption of one of the desktop computing era\\u2019s most disruptive technologies, spreadsheet application Lotus 1-2-3.

In the months ahead, Zerella\\u2019s mastery of the tool would allow the former auditor to move the Simplicity finance team beyond calculators and pencils as he led the automation of the company\\u2019s entire planning process\\u2014and received multiple promotions. \\xa0\\xa0

In fact, the former auditor held the position of treasurer at the time of his departure to accept his first CFO appointment\\u2014only 5 years after his arrival. \\xa0

\\u201cLooking back, I probably got there too soon\\u2014I probably could have used a little more training,\\u201d recalls Zerella, whose Simplicity career was also notable for having permitted him to witness firsthand the transformational power of tech\\u2014which itself would lead to his relocation only a few years later to a locale he will now likely always call home, Silicon Valley.\\xa0\\u2013Jack Sweeney\\xa0