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Not unlike that of many of his CFO peers, Derrek Gafford\u2019s career path has been shaped in part by geography\u2014specifically, by having its origins in a city that was at once home to a state college, the corporate headquarters of a marquee company, and a Big Four accounting office populated with new college grads.

In Gafford\u2019s case, the city was Boise; the college, Boise State; the marquee company, grocery giant Albertsons; and the Big Four accounting house, Deloitte.

\u201cI had worked my way through Boise State in an Albertsons grocery store, which actually paid for a lot of my education,\u201d explains Gafford, who upon graduating with an accounting degree would end up nabbing a job with Deloitte\u2019s Boise office.

\u201cOriginally, the only job that I had ever really wanted was to work in finance at Albertsons,\u201d he continues, \u201cand guess what company became the first account that Deloitte assigned me to?\u201d

After about 2 years with Deloitte, Gafford joined Albertsons\u2019 internal audit staff, from which he eventually advanced to oversee the company\u2019s audit department while reporting directly to Albertsons\u2019 CFO.

\u201cAs an internal auditor, I had traveled the country visiting stores and distribution centers, so I had gotten a feel for the various aspects of the business and how the company operated,\u201d recalls Gafford.

However, after 6 years with Albertsons, Gafford began to consider different finance leadership roles beyond Boise\u2019s city limits.

\u201cThe way things were headed,\u201d he remembers, \u201cit seemed like I was going to be a lifelong leader of internal audit\u2014which is not where I wanted to be. There was this small, privately held grocery company in Seattle that was looking for a CFO, and the CEO and I got along, so we packed up and headed north.\u201d \u2013Jack Sweeney