Welcome to CFO Summit Boston 2026. We will start with an overview of the day's agenda, followed by a brief icebreaker session designed to help you connect with peers and share your goals and challenges.

It's time to connect and unwind over a drink as we bring the day's content to a close.

Most CFOs have sat through an AI pitch. Far fewer have watched a fellow finance leader build something real, live, starting from nothing. Dave Sackett, VP Finance at Persimmon Technologies, will build a purchase order requisition agent on stage, using prompts the audience gives him in real time. No slides, nothing pre-built, whatever comes together is what comes together in the room. This isn't a vendor pitch dressed up as content. It's one finance leader showing exactly how he'd approach this himself, mistakes included, so you can judge for yourself whether it's worth trying with your own team. Key takeaways: - What it actually looks like when a finance leader builds something like this themselves, not a finished vendor product - Which prompts genuinely worked, and which needed several attempts - Whether this is worth trying with your own team, and what it would take

Boards and investors don't actually want to hear about AI. They want to hear about velocity, and CFOs are increasingly the ones expected to translate one into the other. This session moves past FTE savings as the measure of AI's value and into the metrics boards actually respond to: cycle time, decision speed, capital deployed faster. It's about what it takes to present agentic workflows in a way that builds confidence rather than raising more questions than it answers. Most sessions on AI ROI stop at productivity math. This one is about translation, turning technical capability into the language of trust that boards, CEOs, and investors actually respond to. Key takeaways: - A framework for reframing AI's value from FTE savings to the cycle-time and decision-speed metrics boards actually care about - What to say, and not say, to a board when presenting the results of agentic workflows - How to build the kind of confidence that gets the next investment approved, not just the current one explained

In this hands-on, end-of-day interactive experience, you’ll dive into the four core CFO archetypes, identify your dominant working style, and explore how it shapes the way you lead, influence and make decisions. You’ll move through two breakout rounds: - First, connecting with peers who share your archetype to compare strengths and patterns - Then joining a mixed group of contrasting archetypes to uncover collaboration gaps, challenge assumptions and learn from perspectives radically different from your own. The four CFO archetypes: 1. The Strategic CFO (AKA The CEO’s Strategic Partner): A future-focused business architect who blends financial rigor with enterprise strategy, helping shape markets, models and long-term direction. 2. The Transformation CFO (AKA The Change Agent): A reinvention-driven leader who modernizes systems, processes and structures while managing the people side of change to deliver sustainable evolution. 3. The Digital CFO (AKA The Tech-Forward Pioneer): A technology-enabled strategist who uses automation, AI and real-time data to accelerate insights, improve decisions and transform how finance operates. 4. The Operational CFO (AKA The Process Optimizer): A hands-on efficiency expert who relentlessly improves processes, strengthens controls and enhances daily operational performance across the business.

This 15-minute session is designed to help you quickly connect with finance leaders facing similar pressures, priorities, and decisions. Guided by a set of curated prompts, you’ll move around the room to meet peers navigating challenges such as leading through volatility, implementing AI, and reshaping the finance operating model, creating immediate relevance in every conversation. It’s a focused way to build high-quality connections beyond your existing network, exchange perspectives with leaders tackling different challenges, and leave with relationships you’ll continue to draw on well after the summit.