Strategic Finance, San Francisco Bay Area

I help leadership see what's actually happening in the business, and decide what to do next.

Financial modeling, forecasting, and reporting for complex, fast-moving businesses.

See how I work →

Years across venture-backed startups, SaaS, CPG, and research institutions

$0M

Series B raise supported with investor-grade financial models and diligence

Reduction in operating losses in one year at a CPG cooperative

Selected Experience 2013 to Present

Across very different businesses, one job: get to what's true.

01 Finance & Operations Dec 2025 to Present

Independent Finance & Operations Consultant

Serving as a fractional CFO to growing businesses, partnering with leadership on planning, performance, and financial decision-making.

Desmond Studio Fractional finance and operations support for a creative production studio serving brands including Google, Figma, and The North Face.

Rubix Agency Built a GA4-to-orders model analyzing customer acquisition, conversion performance, contribution margin, revenue drivers, and seasonality.

02 Financial Analyst Sep 2023 to May 2025

Alvarado Street Bakery

An organic, worker-owned CPG cooperative with roughly $15M in nationwide retail distribution. I rebuilt the company's budgeting discipline and significantly reduced operating losses through margin analysis and cost control, then owned the annual budget and 5-year strategic income statements the board relied on. As demand-planning lead, I built the customer-mix and unit-forecast models that gave production and sales a shared read on what was coming, and developed the ROI models behind the company's capital equipment decisions.

67% Reduction in operating losses, one year

5-Year Strategic income statements built for the board

ROI Models behind the company's capital equipment decisions

03 Chief of Staff & Interim Finance Lead May 2020 to Apr 2021

Starship HSA

VC-backed fintech, Series A. I operated as the CEO's strategic right hand while also stepping in as interim finance lead, rebuilding the financial model, instituting a monthly close-and-report cadence that hadn't existed before, and building the company's first OKR and performance-tracking system. Board materials I built on growth trends, unit economics, and operational bottlenecks shaped product and go-to-market priorities.

First OKR and performance-tracking system built

Monthly Close-and-report cadence instituted

04 Finance & Accounting Lead Mar 2018 to May 2020

Synapse

VC-backed embedded-banking platform, Series B. Hired as the first in-house finance and accounting employee post-Series A, reporting directly to the CEO, I built the finance function from the ground up. I played a key role in the $33M Series B raise through investor-grade modeling and diligence support, and owned company-wide budgeting and forecasting, revenue planning across SaaS, transaction and interchange streams, ARR and KPI reporting, cash runway, unit economics, and board-level reporting. I also managed the company's QuickBooks accounting, including a major historical clean-up and establishing a reliable monthly close.

1st In-house finance hire, reporting directly to the CEO

Built Company-wide budgeting, forecasting & board reporting

05 Lead Financial Analyst & Clinical Trial Budget Analyst 2013 to 2018

UCSF

Created and negotiated oncology clinical trial budgets directly with pharmaceutical sponsors, partnering with principal investigators to align on cost and compliance. Earlier, managed grant forecasting and NIH financial reporting for leading researchers, including a future Nobel Prize recipient, and led departmental finance operations through a major system overhaul, earning Contractor of the Month out of 1,200 peers.

Dozens Supported the opening of dozens of oncology clinical trials through budget development and sponsor negotiation

$MMs Negotiated and supported multimillion-dollar clinical trial funding from pharmaceutical sponsors

What I Do

Finance as a way of understanding the business, not just reporting on it.

The models and dashboards matter, but they're tools. The real deliverable is a leadership team that understands its own business.

Forecasting & Planning

Budgets, long-range plans, and driver-based models built to reflect how the business actually runs, not just where the trendline points.

Capital & Investment Decisions

ROI models, pricing analysis, and the numbers behind a capital request, built to hold up when someone pushes back.

Reporting Systems

Monthly close, KPI tracking, and board materials designed to be read, trusted, and acted on, not filed away.

Cross-Functional Partnership

Working directly with founders, CEOs, COOs, and department leads to turn financial detail into a shared understanding of what's true.

How I Work

I don't start with the spreadsheet. I start with the question underneath it.

Messy inputs, clear picture.

Start with the real question

Most financial requests are a proxy for a bigger question leadership hasn't fully named yet. I find that question first. The model comes after.

Go granular, then zoom back out

The right level of detail is whatever it takes to explain the number in front of you. Not more, not less.

Build with the people closest to the work

The best models come from the people actually running the business, not just the ones reporting on it.

Clarity is the deliverable

A model nobody reads didn't do its job. Everything I build is meant to be understood by the person making the decision.

About

Finance discipline, operator's instincts.

I'm a strategic finance professional who moves fluently between industries. I attribute that range to being curious by nature, analytical by training, having a strong sense for where information lives, an ability to recognize familiar structures in unfamiliar problems, and a proclivity for rapid self-directed learning. I've also harnessed a strong sense of judgment around when a problem warrants deeper analysis and when additional precision begins to offer diminishing returns. I've spent my career translating complicated businesses into plans, forecasts, and reporting for executive teams. I'm a strong writer and public speaker with a direct, pragmatic communication style. I've also built and owned two brick-and-mortar businesses of my own, which keeps me close to how a company actually runs day to day.

I'm an advanced Excel user who builds models to be maintainable, well-documented, and thoroughly stress-tested before anyone relies on them. I'm also fluent in the AI tools changing how finance work gets done, including using Claude Code to build this website. Outside of work, you'll find me outdoors or making an overly ambitious cake.

Based: San Francisco Bay Area
Education: UCLA, B.A. Economics, full merit scholarship
Tools: Excel, QuickBooks, Oracle, ERP systems, Bill.com, Salesforce, Tableau

If your business needs a clearer picture of itself, let's talk.

Open to fractional and full-time opportunities

anna.volfe@gmail.com LinkedIn, Anna Koenig