Why Every CFO Needs a Personal Brand (And How to Build One), with Wassia Kamon
Most CFOs don’t think about their personal brand until they need something: a new role, a board seat, a stronger network, a speaking opportunity, or simply a way to stand out from every other finance leader with the same credentials on paper.
But by then, it may already be too late.
That’s the point Wassia Kamon, CFO of Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs and host of The Diary of a CFO podcast, makes clearly. “If I Google you today, what will I see?” For Wassia, that question changed how she thought about her career. It pushed her to stop treating LinkedIn like an online resume and start treating it as a long-term leadership asset.
“People will Google you before they work with you. And that will be now your first impression.”
For finance leaders, that matters. Not because every CFO needs to become a full-time content creator, but because visibility, trust, and reputation now shape how people understand your leadership before you ever walk into the room.
The moment Wassia realized visibility mattered
Wassia’s personal branding journey started during COVID, when many people were rethinking their careers. She took a course led by the then-CMO of Netflix, and one idea stuck with her: if you plan to be in the workforce for the next three decades, you need an online presence.
So she Googled herself.
“I was like, ‘Okay, there’s nothing much there.’”
Still, she didn’t jump straight into posting. It took about a year from taking the course to publishing her first LinkedIn post. She updated her headshot, optimized her profile, took a few LinkedIn courses, and then paused. Even that small amount of effort made a difference.
“Just having a new headshot and an optimized new profile, I was approached by my first VP role,” Wassia says. “On LinkedIn, yes. No posting, nothing.”
Later, when a recruiter reached out about the CFO role at Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs, she already had more than 20,000 followers and a visible body of work. The process moved quickly.
“I was basically hired on the spot,” she says.
Personal brand is not just about getting hired
It’s easy to think about personal branding only when you’re looking for a job. You update your LinkedIn, polish the profile, maybe share a few posts so you look active.
But Wassia’s experience points to something bigger. Her visibility did not just help her get the CFO role. It helped her step into it.
When she joined ACE, her colleagues already felt like they knew part of her. “I was very surprised when I stepped in that my employees, my coworkers, my peers felt like they already knew a part of me,” she says.
That shortened the trust-building curve. Instead of starting completely cold, her content had already created familiarity.
“That learning curve where you have to build trust and establish credibility and all that was very shortened because of all the content that was online.”
For any CFO entering a new organization, that matters. The first 90 days are critical. You need to build trust, understand the business, earn credibility, and start making decisions. A visible executive brand can make that transition warmer.
As Wassia puts it:
“People pay so much attention. It’s not just to get the job, but also how you show up in those first 90 days that are so crucial in any leadership role.”
The opportunities you can’t predict
The benefits didn’t stop with job opportunities. Wassia’s online presence led to speaking engagements. Those clips created more opportunities. One was seen by Christian Wattig, Director of Wharton Online’s FP&A Certificate Program, which led to Wassia teaching in the program.
“It created connections and opportunities I didn’t even anticipate,” she says.
Her podcast amplified that even further. For Wassia, The Diary of a CFO became more than a content channel. It became a way to connect with executives she admired, learn from them, and start conversations that may not have happened otherwise.
“The podcast only amplified that. With now me being able to almost use it as a business card to other executives I always wanted to talk to.”
That’s one of the quieter benefits of building a visible executive brand. It does not just show what you know. It expands who you can learn from.
Why finance leaders stay invisible
There’s an obvious reason many finance leaders hesitate to post online: confidentiality.
Finance people are trained to be careful. They sit close to sensitive numbers, budgets, compensation, forecasts, board conversations, and strategic decisions. That caution is useful. It’s part of the job. But Wassia argues it should not become an excuse for being invisible.
Her rule is simple:
“If it wouldn’t be on the press release or in public records, I wouldn’t share.”
That still leaves a lot to talk about. Finance leaders can share lessons from previous roles, reflections on articles they’ve read, takeaways from conferences, book reviews, perspectives on leadership, lessons from mentors, or stories about how they think through change.
