CFO Awards 2022 Finalists

Steven B. Binder
Chief Financial Officer
MannKind Corporation

When Steve Binder started with the company in July 2017, MannKind had little revenue, and a significant debt load. Since that time, he has helped guide the company in raising approximately $150 million through common stock sales, over $200 million in non-dilutive capital, raised $230 million in a private placement of convertible debt, replaced high-interest debt with a new, preferred senior-secured lender with better terms and converted legacy debt to equity. In addition to ensuring that MannKind had enough capital to survive and grow over the last five years, Binder guided the company’s capital allocation to support a growing endocrine franchise and investing behind a product pipeline.  Beginning with the second quarter of 2022, MannKind will have four sources of revenue vs. one when Binder started in 2017.  Afrezza, VGo and Tyvaso DPI manufacturing plus royalties from the sale of Tyvaso DPI by the collaboration partner.

Craig Borstelmann
SVP, CFO & Treasurer
Republic Indemnity Company of America

Craig Borstelmann has a successful track record of accomplishments and experience in the financial management of property casualty insurance companies.   He has been responsible for the financial accounting and reporting functions in four different organizations.   He has directed many complex and wide-ranging system conversion and enhancement projects.  These involved establishing documenting existing procedures, data elements, and controls and developing specifications and testing protocols.  Borstelmann has also overseen treasury operations to control and maximize his firm’s cash flow. He also successfully managed his organizations’ auditing and examination processes always satisfying these requirements. He directed his company’s risk exposure and capital management functions to ensure compliance with all statutorily requirements. Borstelmann also managed the due diligence and transition of a merger of one his employers into a larger firm. 

Jason Brooks
EVP & Global CFO 
The MBS Group

Jason Brooks is a leader who helped The MBS Group navigate through the unexpected to keep steady through the pandemic crisis in 2020 and then to emerge and build the company’s highest growth year in 2021. Brooks managed through the pandemic with the focus on job preservation to maintain the company’s backbone – its invaluable workforce. This required strict cash reservation, tightened budgets, sacrifices, managing cash flow and integrated assets, and negotiation with all the equity holders and debt holders to prioritize the company’s integrity and people. His efforts and leadership helped keep the business going to minimize impact on the hundreds of families relying on the company. Moving through 2021, it became a rebound year, and now The MBS Group is the world’s largest studio advisory and production services company, servicing nearly 500 sound stages in North America, the UK and Ireland, and supporting more than 450 productions a year. 

Robert A. Clarke
Chief Financial Officer
National Notary Association

Robert A. Clarke is the CFO of the National Notary Association (NNA), the nation’s foremost authority on the American Notary Office, dedicated to imparting knowledge, understanding, and unity amongst all notaries. Since Clarke joined the NNA in 2013 as the CFO/VP finance, he has led the team through a growth of over 2.5 times in revenues and five times in earnings. Additionally, he has led the team to grow three times, from 100 employees to over 300 employees. Through the pandemic, a particularly challenging couple of years, Clarke’s leadership has been nothing short of transformational, and he has increased the gross revenue of NNA significantly. His career in finance has always been driven by one singular goal and vision: the finance department should always see itself as a service department, first and foremost, to both the company’s external customers and internally to all the other functional departments in the business.  

Erin Eichberg
CFO/HR Director
Eichberg Associates, Inc.

Erin Eichberg was an actress and had a successful off-Broadway career. After having her daughter at age 38, she returned to college and got her degree in American Sign Language and Deaf Studies at Northridge University. Eichberg graduated with a 4.0 GPA while raising a seven-year-old daughter. She had zero background in accounting, but when Eichberg Associates, Inc.’s bookkeeper said she would retire after 35 years with the company, Eichberg was asked if she would join her family’s third-generation insurance business. She reluctantly agreed to give it a try. After just six months of training, the bookkeeper said that she’d never seen anyone that mastered the accounting of an insurance agency in the time Eichberg did. Now, six years later, she has become a top-notch CFO, and even the company’s CPAs are in awe of her accomplishments. 

