19 Years at SAP and Why She Never Left - Gina McNamara (SAP)

Everything that made her great as a specialist didn't help her as a CFO.Gina McNamara told me that this week on the first episode of Season 3 of the CFO Track.Gina is the Regional CFO at SAP. She has been there 19 years, with 6 market units across Asia Pacific, Japan and China.Gina joined through an acquisition as a contractor. She wasn’t even permanent at the time, but took every role that would help her learn.Revenue recognition and commercial business partnering. Each one built her skillset, helped to earn trust and Gina made it to CFO, still in her 30s!Then the job changed her career.Male dominated and difficult conditions at times. The skills she’d spent years building were the wrong ones for the role she was now in.Gina began working with an executive coach that gave her a different perspective.“What if you just left those 20 emails at 5pm? What would happen?”.Gina’s team had to tell her to stop doing their jobs and she started stepping into the role she knew she could do all along.19 years with SAP, because she kept choosing to learn.Not settling for comfortable, but 19 years of progression and growth.A massive Season 3 is here for The CFO Track. Welcome back!Highlights:• Her first year as CFO nearly broke her and an executive coach turned it around• Why lateral career moves matter more than promotions for building a path to CFO• How she survived an acquisition as a contractor and turned it into an 19 year career• The moment her team told her to stop doing their jobs and why it was the best feedback she got• What happens when you say no and someone tells the CEO you don’t understand• How SAP is running vibe coding sessions inside its own finance function• What it takes to manage six markets across Asia Pacific as a working parent• Why 19 years at one company is not stagnation when the business never stops changingTom Hunter, Story Recruitment - first-CFO and first-finance-hire search for Australian tech, fintech and deeptech startups. Host of the CFO Track Podcast. Storyrecruitment.com.au