I was recently featured in CPA Ontario's Drive Business Forward campaign — a series spotlighting how CPAs across the country are leading change in their industries and communities.
The piece covers the Kwantum story: leaving a VP role at a multinational firm to build a fractional CFO practice focused on early-stage tech founders. The gap I saw in the market was straightforward — brilliant founders with deep technical expertise but limited financial fluency. The CPA designation gave me the credibility and foundation to step into that space and actually be useful to them.
The feature also gets into what the fractional CFO model looks like in practice: building the financial models, structuring the deals, and being in the room when it matters most. When a pitch meeting comes, my job is to let the founder do the dream pitch — and step in when the hard financial questions start.
My favourite saying: "I tell the CEO, ‘You go out there, do the dream pitch. When they start drilling into your financials, hand the mic to me and I will walk them through the model I built.’"
More than a career milestone, being part of this campaign is a reminder of why I made the move in the first place.
The founders I work with — medtech companies preparing for a seed round, blockchain companies scaling across borders, AI platforms navigating investor relations — are some of the brightest people I've ever been around. What they're building is genuinely exciting. But even the best ideas need a solid financial strategy behind them, and that's the gap Kwantum exists to fill.
If you're an aspiring CPA wondering whether the designation can take you somewhere unconventional, I hope this answers that question. Be curious. The CPA gives you the foundation — what you do with it is up to you.