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As the 32-year-old CFO of Brex, Adam Swiecicki has a professional narrative unpopulated by the tales of economic and business hijinks that many of our CFO guests share.

Instead, Swiecicki\u2019s forward-looking delivery seems intent on making a clean break from the CFOs of the past, whose career lessons frequently have involved the same one or two finance constituencies. \xa0

\u201cI just realized that there is a broad ecosystem of people whom Brex touches,\u201d he observes, \u201cand it\u2019s really important that we keep all of them in mind.\u201d \xa0\xa0

To Swiecicki, the phrase \u201cstakeholder capitalism\u201d has become much more than a buzzword du jour\xa0and indeed a guiding principle for the kickoff of his CFO career.

Having entered the CFO office from stints with investment banks and hedge funds, he realized quickly that he needed to make a \u201cbig change\u201d when it came to his management mindset. \xa0

\xa0\u201cI had heard about stakeholder capitalism, but I hadn\u2019t really given it much thought until I stepped into the CFO role,\u201d comments Swiecicki, who shortly after assuming the role of finance chief found himself engaging with not only investors and board members but also customers and employees. \xa0

\u201cHistorically, there has always been a view that shareholders and stakeholders are not aligned, but what I have come to realize is that they are very aligned when it comes to maximizing value for them both together,\u201d reports Swiecicki.

Meanwhile, having spent more than a few hours over the past 9 months with company customers, Swiecicki seems intent on removing any doubt that such an alignment exists, particularly when it comes to serving Brex\u2019s customers.

\u201cThe question that we like to think about is \u2018What is the value that we\u2019re creating for our customer?\u2019\u2014and this is really not so much a finance metric as it is a goal that the whole company can rally around,\u201d remarks Swiecicki, who notes that executives from product management, engineering, and operations can now share the common goal of finding new value for the customer.

Once this value has been created, the ball is back in finance\u2019s court, where the finance team must determine a pricing model hopefully appropriate to achieving an even better alignment of common goals.

Says Swiecicki: \u201cFrom a pricing perspective, we want to extract some of this value for ourselves but ultimately deliver a lot of ROI for the companies that are buying our software products.\u201d\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney