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Shana Veale had been working in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, office of Arthur Andersen for only about 8 months when the 88-year-old stalwart accounting house collapsed.  

Being a recent college graduate at the time, Veale tells us, she really didn\u2019t grasp all of what the news headlines attempted to convey as the turn of events surrounding the Enron scandal unfolded.    

\u201cWe began having these weekly calls internally to discuss the circumstances, but then the cuts came in May and I no longer had a job,\u201d recalls Veale, who as a newbie accountant had little to lose when compared to those colleagues with households to support and decades of equity about to vanish.

Still, having been an eyewitness to the collapse of a firm that had once populated corporate parks and urban centers across the country, Veale found that her first career chapter would administer a lesson that many finance and accounting professionals often learn much later in their careers.

\u201cWhen in business, you should always expect the unexpected\u201d was the takeaway from Veale\u2019s early days\u2014which she says has come in handy at PharmChem, Inc., where roughly 18 months ago she found herself on the sidelines of a proxy fight between company management and new and old board members.

For Veale, who had served as PharmChem\u2019s controller for the previous 3 years, \u201cthe unexpected\u201d this time around resulted in doors being swung open rather than shut, as the victorious and newly configured board asked her to serve as CFO.

\u201cI got lucky because I had had 3 months with the former CFO as the management teams transitioned, so I was able to gather information on the things that I just had not done before, \u201d remark\u2019s Veale, who lists preparing for an upcoming audit among her top of mind, 12-month CFO priorities.

Looking back Veale observes: \u201cI have had a lot of interesting things happen in my career, but I have found very few people who can say: \u2018Oh, yes, I\u2019ve been through that as well.\u2019\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney