BROADCASTS.com

One of the unspoken truths about interim CFO roles is that they sometimes don\u2019t lead to an actual CFO role\u2014a fact that has turned more than a few seasoned finance executives into chronic nail-biters.  

For Jared Poff, who ultimately cleared all hurdles as an interim chief to land inside the CFO office at Designer Brands (formerly DSW), the job title ended up leaving a lasting impression. 

\u201cI sat in the interim role for nearly 6 months, and they were absolutely the most grueling 6 months of my career\u2014outside of COVID, maybe,\u201d recalls Poff, who was recruited to Designer Brands back in 2015 with the expectation that he was going to be groomed by the company\u2019s then-CFO to take over her role within the next few years.

For Poff, a former Cardinal Health finance director and more recently treasurer at retailer Big Lots, the plan was to join Designer Brands as treasurer and take a year or two to beef up his accounting and controllership experience before entering the C-suite.

The fact that he was swapping a treasurer role at Big Lots for a treasurer role at an organization which at the time was only half the size of Big Lots didn\u2019t seem to matter, as Poff viewed the Designer Brands opportunity as one that offered a viable on-ramp to the CFO office.

However, Poff tells us that within months of joining the company, Designer Brands\u2019 board put in motion a CEO change at roughly the same time that its then-CFO got recruited to fill another CFO opportunity.

\u201cI was named \u201cinterim\u201d because the board was not 100 percent comfortable that a first-time CFO was a good match for a first-time CEO,\u201d remarks Poff, who remembers wondering whether his career calculus may have been faulty.

\u201cI was treasurer, I was controller, and I was CFO, and because I didn\u2019t know whether I\u2019d be keeping the CFO position, I couldn\u2019t hire for the other two roles,\u201d reports Poff, who came across a list of 70 possible CFO candidates that was circulating among board members.   

\u201cIt was as if I were interviewing for the position every day, but I did get the nod,\u201d comments Poff, who recalls his early days at Designer Brands as a period of accelerated learning.

Says Poff: \u201cI would do it again in a heartbeat\u2014when it\u2019s trial by fire, you just learn everything.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney