For anyone in the finance profession who feels they are not developing the critical skills to influence others and that their efforts are not getting recognized, The Audacious Finance Partner shows the quickest way to get tangible results for you and your organizations. Discover how to get to the right insights that deliver the most value; become a trusted advisor to the business and apply commercial teaching principles to combine influence with impact. These are areas not traditionally taught in finance courses or business schools; even though they are the skills employers and the next generation of leaders are calling out for. This book follows our main character who frustrated with his lack of success using traditional keeping-the-score approaches decides to push himself outside his comfort zone. He seeks out mentors who have found better and faster ways to develop the critical skills to influence and impact their organizations. Typical coaching and mentoring of these skills is time consuming and expensive, so the book's chapters have been organized as a dialogue between mentor and mentee. This means you get the accelerated experience and value from being immersed in real-to-life conversations that have been concisely distilled from other successful finance partners of large, medium and small organizations covering most major industries across the globe. The Audacious Finance Partner is useful for those who have entered or work in today's Finance world, from newly qualified accountants, graduates, MBAs to more seasoned finance managers and directors. Groups on the outside looking in: consultants, executives & others in leadership roles seeking to better understand finance business partnering can also expect to benefit. This book provides a solid platform to add value and translate valued insights for influence and impact. There are also further support materials and reference guides at the partner website www.afpsuccess.com. No longer feel disillusioned with the traditional keeping- the-score approaches to finance and accounting, instead learn a more meaningful way to make a difference, enjoy stimulating work and a successful career.

Emotions at work: irrational, or invaluable? For centuries we have divided mind and body, valuing reason over emotion. But new research is fundamentally changing our understanding about how our brains and bodies work. What might be possible when we leverage both our reason AND emotion? Explore the vital link between emotions and organizational performance. Knowing more about our body and brain and how we are interconnected and interrelated can positively impact people, performance and profit. Leadership coach and experienced finance director Susan Ní Chríodáin sits at the nexus of business and emotion and reveals how to reintroduce humanity into the workplace, for improved engagement and fulfillment, benefiting both individuals and organizations.

A landmark work from one of the preeminent historians of our time: the first published biography of Andrew W. Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy, leaving his transformative stamp on each. Andrew Mellon, one of America’s greatest financiers, built a legendary personal fortune from banking to oil to aluminum manufacture, tracking America’s course to global economic supremacy. As treasury secretary under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and finally Hoover, Mellon made the federal government run like a business–prefiguring the public official as CEO. He would be hailed as the architect of the Roaring Twenties, but, staying too long, would be blamed for the Great Depression, eventually to find himself a broken idol. Collecting art was his only nonprofessional gratification and his great gift to the American people, The National Gallery of Art, remains his most tangible legacy.

In 1995, the Baring Brothers collapsed over a weekend, brought down by the 'rogue trader' Nick Leeson. Utilizing British and American archives, this work charts Baring Brothers development from wool merchants to one of the most powerful global financial institutions. It also analyses the errors which led to its downfall.

This book highlights the historic inflection point we are in, both in terms of philanthropy in general, and specifically in financing the solutions to our largest and most urgent social and environmental problems. It covers the two movements that have recently had a dramatic influence on capitalism. First, wealthy millennials have been pressuring their bankers to invest their family portfolios in companies with high social and environmental impact (ESG ratings), triggering a wave where the wealth management industry, and now all public companies, are significantly adapting to the increasing demand for good. Second, The Giving Pledge triggered another wave, changing what success and the accumulation of wealth means. It has even begun to redefine the goal of capitalism as more than 200 billionaires have pledged to give half or more of their wealth away. This book also focuses on the bottleneck problem that The Giving Pledge has created, as it is very hard to give hundreds of billions away with measurable impact to nonprofits lacking detailed long-term plans to scale. Nonprofits have never had the luxury of having all the resources to invest in the planning, management training and systems needed to rapidly expand. Thus taking in very large gifts is very difficult, and almost impossible to justify. Large philanthropy can always be used for traditional capital campaigns and to fund endowments, yet The Giving Pledge signers are often looking for large visible impact beyond these traditional avenues. The result is a bottleneck which has grown as more billionaires pledge their funds away while their wealth continues to skyrocket and giving rates stay very small. Finally, this book covers the emergence of large giving vehicles, modelled after the private equity industry. They have sophisticated third-party managers focused on deploying funds and supporting management teams. It also covers the scaling of nonprofits in a significant way (“Big Bets”) as well as investing large philanthropy through for-profits as Program Related Investments (PRI) at scale. This book is of interest specifically to nonprofit and foundation leaders, as well as wealth managers, estate attorneys and other philanthropic advisors. It is also of interest to investors and corporate CEOs as they begin to access these large pools for philanthropic capital to increase their impact. This book is focused on providing those with the ability to make large philanthropic investments a path to scale their impact and increase their fulfillment and that of their family. It provides a step-by-step guide of how these approaches, especially PRI at scale, can actually solve the social and environmental challenges that have been seemingly hopeless.