I’m a founder-operator and cross-functional executive with almost three decades of experience building, scaling, restructuring, and strategically leading businesses across finance, operations, legal/commercial, systems, and growth.
While I’m often brought in through the CFO lane, my real operating profile has always extended well beyond finance. Over the course of my career, I’ve served as Founder, CEO, CFO, and Head of Strategy, Innovation, and Technology — helping architect businesses, modernize operations, improve financial performance, navigate complexity, and create leverage across multiple functions.
Starting in my mid 20’s, I built and scaled founder-led businesses from $0 to $30M+ ARR and over $200M in cumulative sales, and have worked across the full lifecycle — from early-stage build through growth, complexity, capital raising, and operational refinement.
My work tends to sit at the intersection of:
• finance and strategy
• operations and systems
• leadership and execution
• risk and opportunity
• business model design and real-world implementation
I’m especially effective in environments that require more than a traditional finance executive — situations where the business needs judgment, commercial clarity, operating discipline, and the ability to translate between ownership, leadership teams, technical teams, and execution on the ground.
Earlier in my career at Nike, I was rapidly promoted into management by age 22, where I helped centralize U.S. retail special-order operations and served as an internal systems “IT Super User,” acting as a translation bridge between engineers and management during major implementation initiatives.
Across multiple ventures and executive roles, I’ve led work spanning financial architecture, strategic planning, legal and commercial structuring, systems modernization, vendor and partner negotiations, investor, bank and loan relations, compliance, and scaling operations.
I continue to invest in sharpening my edge across finance, strategy, and innovation, including ongoing development through CMA candidacy, MBA studies, and MIT Sloan Executive Education focused on management, innovation, and technology.
I’m most aligned with opportunities where I can bring a high-agency operator mindset across finance, strategy, systems, leadership, and long-range value creation.
Core strengths:
Strategic Finance | CEO/CFO Leadership | Growth Strategy | Business Architecture | Innovation | Technology Translation | Legal/Commercial Structuring | Operational Scaling | Risk & Compliance | Executive Decision Support
Karl Ohlemann
KarlOhlemann.com