Women in Leadership Roundtable: Rising through the ranks

Alex Curran is the North American Regional CEO at Aptitude Software, responsible for leading the region which represents over 50% of the group’s revenue.

As the first female CEO at Aptitude, Alex is passionate about the topic of Women in Leadership and has a strong focus on creating and nurturing a positive, productive and efficient culture and building highly effective teams to ensure continuous growth.

Alex Curran | LinkedIn

Ekaterina (Katya) Emelianova is CFO and Deputy CEO of  TradeXBank AG and a member of the Executive Board.

Ekaterina has over 25 years of professional experience, mainly in the financial industry. Prior to her current position as a CFO of TradeXBank, she was keeping number of positions as a Finance Director or CFO of the Corporate and Investment Business at the large Eastern European Banks, Investment companies with the presence over 10 countries and was in charge of overseeing foreign subsidiaries across all countries of presence. She has solid experience of the transformation of finance function including technological aspect of it. She keeps CFM, CMA, CSCA and CIA qualifications and holds EMBA degree from London Business School. Since July 2021, she has served as President of the Swiss Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), a not-for-profit organization focused on advancing the management accounting profession.

Ekaterina Emelianova | LinkedIn

With expertise in areas such as accounting, reporting, analytics and automation, Terri Smith, EVP Finance & Accounting, Betacom Inc., has held multiple financial positions in public and private growth companies ranging from start-ups to $70B+ companies.

Terri has successfully led financial teams in multiple large-scale M&A integration efforts and pioneered successful financial support processes tailored to accuracy and lean efficiency. As EVP Finance & Accounting at Betacom, Inc., Terri not only drives innovation within the Financial leadership realm but also carries a passion for furthering Women in Leadership via mentorship and continued professional growth. ​Terri said, “As prior client of Aptitude Software, I am absolutely honored to participate in discussion of this extremely important topic, Women in Leadership.”

TERRI SMITH | LinkedIn

Sara is a Principal in KPMG’s Advisory Technology practice. She has more than 30 years’ experience leading the development of technology strategies and delivery of large, transformational IT initiatives in clients’ finance, supply chain, and manufacturing operations.

Prior to joining KPMG, Sara was a Partner at Accenture, where she held a variety of leadership roles. She worked with client manufacturing executives to align IT strategies with business goals and corporate change initiatives and has architected the comprehensive technology solutions needed to realize their business goals. Prior to becoming a consultant, Sara worked for nearly a decade as a manufacturing process engineer in a state-of-the-art semiconductor production facility, focused on improving production yield/productivity by leading process engineering initiatives.

Sara leads several KPMG initiatives focused on sponsoring and advocating women in their career development and progression. As a mentor, she’s in high demand by women across multiple firm disciplines. Sara launched and currently leads the Women in Consulting and Women in Technology affinity groups, where she reaches 2500+ women with various mentoring and development programs.  Sara has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Brown University and a MS in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.

Sara Dioguardi | LinkedIn

Sandy is a Partner at EY and the Finance Transformation leader for insurance. She has been with EY for 12 years, 21 years in consulting overall. Prior to that she worked in the Insurance industry.

Her interest in this roundtable is to share some of her lessons learned as she moved into a leadership role – in the hopes of providing some thoughts and perspectives for others to consider as they continue their career journey.

Sandy Sposato | LinkedIn

Sirisha Dasu is a digital transformation, technology strategist, and visionary. She led key company transformation activities at VMware, Intuit, Portal Software and Quantum Peripherals. She has successfully scaled, transformed, and expanded the finance capabilities during a time of exponential business growth at VMware from $700M in 2006 to $13B in FY’22.

Sirisha is known for being collaborative, innovative and customer-centric, delivering consistent business results that exceed company goals. She is currently part of the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) transformation leadership team evaluating the impact of SaaS transition on key finance systems and processes such as sales compensation, bookings, revenue recognition and reporting. A strong people leader specializing in motivating, inspiring, and building out global teams, Sirisha has extensive knowledge of financial close processes and works closely with internal and external auditors in designing robust, compliant processes and systems. During Sirisha’s current tenure at VMware, she was the finance systems lead for the integration of Pivotal Software, Carbon Black and Cloud Health integrations ensuring a successful transition of people, processes, and policies.

Sirisha is an Advisory Board Member of SEBA (School of Economics and Business Administration), Saint Mary’s College, and is on the customer advisory boards of BlackLine Systems and Aptitude Software corporations. Sirisha’s educational background includes an M.B.A in Finance from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK followed by passing of CPA exam in California. She is an avid reader and is very interested in learning from and guiding others – focused on promoting women’s career development by mentoring and coaching members in direct and extended organizations.

Sirisha Dasu | LinkedIn

Karen Nunn has worked in the accounting field for over 33 years. She has Bachelor and Master’s degrees in accounting and is a CPA. For nearly 20 years, she’s worked at Health Care Service Corporation where she started as an accountant.

Her current position is Divisional Vice President of Financial Operations. She is responsible for a wide range of functions including Accounts Payable, Accounting Operations and functional support of the Accounting Hub and the ERP system. She was happy to be asked to participate in this panel because she believes it’s important to share experiences and perspectives to drive conscious awareness and to help build strategies to address inequities.

Karen Nunn | LinkedIn

Sian Ciabattoni has 25+ years’ marketing experience in SaaS software marketing, with a strong focus on campaigns and branding, recently leading the company rebrand. Sian is passionate about Women in Leadership and is an active member of the Diversity & Inclusion Steer Co at Aptitude.

Sian has successfully lead marketing teams throughout her career and around the globe. As well as 1:1 mentoring, she continually focuses on developing and improving her own marketing and personal skills – recently completing the Chartered Institute of Marketing Digital Diploma in Professional Marketing.

Sian Ciabattoni | LinkedIn