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When Rajesh Gupta tells us that he likes change and fixing things that are broken, we can\u2019t help but wonder how a finance career that has encompassed more than 20 years with General Electric has come to satisfy that appetite.

Certainly, we reason, this number of years with a single company is more likely to accent the resume of a change-averse executive than that of someone who actively pursues it.

However, as we quickly learn, Gupta\u2019s GE years were spent across three continents, and 15 of them involved ever-acquisitive GE Capital.

\u201cBecause GE Capital grew from a lot of different acquisitions, each of its new companies would in effect have its own culture\u2014and rather than try to force their own culture on it, GE would instead introduce its leadership training and financial management approaches,\u201d explains Gupta, whose career with GE began in India after he was first hired by a GE joint venture that was shortly thereafter acquired by GE Capital.

\u201cI was asked to join a leadership training program, which basically opened the door to opportunities through which I could take on different roles inside GE,\u201d reports Gupta, whose vocational track quickly found traction inside GE\u2019s M&A and commercial business partnering activities. From restructuring acquisitions to dealing with credit card operations, Gupta tells us, his appetite for change found a wealth of avenues to pursue.

\u201cI was heading down a path that I felt would someday allow me to become a general manager of a GE business unit\u2014but then 2008 happened,\u201d comments Gupta, who notes that the economic downturn of the late 2000s became something of a wakeup call.

\u201cWhen I looked at my CV, I saw that I had had a career that was difficult to explain to people and that I needed to make a choice rather than continue to straddle the general manager and finance worlds, so I decided to go down the finance track,\u201d recalls Gupta, who in short order was named CFO of a bank owned by GE Capital in the Czech Republic.

\u201cI took hold of the position with both hands,\u201d remembers Gupta, who years later doesn\u2019t attempt to conceal the grave uncertainties of the time. Nonetheless, from that day forward\u2014whether inside or outside of GE\u2014Gupta has always had the CFO title preceding his name.

Adds Gupta: \u201cWhat became clear to me was that the outside world typically thinks about future roles based on the last role that you occupied.\u201d\xa0\u2013Jack Sweeney\xa0