Jill Woodworth took her new role at Alation, a business to business enterprise software company focused on data catalog, analytics, and data management just last month. But before she landed there; Woodworth had a breadth of experience in the business and finance space, taking lessons learned with her from role to role.
From investment banking to corporate finance
Before taking on the beast that is corporate finance, Woodworth spent just shy of three decades in investment banking and she believes her time in that space has given her an edge as a finance chief.
“I think you get a very interesting vantage point — as a banker, that is — as over the years you get to meet hundreds of really talented CEOs and CFOs, and you get to help them, and coach them through capital raisings and acquisitions,” said Woodworth in an interview. “It allowed me first hand to see the leadership qualities that I wanted to embody as a CFO,” she said.
Woodworth is an alum of both Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, where she was managing director from 2006 until 2018.
“As a banker you very are technically trained, and because of that, understanding the investor mindset came really naturally to me,” said Woodworth on her transition to corporate finance. “The fun part was hiring great teams and being able to augment my leadership skills across the areas of accounting and tax and other areas that weren't necessarily a specialty of mine over the last several decades,” she said.
After her time at the banking giant, Woodworth took her skills to exercise platform Peloton where she held her first CFO role.
Chasing high growth
Then, on May 11 Woodworth took the financial helm of Alation, where she hopes to apply what she has learned about scaling high-growth companies, according to the release announcing her appointment.
The Redwood City, Calif.-based company is ten years old and a data driven startup, acting as somewhat of a data catalog and providing a sense of organization to its customers.
The company’s customer base now includes many Fortune 500 companies, according to the release, and last year they raised $123 million in a Series E funding round in order to meet “surging global demand for data intelligence platforms,” according to a November 2022 press release.
“I'm truly passionate about the software, and the business intelligence platform that Alation has built,” said Woodworth.
The CFO also noted that similar to Peloton, Alation is a company that is growing really fast. “In terms of lessons learned, as a finance leader, you have to help the company balance that external growth and serving your customer base while at the same time thinking about the infrastructure that you really need to support that growth,” she said.
Woodworth joined Peloton in 2018 as CFO and led the fitness equipment giant through its initial public offering in 2019. She also guided the company through the pandemic, where they saw great growth after COVID-19 restrictions closed local gyms across the country. Her departure was announced in June 2022.
Soon after, co-founders of New York-based Peloton announced their resignations in September 2022, as the company experienced financial woes due to weaker demand, CFO Dive previously reported.
When it comes to supporting growth, having a strong tech stack is key — meaning the infrastrucutre necessary to support a growing business — and, “that sometimes is very hard to do when you are growing at a fast rate,” she said.
In terms of other lessons learned, despite the macro environment, “there is never a time when you should not be keeping a very close eye on cost structure, and evaluating every dollar that you're spending and, really weighing the trade offs of what you're trying to achieve. That’s certainly something I'm taking with me to Alation,” said Woodworth.