Ron Farr
CFO
West Hills Hospital

Ron Farr has worked in the healthcare financial field for 30 years, with almost 25 of those years for HCA Healthcare.  He also served as a Medical Corps officer in the United States Air Force.  His steadfast approach has guided him through many challenges throughout his career, but nothing could have prepared him for the mayhem of the pandemic.  The hospital was confronted with numerous challenges, including operational issues, supply issues, productivity and staffing issues, and a fear of the unknown.  As a member of the hospital leadership team, Farr helped to lead West Hills Hospital through these difficult times by managing expenses and productivity, and he oversaw the supply chain and secured adequate PPE for the team.  He was supportive of team members on the front lines and rounded on the team regularly to make sure they had what they needed.  

Pam Kessler
CFO and Co-President
LTC Properties

Pam Kessler was appointed co-president of LTC Properties in May, 2020. She has been LTC’s executive vice president, chief financial officer and secretary since 2010. She joined LTC in 2000 as vice president, controller and secretary. Prior to joining LTC, Kessler was the corporate controller for a privately held commercial and multifamily real estate developer. She was also the director of financial reporting for Irvine Apartment Communities, a Southern California apartment REIT. Additionally, she served as the assistant controller of the Inland Empire division of KB Home. She began her career as a certified public accountant at Ernst & Young. Kessler introduced a practice that is not so common at REITs, which is to pay monthly dividends, which makes it a great investment for retail investors. Due to her leadership, LTC has also continued to pay dividends throughout the pandemic, and continues to make investments around the US.

Mike Matzner
Chief Financial Officer
illi Commercial Real Estate

Mike Matzner is the chief financial officer at illi Commercial Real Estate, joining the team in November of 2014. Matzner has worked in property management for over 30 years, and obtained his real estate license in July 2014.  Prior to joining the team at illi, he worked for 25 years at a local property management company as a controller, and developed an excellent reputation working with clients throughout varied states. Matzner is known for his strong work ethic and is loyal, dependable, trustworthy, and highly regarded by his friends and colleagues.  It is rare to come across a professional in any industry that is as balanced as Matzner. 

Kelly Russell
Director of Finance & Operations
Kahn Media Inc

After college, Kelly Russell went to work in finance at Gold Mountain Media, an Encino based media buying agency where he wrote software from scratch to manage the company’s cash flow while juggling ad budgets for clients with pass through costs. He rose to a leadership role in finance at Gold Mountain for nearly a decade before moving to Activision/Blizzard as a team lead in finance, before finally landing at Kahn Media where he took over as only the second head of finance and operations in 14 years. He joined the team during the pandemic and immediately dove in to create new streamlined processes, helped clean up AR, improved cash flow, and led the finance side of the company to its most profitable two quarters and H1 in company history, with projections that 2022 will be both its biggest revenue year and most profitable. 

Manveer Sehmi
EVP Head of Finance and Operations
Hartbeat, LLC

Manveer (Monti) Sehmi moved to the US in 2001 in search of opportunities in accounting and finance.  During the first 12 years of his professional experience, he began in public accounting working for a national firm and then moved over to Ernst & Young in its assurance practice and was responsible for managing large publicly traded entities such as Salesforce.com account as well as small emerging companies. After successful runs at a number of different organizations, Sehmi is currently EVP and head of finance and operations for Hartbeat, LLC., the new multi-platform media company (post-merger of Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud and Hartbeat Productions) and is a fully diverse, black-owned organization. The leadership decided to merge both entities in Q3 2021, so Sehmi worked diligently with the leadership team, outside bankers and legal counsel to create the new business model and manage the restructuring of the new brand. 

Lusine Yeghiazaryan
Chief Financial Officer
SADA

As CFO at SADA, Lusine Yeghiazaryan is responsible for all aspects of finance strategy and financial reporting, revenue and sales operations, global accounting, and financial management. Yeghiazaryan has expertise and extensive experience in technology and biotechnology industries including corporate strategy, finance transformation, M&A, IPO readiness, audit and assurance, design and optimization of financial processes and controls, and enterprise risk management. Prior to joining SADA in her capacity as CFO, she served on SADA’s board of directors as the company’s first independent director and supported SADA’s growth and transformation over that time period. Prior to SADA, Yeghiazaryan was VP finance, IA and internal controls at GoPro, Inc., leading the pre-IPO ICFR readiness and post-IPO financial reporting processes, internal controls, and enterprise risk management. 

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