Twenty years in senior finance.
Nine years as a CPG founder.
I've sat in the founder's chair and the CFO's. That combination is how I read a P&L, a forecast, and a founder at the same time.
$100M+
9 yrs
$40M
BUDGET OWNERSHIP
CPG FOUNDER
INSTITUTIONAL PORTFOLIO
Strategic finance partner to the CPTO and Legal at Wikimedia Foundation, owning global budget strategy and board-level financial reporting.
Built White & Elm from zero to national retail: Target, Birchbox, 50,000-unit purchase orders, seven-figure valuation, FDA OTC registration.
CFO at Colorado State University's Infectious Disease Research Center. Designed a fee-for-service model adopted as a national benchmark. Launched CSU's first Biotech Business Incubator.
The CFO's chair
and the founder's.
Twenty years in senior finance across institutional and commercial environments. CFO at Colorado State University's Infectious Disease Research Center, managing a $40M research portfolio. Strategic finance partner at Wikimedia Foundation, owning $100M+ in global budget strategy for the CPTO and Legal divisions.
Nine years as Founder and CEO of White & Elm, a CPG skincare brand, scaled to national retail. Target contracts. Birchbox partnerships. 50,000-unit purchase orders. Seven-figure valuation. FDA OTC registration. B Corp certification. Eight years with zero product recalls.
Most finance executives have the institutional side or the founder side. Few finance executives have built a CPG brand. Fewer have done both.
BACKGROUND
What I bring
to the table.
Institutional finance rigor.
Managed $40M to $100M+ portfolios inside organizations that demand board-level accuracy, clean internal controls, and reporting built for stakeholders who ask hard questions. That standard doesn't change by company size.
EXPERTISE
Founder-level operational fluency.
Built a CPG brand from zero to national retail. Lived the capital strategy, the retailer negotiations, the regulatory filings, and the decisions that don't show up in the textbook. Learned by doing.
CPG domain depth.
Trade mechanics, deduction management, DTC-to-retail financial transitions, and product-based revenue. Deep familiarity with the financial architecture that separates brands that scale from brands that stall.
AI-native financial operations.
Hands-on experience building with agentic AI: custom tools, automated workflows, and structured systems for financial operations. Executive fluency in where AI creates real leverage, what the data infrastructure has to look like, and where the failure modes are.
Let's talk.
Reach out directly. I read every message.
sherelle@sherellereed.com