Jill Barnard, Chief Financial Officer / COO of Televerde, Most Inspiring Finance Leaders of 2021 Profile

Jill Barnard
Chief Financial Officer / COO of Televerde


Jill Barnard, Chief Financial Officer / COO of Televerde, Most Inspiring Finance Leaders of 2021

“A True Inspiration”

According to Televerde CEO Morag Lucey, Televerde CFO Jill Barnard is a great business partner, a solid financial leader who can read the entire chessboard optimizing financial resources, and a sales partner who allows for flexible pricing models to get the deal done while maintaining strong profitability margins. This operational mindset allows for partnership in funding tools necessary to get the job done. What’s more, as a female leader, Jill has had to face significant barriers in her career. “I consistently have earned 20% less than my male counterparts. Women are more likely to be seen as ‘transactional accountants’ rather than strategic CFOs. This is the reason men are paid more…women were the uneducated bookkeepers back in the day. Very good at keeping records, knowing everything about a company, but rarely had a seat at the strategic table. I’ve had to overcome this over and over in my career.”

Jill is inspiring and empowering women entrepreneurs across industries to become the great leaders of tomorrow. She has championed women across many industries during her long career. Facing that uphill battle herself, Jill always makes efforts to ensure women have a seat at the strategic table. “Upper-level finance has traditionally been male dominated, so I take every opportunity to teach women to think about being a business partner in every position and not just a good accountant. The days of the stodgy old accountants only reporting on the past are gone!” she adds. “For women working for me, or as a peer in leadership groups (AzBL & FEI), I take any and all opportunities to teach. Once an anomaly, the younger up-and-coming finance professionals are realizing the landscape has changed. You must be serving the business looking forward and proactively to steer the company rather than just reporting on what already happened. New generations of women in finance will have a seat at the strategic table and an opportunity to earn equal pay by learning to be the best business partners regardless of how it used to be.”

As a single parent and a CFO, Jill had zero grace to be a mom. She was the first at daycare and the last to pick up. “Too many Saturday mornings were cartoons in my office while I worked. I ran at a stress level that aged me beyond my years. I was the best CFO. Businesses thrived while my daughter took the backseat more than she should have.” But all these hardships and struggles taught Jill to be a great leader. “You cannot want more for others than they want for themselves. As women, we tend to be nurturing. I love to teach, empower, and really develop talent into fantastic strategic thinkers. But sometimes people just want to be exactly where they are. I had to learn that was OK and not be frustrated with ‘you could be so much more’.”

Televerde is a global B2B sales and marketing solutions company specializing in generating revenue as a service and providing a full suite of sales and marketing services, including inbound customer care. Televerde was born in purpose, launching in 1994 as a way to help women incarcerated inside the Arizona Women’s Correctional Facility learn business acumen and marketable business skills so they could reclaim their independence and join the workforce after release. Since Televerde’s inception, more than 3,500 women have graduated from the program, moving on to launch careers in every area of business. Televerde has continued to grow and evolve, staffing a 650+ global workforce.

Televerde’s mission is to provide 10,000 life-changing opportunities to disempowered communities over the next decade. This unique business model has delivered $65B and counting in pipeline for its customers.

Jill’s immediate focus moving forward is to maximize the company’s digital transformation. “With the implementation phase complete, we can spend all of our time maximizing the benefits. Putting the bones in place was a heavy lift, but now adoption, streamlining, and tweaking will maximize our efficiency,” she says. “This will increase our margins, profitability, and top-line revenue while delivering stronger ROI for our clients.” IEWL


Company

Televerde

Management

Jill Barnard
Chief Financial Officer / COO of Televerde

Description

Televerde is the preferred global revenue creation partner driving marketing, sales and customer success excellence for B2B businesses around the world. Powered by a cutting-edge customer journey platform and the delivery of a highly personalized experience, we deliver full end to end life-cycle revenue generation from Marketing, through Sales to Customer Success with scalability, repeatability and predictability. From audience identification to advocacy, we drive bottom line results. Our uniquely evolved approach, business model, and best practices have enabled us to deliver over $65B in pipeline and to close over $12B+ in revenue for our customers. Working across industries and with leaders across sectors, we are powered by a mission to transform 10,000 lives.


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