Meet one of our Venture Capital CFOs, Yanfen Wu, CPA! Yanfen has been a valuable part of Kranz Consulting since September 2021. Her years of experience and passion for finance have allowed Kranz and our clients to succeed and thrive. Get to know her story below!
Hometown: Rockville, Maryland
Alma Mater: University of Oregon
Favorite things to do outside the office: I enjoy traveling around the world.
Professional Certifications: CPA
How has your background impacted your experience as a consultant? I have travelled a lot of places in the world (China, UK, Germany, Netherland, US east coast to west coast), and I also changed jobs at different firms (small CPA firms to KPMG, BDO, PwC, and then to Kranz). I feel that we all have different needs during our lives and careers. This is true for our clients who must have various needs along with their business journeys. Therefore, to help our clients find the best solutions on various needs will gain their satisfaction and trust.
What’s a typical workday like for you? Starting around 8:30am ET, I normally cleanup my review work through 12pm ET. Throughout the rest of day, there are normally a mix of internal and external meetings and calls as well as questions and emails to cover.
As part of a team that works 100% virtually, what technology or collaboration tools do you use to make your work life easier? Zoom Chat (messages and calls) is a great tool to get frequent connections with my teams and let me feel that my teams are just around.
What motivates you to wake up and go to work every day? To accomplish something meaningful and valuable – either for my clients, my team, or myself.
What kind of work have you been doing? Tax compliance, tax consulting, CFO services, and financial reporting services to investment funds.
Where do you see the benefits? Self-fulfillment by providing valuable services to my clients, self-fulfillment by feeling valuable about myself.
Linking data to finance and accounting, explain environments that have had a lack of reporting infrastructure/inefficiencies and how you have brought organization, solutions and implementation: During my KPMG’s Raleigh years, I was gradually promoted from senior associate to manager then senior manager. Because I worked with different level groups, I had a very close understanding of how upward feedback would work better. In addition to using firm provided feedback system, I proposed to provide local office upward feedback through group action, where associate group, senior associate group, or manager group can hold internal meetings and gather upward feedbacks. The good part from this method was that each group’s feedbacks reflected the group’s common concerns and appreciations to the upper levels. These point opinions have been discussed and proved among the group members. As a result, the feedbacks are more constructive, firm, and right to the point.