685: When Opportunity Knocks | Rebecca Mahadeva, CFO, Greater Than One

CFO THOUGHT LEADER

For Rebecca Mahadeva, the late 1990s audit of a minor league baseball team was the type of rare career assignment that never failed to intrigue both accountants and non accountants alike.

At the time, Mahadeva had been serving a variety of technology audit clients as a young associate for Coopers & Lybrand when she added to her docket a major league baseball team otherwise known as the New York Mets.

“The Mets controller at the time engaged me to do a site visit and some compliance work on the financials of a single A team up in Canada known as the St Catherine’s Stompers,” explains Mahadeva, who says her visit’s findings were used to help bolster confidence behind the purchase price the Mets owners had divvied up for the single A team.

Following the close of the deal, St. Catherine’s Stompers relocated to Brooklyn, and was subsequently renamed The Brooklyn Cyclones . The newly rebranded Cyclones became the first professional baseball team to play in the borough of Brooklyn since the Dodgers left for Los Angeles in 1958.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but this engagement was really my job interview,” observes Mahadeva, who says that ess than a year later she received a Mets job offer from the same controller. Mahadeva joined the Mets organization as an assistant controller and would spend more than a decade inside its finance function, often taking on assignments to improve operational efficiencies in different areas.

“Baseball is a very hard industry to leave—people seldom do—but there were no growth opportunities for me,” comments Mahadeva, who next accepted a controller position in a professional services firm specializing in marketing communications and healthcare—a realm that has continued to bring Mahadeva new and more senior roles.

Today, as CFO of marketing agency Greater Than One, Mahadeva believes that professional services present a challenge to finance leadership unlike that presented by other sectors.

Says Mahadeva: “The CFO of an agency must find the delicate balance between the output of our employees and the hours that are required to pursue new business opportunities.”

Of course, no matter what balance maybe achieved, few challenges will ever match the deal that brought baseball back to Brooklyn. – Jack Sweeney

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