For Rodrigo Brumana, the path to becoming finance chief of e-commerce firm Poshmark Inc. resembles the road he once traveled from San Jose, Calif. to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska via motorcycle — one that required a sense of adventure, precise planning, and the ability to remain calm when your gut tells you to panic, he said.
“Preparing for the trip was just as good as the trip itself, which I think tells a lot about what it takes to be a CFO — you have to be a planner,” Brumana said in a recent Airbase webinar.
The trip was in June 2012, Brumana recalled, and it was during the ride that a tragic accident involving one of his fellow motorcyclists forced the now finance chief to remain calm — a skill he says is essential for CFOs in the hot seat.
It was because of skills that he had learned throughout his career that Brumana was able to lead riders to safety that day. Now, the seasoned CFO says that his career in general took a lot of thoughtfulness, as well as an adventurous spirit.
Career of adventure
When Brumana came over to the U.S. in 1999, he spoke no English and had no financial experience. It wasn’t until he rented a car and drove through 34 states in the span of 30 days that he realized he had no choice but to learn the English language, and the nuances of American culture.
“There was no GPS at this time, I had to learn how to talk to the people I met and say ‘hey how do I get to the Grand Canyon’, and that is how I learned,” said Brumana.
The CFO also quickly adapted to the language of finance when he arrived from Brazil.
“When I learned English, I went to work for an investment bank — Bear Stearns. I did not know much about investment banking, but I was a computer programmer, and at that time, there was a fear that all of the computers were going to stop working, so I got the job,” said Brumana.
Soon after, Brumana attended the University of California Berkley’s Haas School of Business where he received his MBA.
“I was very lucky,” Brumana said. “Early on, I had a mentor who told me, ‘If you want to become a CFO, you have to gain experience in corporate finance as well as accounting very early on’,” he said.
After Bear Stearns, Brumana was a divisional CFO at then Fairchild, now part of onsemi — a semiconductor supplier — for five years until 2008, when he went on to become the senior director of finance and controller at Palm Inc. With these experiences, Brumana checked the boxes of corporate finance and accounting.
After holding executive financial positions at HP, RetailMeNot and eBay, Brumana landed another CFO gig at OfferUp — a Bellevue, Wash. mobile marketplace company, according to his Linkedin profile.
Brumana then took on the roles of CFO for Amazon’s private brands, and finally, CFO of Redwood City, Calif.-based Poshmark after the previous finance chief Anan Kashyap stepped down in June 2021 after five years with the company, and a few months after the company went public.
Know what you don’t know
Unlike many CFOs, Brumana has, at one point, held every functional job of the finance team — financial planning and controller, for example — but it was not until later in his career that he learned how to hire talent to amplify his position, he said.
“There’s no right or wrong way to get to the job. I myself liked to go deeper in different areas because I liked to feel knowledgeable about the things I am talking about,” he said.
But Brumana then came to realize that, “when you are a people manager, and you know how to recruit and hire the best of the best — you can actually amplify your career and learn a lot from those around you,” he said.
When it comes to knowing what you don’t know, it is just as important for finance chiefs to know when to turn to the capabilities of systems instead of people.
“One thing that I see happen a lot, especially with companies going public too soon, is sometimes we’ll focus on the people aspect and neglect the systems aspect. If you do that, it can bite you down the road, because the systems are supposed to augment the people,” said Brumana.
