Global CFO Excellence Awards 2021

16 Acquisition International - Global CFO Excellence Awards 2021 Marketing CFO of the Year: Lauren Murphy – USA assive and predictable mobile newsfeed advertising can cause ad blindness. Adludio believes the best mobile experience requires active user involvement. Its innovative ads invite the consumer to interact with the brand by mirroring the natural human behaviours associated with interfaces, such as swiping, dragging and tapping the screen. These fluid interactions are reinforced by the company’s state-of-the-art game engine, CYAN, which allows it to deliver seamless full-screen experiences at lightning speed. With this technology at play, the creative capabilities are endless. Lauren Murphy began her career as a trainee accountant at a small audit firm in South Africa. While training, she got seconded to a manufacturing firm where she gained a solid set of technical skills. After her training, she moved to financial services and worked as a financial controller for Africa’s largest mortgage originator. In this role, she managed a team of eight women which enriched her and developed her leadership skills. She is truly passionate about empowering women in finance so she found training her team and watching women gain confidence to progress onto their own careers an incredibly rewarding experience. In 2008, Lauren moved to the United Kingdom to gain international experience and secured a position as a financial planning and analysis accountant for a manufacturing firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This role required her to provide accurate reports and financial analysis that can help guide leaders to make timely data- based business decisions. The work is much more than just number crunching as it bring a lot of strategic value to a business and is the bedrock of being a good CFO. Following this job, she worked in a similar role for a fashion brand based in London andGermany. She was later drawn to London’s emerging and vibrant start-up scene and in 2012, joined the founding team of Adludio. Lauren’s journey at Adludio has been an exciting and challenging one where she has learned about many aspects of business including some that were outside of her wheelhouse. Her first achievement was raising Adludio’s initial seed funding through a prominent European crowdfunding platform, and a few months later, she raised more capital from VCs as part of a merger deal with a competitor business. Over the years, Lauren has been involved in further investment rounds which were necessary to aid Adludio’s international expansion, a project that P has exported her to the United States. Moving to the US has been an incredible opportunity for Lauren because she has been able to explore and understand a bigger economic market and experience another business culture. When asked about her leadership style, Lauren said, “I like to lead by knowledge sharing so I often have a consultative approach to leadership. I have found that clearly communicating a goal and consistently sharing suggestions and thought processes on how to achieve it allows me to create strong bonds and relationships with the people I am collaborating with. “Although I was fortunate enough to gain leadership experience early in my career, I didn’t feel confident in my leadership ability. There may be various factors influencing women’s leadership skills but perhaps the most common and indeed most lacking is self-confidence. This was most certainly true in my case. It has taken me more than a decade to stop second-guessing myself and feel comfortable in my senior leadership position. I do not have the perfect formula to improve self-confidence but I do know that an important element is to take responsibility for yourself. I would encourage women to select an area for personal and/or professional development and develop their own action plan to implement it within a set timeframe.” Lauren also shared her advice for aspiring CFOs: “It is important to have an academic qualification in a financial or mathematical discipline and to gain relevant work experience at reputable firms. “Success requires a lot of hard work and belief in yourself. I do not think there is a fast-track route to success, but I would definitely recommend finding a mentor in the industry you are interested in. Their experiences and insights could be invaluable to you whether it is through the advice they provide to you, the support they offer or introductions they make. These benefits of a mentor may help you to achieve your own career goals quicker.” In terms of her plans for the future, Lauren would like to continue to contribute to the success of Adludio by expanding her own profile to include capacity building, as she believes that investing in the right people at the right time and in the right places is what will distinguish Adludio from competitors and drive its profits. Adludio is a VC-backed, international, multi-award-winning mobile advertising company with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taipei. It makes engaging, interactive sensory ad units that create a 10 times more memorable brand experience, working with some of world’s largest media agencies and having advertised for some of world’s most renowned brands across various verticals such as Jaguar, Microsoft, HSBC, Nike, Netflix, L’Oréal, Red Bull, Etihad Airlines, and many more. CFO, Lauren Murphy has been with Adludio since its infancy and played a role in it achieving its successful growth to date, earning her recognition by Acquisition International within its Global CFO Excellence Awards. We therefore take a closer look at the achievements of Lauren and Adludio. Apr21100 Company: Adludio Contact: Lauren Murphy Email: [email protected] Website: www.adludio.com