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The podcast featuring finance leaders driving change within their organizations.

Jul 26, 2020

When Ray Carpenter retraces his steps to the CFO office at Xandr—an analytics and advertising company formed by AT&T’s WarnerMedia—he singles out two earlier roles as having been outside AT&T’s traditional finance track.

“I actually got kicked out of finance for one role,” says Carpenter, referring to a stint as a marketer inside a start-up launched by AT&T’s emerging business markets group. “We did things that were uniquely different from what AT&T typically does when it launches a new business,” continues Carpenter, who in addition to marketing was responsible for the start-up’s pricing strategy.   

Next, Carpenter joined AT&T’s mergers integration group, where he helped to lead integration planning efforts for different corporate functions, a role that made him keenly aware of the integration challenges such future acquisitions as DirectTV would present.

From his stint in the mergers group, Carpenter stepped back inside AT&T’s more traditional finance and accounting ranks and was soon named CFO of its Entertainment and Internet Services division.

“It wasn’t a forgone conclusion and still never is. AT&T has a habit of moving people around,” explains Carpenter, who mentions a number of different functional areas recently led by executives who in the past had held traditional finance roles.

Says Carpenter: “I always knew that I’d be close to numbers, data, and analytics, and I felt that this would typically put me in the finance camp, but I wasn’t surprised when other opportunities surfaced.” –Jack Sweeney