BROADCASTS.com

When Jonathan Carr first walked through the doors of the Stryker Inc. plant in Arroyo, Puerto Rico, the boyish newbie accountant no doubt turned the heads of a few managers.  

Having finished college only about 18 months earlier, Carr was now the accounting and finance \u201clead\u201d for a major software implementation under way at the medical device manufacturer\u2019s Puerto Rican plant.

To succeed in his new role, Carr would need to have local managers as well as senior IT executives walk him through the manufacturing plant\u2019s transaction processes so that he could understand how the software\u2019s promise of automation could be leveraged to streamline the plant\u2019s accounting close cycle.

Looking back, Carr can see that it was his inexperience at the time that made the assignment so enriching to his early career.

\u201cYou have to find things that you have absolutely no idea how to do because it\u2019s those things that will help you to grow exponentially,\u201d remarks Carr, who credits his boss at the time, a Stryker divisional controller, for instilling a risk-taking career mindset.

Recalls Carr: \u201cOne of his biggest pieces of advice to me was to find opportunities that would either get me promoted or get me fired.\u201d

After more than 5 years at Stryker, Carr began to think about finance career opportunities inside high tech, a sector widely populated by growth companies that could help him to move beyond manufacturing\u2019s hyperfocus on cost accounting.

The SaaS software company Survey Monkey soon captured Carr\u2019s attention.  

\u201cAt the time, Survey Monkey\u2019s FP&A team wasn\u2019t built out and the company was still at less than $100 million in revenue, so here was this opportunity to start thinking about how to take an organization that was growing organically and add strategic levers to it,\u201d comments Carr, who would serve as head of FP&A not only at Survey Monkey but also at yet one other tech firm before stepping into the CFO office at Armis in 2020.

Asked about the \u201cdeep end of the pool\u201d\u2014or the Stryker plant that he had entered with only 18 months of experience\u2014Carr tell us: \u201cThese are the types of opportunities that as a leader I think are so important to now provide to my own team.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney