BROADCASTS.com

Gillian Sheeran\u2019s was perhaps 17 years into an illustrious finance career and on her second CFO tour of duty when she finally met the limits of her CFO superpowers.

These powers had first guided her into a CFO role at the tender age of 32, where during her tenure she would help to turn a 200-employee IT consulting firm into a global business with 850 workers and eight offices in six countries. Next, she added a turnaround chapter to her CFO resume when she helped to design and implement new processes allowing a company to return to profitability within only 9 months.  

It was such stirring feats and results-oriented outcomes that led a mentor impressed by her resume to comment, \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to take half of this stuff out because nobody is going to believe that you did all of this in such a short period of time.\u201d

To help us better understand the career mind-set that once guided her thinking, Sheeran issues a mock impression of herself: \u201cI work incredibly hard because that\u2019s what I do\u2014I work smart, and I work hard, and I go in and achieve, and I never fail.\u201d

To which she adds: \u201cI thought I was invincible because I used to be able to sleep.\u201d

She explains: \u201cMonday to Friday, I might have slept 4 hours\u2014or some nights, even worked straight through\u2014but I could always sleep on the weekend. But now, with kids, I could no longer sleep on weekends.\u201d

Of course, we know that more than sleep\u2014or the lack of it\u2014is responsible for altering Sheeran\u2019s career mind-set. It was during her turnaround CFO chapter that Sheeran, then the mother of a 2-year-old and a 9-month-old\u2014encountered experiences that she had never run into before.

Sheeran recalls: \u201cI ran into a wall\u2014and I never run into walls.\u201d

There were days, Sheeran tells us, when she found herself unable to answer emails. This is a frank admission that Sheeran uses to expose what now appears to be a turning point in her career.

\u201cThe experience made me redefine who I was and how I was going to do my job going forward\u2014and unfortunately I had to learn by failing,\u201d explains Sheeran, who would step down as CFO and vacate the professional world for a period of 2 years, during which the pandemic arrived.

Along the way, as Sheeran\u2019s oldest child reached school age, she and her husband agreed that her home front status need not be a long-term plan.

Reports Sheeran \u201cI may be a great CFO, but I\u2019m not great when I\u2019m home with the kids all day.\u201d

Last January, as she began evaluating opportunities for returning to the C-suite, Sheeran listed market potential, fast growth, and smart people as the most requisite characteristics of a business that she would like to join.

In addition, she wanted a workforce culture and set of values that she could \u201cget behind,\u201d before adding yet one more business characteristic to her wish list: \u201cflexibility.\u201d

Comments Sheeran: \u201cI really wondered whether I was pushing the boat too far.\u201d

In July 2022, Sheeran was named CFO of Pricefx, a fast-growing pricing software company that she credits with having checked every box on her list.

Indeed, flexibility soon turned out to be a very important box when the date of Sheeran\u2019s daughter\u2019s first day of school in late August ended up being scheduled to coincide with a Pricefx strategy meeting\u2014which quickly landed elsewhere on the calendar.   

Remarks Sheeran: \u201cWe believe in family, and it\u2019s not just lip service.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney