Earned Authority: Angela LaFon on 44 Years in Finance and the CFO Role

With forty-four years of work in the rearview, spanning multiple industries and modalities, it was clear, Angela Cardy LaFon didn’t map out a career so much as she read the terrain in front of her and kept moving. She came up through one of the most demanding eras of public accounting, was there when Klondike Bar national, sat in rooms where she was the only person who knew what online banking was, and eventually brought all of it to bear as CFO of Greybull Stewardship.

We certainly think she’s earned the right to stop, but beforehand, Angela shared insights from what four decades in finance have taught her, how the job has changed, and why the most important skill she developed had nothing to do with numbers. 

Getting Started

LaFon entered accounting in 1982 through KPMG, one of the “Big Eight” firms, popularized for their prestige. Getting an offer from one of them, straight out of school, was considered the credential that opened every door after. From there, her path moved through consumer goods, licensed apparel, media, and eventually private equity, each stop adding a fresh layer of operational fluency.

You started at KPMG right out of school. How was the environment coming in?

I had no idea what to expect. Professors teach you accounting. They don’t teach you life skills, and I could have really used those.

I was hired with fifteen people.

Angela LaFon Chief Financial Officer, Greybull Stewardship Small Business Private Equity Team 

 I was the last one to leave, after five years. It was a very tough environment, but that’s how it was at the time. You did what was asked of you, and you made it work. But I had great clients. Tropicana, the early Olive Garden rollout. General Mills owned Red Lobster and was rolling out the Olive Garden at the time, so we had an all-female staff living in Orlando for the summer doing that accounting work. Long before any of those brands were what they are now.

You moved through a lot of different industries across your career. Was there a philosophy behind that, or did it just unfold?

I never really had a plan. I went with the flow. What I learned is that there is more than one way to do things, and sometimes you need to be flexible. Every time I walked into something I didn’t fully understand, I came out the other side knowing more than I went in. The willingness to say yes when something looked interesting, to walk into a room and trust that you’d figure it out, that’s been the throughline. Not a strategy exactly. More of an orientation.

Adapting with Technology

In 1984, LaFon volunteered for what turned out to be the rollout of the first Apple Macintosh and the debut of Microsoft Excel. It was a room full of accountants in Arizona, handed tools that would reshape their entire profession within a decade.

You’ve watched technology remake this field from the very beginning. How do you think about that arc?

When I started, some clients had manual accounting. Books, ledgers. Others were computerized. Audits took a long time because everything was physical. You’d be handed a report eight inches thick and spend weeks just testing the data inside it. Now there’s an algorithm for that.

I signed up for an early online banking pilot once, before most people knew what that meant. You had to dial a phone, hook up a modem, and wait for transactions to appear on an amber screen. It wasn’t perfect, but I knew it was going to be impactful.

What have you noticed as AI has become more present in this work?

My concern is that people take whatever answer comes out of the system and don’t question it. They don’t know how the inputs work, how the data is being manipulated inside the software. And if you don’t know that, you can’t catch a problem when it shows up. I’ve realized that automating a process gets messy if you don’t know the process and its outcomes first. When it comes to accounting and finance, everything should match, and you should know why or why not. 

The CFO Role

The Chief Financial Officer sits at the intersection of a company’s past, present, and future. In its most traditional form, the CFO is the steward of financial health. They typically oversee accounting, reporting, compliance, and planning. But in an operational private equity environment like Greybull’s, the role demands something more: the ability to move between big-picture strategy and ground-level execution without losing sight of either. LaFon has spent her career doing exactly that.

How would you describe what the CFO role demands, beyond what most people assume?

Everybody wants to be a strategist and nobody wants to be a tactician. But the greatest strategies in the world aren’t worth anything if you can’t execute.

After the strategy and vision are complete, you have to know how to get into a business, set up the systems, get things running right and stay close enough to the work that you catch problems before they become crises. I’ve done both throughout my career, and I don’t think you can do one well without the other.

What makes the relationship between a CFO and a CEO function well?

Open communication. A cohesive strategy that everyone is working toward. And respect.

But I think the most important thing is being willing to confront a situation when it comes up rather than letting it sit. I’ve been in environments where people didn’t communicate openly, where there were games, where things were left unsaid that needed to be said. It doesn’t resolve itself. Speak up. Deal with it directly.

And if a decision doesn’t go your way, you get on board and make it work. Give your opinion, and when you’re on a good team, you can commit to the team’s vision.

Women in the Working World

When LaFon got started, finance was not a field that easily accommodated women. The barriers were structural, practical, and rarely acknowledged, but seeing the shift is promising for the future of working women.

What did it mean, in practical terms, to build this career as a woman in finance?

Early on I couldn’t get a company credit card. They wanted my husband to sign for it. I didn’t have one. That’s where it started. The environment wasn’t designed with women in mind, and sometimes that was made very clear. I learned you must have a voice and use it. The moments that need to be named need to be named.

I don’t walk into a room thinking about whether I’m the only woman in it. I just come in and do my job. But staying quiet when something is wrong doesn’t make it go away. Speak up. Address it when it happens. And I think it has genuinely gotten better. When I look at the financial management layer at most organizations now, including here, there are a lot of women

Letting Go

Retirement, in LaFon’s telling, is less an ending than a reorientation. The instincts she spent forty-four years developing don’t retire with the title. They just find new work to do.

What does this next chapter look like for you?

I’m excited for the opportunity to just connect with people I haven’t had enough time with. Friends, family, community. That’s the thing the career cost most. Time. I’m ready to put some back.

Any final thoughts for someone reckoning with a big transition, in a career or otherwise?

Plan the big things. Then let the rest go and enjoy the moment.

I’ve watched deals fall apart after months of work. I’ve seen companies get turned upside down. You can’t white-knuckle your way through those moments. You adapt, you keep your head, and you move.

Greybull was built on the belief that the most valuable thing you can bring to a company is not capital alone, but the experience to know what a business actually needs. Angela LaFon spent forty-four years earning that kind of understanding. We were lucky to have it in the room.