IDG News Service — Name: Evan Cassidy
Age: 28
Time with company: 1 year
Education: Bachelor of Science, Master in Accounting, MBA from Babson College; CPA company headquarters: Dublin, Ireland; U.S. headquarters: Boston
Number of countries: Ireland, England, U.S.
Number of employees total: 55
Number of employees the CFO oversees: 3
About the company: Emergn is a global IT management consultancy that uses Lean and Agile-inspired methodologies to increase value, improve flow and advance quality across the enterprise. The company's customers are enterprise-level Fortune 500 and 100 corporations and government in the U.S. and Europe.
1. Where did you start in finance and what experiences led you to the job you have today?
I'm certainly a growth guy. There's a very strong entrepreneurial spirit that runs deep within me, which isn't always the norm for a CFO. It started early. My parents, who are probably responsible for it, like telling the story about when I was five years old I started to rent books to my family and friends from my personal library. When I was in middle school a friend of mine and I decided to start a boat-tour business -- we were going to give people tours of Marblehead Harbor [north of Boston]. I think the logic at the time is that he was supposed to provide his family's boat and I was going to do much of the rest. While it didn't quite get off the ground -- or into the water -- it was a first, fun stab at a business plan.
I had the good fortune of being involved in "real" startups as early as high school. I got neck deep into the Web-design craze back in the late '90s and was able to build a company working with some clients. Juggling the business with schoolwork was tedious -- I vividly remember sneaking to the phone booth to make calls to clients between classes. They had no idea I was 15. This was a great experience that helped me to learn how to deal with people and manage client demands. I think I did pretty well for someone who didn't have a driver's license yet.
Following my passion, I went to Babson College, the Promised Land for entrepreneurship. The climate there was electric with startup energy. The more I became involved in startups, the more I seemed to become the money guy. This probably guided my path through accounting, undergrad and master's, culminating in a CPA.
My first exclusive accounting job was at KPMG in the forensics practice in Boston, where I got to experience an interesting side of accounting by investigating fraud and helping to build out anti-money-laundering compliance frameworks. I always explain to people that it was a combination between accounting and "CSI."
