ON Partners Recruits Chief Accounting Officer for Tegus

September 6, 2022 – Joe Olson, Daniel Bolger, and Jake Espenlaub of ON Partners have helped to place Lisa Akhionbare as chief accounting officer for Tegus, a research platform for institutional investors.

Previously, Ms. Akhionbare was vice president and corporate controller at Vroom where she scaled the accounting organization from 12 to nearly 100 team members. During her time at Vroom, sales revenue grew from less than $600 million per year to more than $3.4 billion per year. Ms. Akhionbare also led the operational accounting team through Vroom’s IPO in 2020. Prior to her career at Vroom, she led a variety of teams at PwC, Comcast, EMS, and Hearst Media.

Tegus looks to empower top investors and companies across the globe to outperform the market by surfacing the qualitative insights, critical public financial data, and customized expert calls—all on an integrated, modern SaaS platform. The company serves more than 2,000 customers worldwide, including investment firms, corporations, and consultancies.

With a primary focus on technology, consumer, industrial, and the life science sectors, ON Partners recruits C-level and board talent for public and private companies, as well as venture capital and private equity firms. Founded in 2006, the firm’s consultants work from offices in Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Menlo Park, CA; Minneapolis. MN; San Francisco; and New York. ON Partners was named one of the fastest growing search firms this year by Hunt Scanlon Media. The firm is now ranked as one of the 20 largest search firms in the nation.

Mr. Olsen has over 10 years of executive search experience. The functions he serves include CFO, CIO, and their direct reports. Among his recent assignments, Mr. Olsen placed the CFO for Advance Auto Parts and chief accounting officer for Nvidia. He focuses on the consumer products and services, retail, and technology sectors.

Mr. Bolger partners with established organizations to modernize and transform their technology infrastructure and collaborates with growth companies across multiple functions to build executive leadership teams. For larger, established organizations, such as Fiserv, Allscripts, and Digital Realty, he has placed CTO, CIO, and senior-level executives.  With growth companies, Mr. Bolger has placed executive leaders across a range of functions including sales, marketing, technology, finance, and engineering. He previously served as talent acquisition manager at PepsiCo.

Mr. Espenlaub serves the software, E-commerce, consumer, digital, and retail industries. Organizations he serves include public, private equity, and growth equity organizations with a focus on digital transformation. The functions he serves include go-to-market, product, technology, digital, and customer experience. Previously, he ran the technology practice at the Benefits Advisory Group.

Chief Accounting Officers

There are many similarities between chief accounting officers and chief financial officers, such as the responsibility of managing the finances of a business. But there are important distinctions between the positions. According to ZipRecruiter, the CAO is in charge of all things within the accounting department of a company, especially the day-to-day operations.

So, what makes the best type of training for this role? “Hands down, public accounting remains the top training ground for finance executives,” said Ken Martin, SVP and partner at search firm WinterWyman. “The exposure to multiple types of businesses and accounting systems makes for an unparalleled career foundation.”

“Typically, CAOs are technically minded and comfortable expressing their opinions and making pronouncements on how accounting standards will impact their organization,” Mr. Martin said, explaining the ideal executives for this role. “Because they oversee reporting and are accounting focused, they are usually more internal facing and hands on than a CFO. They must also be adept at building, evaluating, and mentoring teams.”

Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor  – Hunt Scanlon Media