“There are so many things we can talk about,” Wassia says. “It doesn’t have to be the results of the company or things that are private.”
In other words, building a personal brand as a CFO is not about exposing confidential information. It’s about giving people a window into how you think.
What should finance leaders post about?
For finance leaders who don’t know where to start, Wassia recommends a simple three-part Venn diagram.
The first circle is what you’re good at. The second is what you enjoy doing or want to do more of. The third is what the people who matter to your long-term goals are actively looking for — whether that’s executive recruiters, future CEOs, founders, board members, or the types of companies you want to work with.
The overlap becomes the foundation of your executive brand.
Wassia gives a simple example. She may be good at bank reconciliations, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be known for them.
“I’m good at bank reconciliation. Do I want to do bank reconciliation? No. That won’t be at that intersection.”
Instead, she recommends looking for themes that sit at the intersection of capability, energy, and market demand. Maybe you’re good at leading change. You enjoy it. And companies at the next stage of growth are looking for finance leaders who can modernize the function. That becomes a content pillar.
“These are the things you want to highlight,” Wassia says. “You want to talk about how you approach a project, or maybe what went well. Maybe what did you learn from it? How did it change your approach?”
The goal is not to perform expertise. It’s to help people understand your judgment.
“Get people to get an insight into your brain,” she says. “Because if only your current boss knows how good you are, you’re in trouble.”
That line should land with any ambitious finance leader. If your reputation lives only inside your current company, it is fragile. If your boss leaves, your internal sponsor may disappear. If your company changes direction, your credibility may not travel with you.
A personal brand makes your value more portable.
How to make LinkedIn sustainable
The biggest barrier for many CFOs is not strategy. It’s consistency.
Posting every day sounds unrealistic. Creating content from scratch feels exhausting. And for leaders already balancing demanding roles and busy lives, personal branding can quickly become another thing they don’t have time for.
Wassia’s answer is to build systems.
Her own writing habit started during her kids’ Saturday swimming lessons. She was sitting there with another mom, also a CPA, watching their children practice.
“We’re like, ‘What are we doing with our time just watching these kids who don’t even want us to watch them?’”
So they decided to use that hour.
“We’re like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna use this one hour and come up with something.’ And that’s how we really started.”
From there, Wassia began using natural downtime to capture ideas. Sometimes that meant voice-to-text. Sometimes it meant adding a question or rough thought to an idea bank. The point was to avoid starting from a blank page every time.
“So I wouldn’t start writing a post from a blank piece of paper,” she says.
Her system was simple: capture ideas when they come, keep an idea bank, write from that bank, schedule one or two posts a week, and build a buffer when possible.
“When you do it consistently, you realize sometimes I have like six weeks of content,” Wassia says. “And I’m in a meeting, they’re like, ‘Oh, Wassi, you just posted.’ I’m like, ‘LinkedIn did it for me.’”
That’s the difference between treating content as a daily scramble and treating it as a system.
Start before you need it
The biggest mistake CFOs can make is waiting until they need visibility to start building it. By then, the trust has not been built. The thinking has not been documented. The network has not been warmed up. The market does not yet know what you stand for.
Wassia’s story shows the opposite path. She started small: a better profile, a headshot, a first post. Then a writing habit. Then a podcast. Then speaking. Then teaching. Then a wider network of executives, recruiters, peers, and future collaborators.
Not all at once or perfectly. But consistently enough that opportunities started to find her.
For modern CFOs, that may be the real lesson. Personal brand is not about becoming an influencer. It’s about making sure the market can see the leader you already are.
Full Episode
If you’re a CFO or finance leader thinking about your next stage of growth, this episode is worth your time.
Wassia’s story is a reminder that personal brand isn’t about posting for the sake of posting. It’s about making your thinking visible, building trust before you need it, and creating opportunities that your resume alone can’t unlock.
Listen (and subscribe) on Spotify