Director of Strategic Finance & FP&A

Foreword Companies • Gallatin, TN

2d • Onsite

About The Position

The Director of Strategic Finance & FP&A is a senior strategic finance leader and key partner to the Chief Financial Officer and executive leadership team. The role translates enterprise strategy into financially grounded plans, investment decisions, and performance actions across Foreword Companies. It leads enterprise and long-range planning, scenario analysis, executive decision support, capital allocation, growth initiative evaluation, business-case development, M&A modeling, and pricing and profitability analysis.

The Director partners with the Corporate Controller on validated actuals, accounting assumptions, liquidity baselines, and the Controller-owned rolling forecast, and with BI & Automation on governed data models, dashboards, and scalable reporting. Through rigorous analysis and clear recommendations, the role helps leadership evaluate strategic opportunities, allocate resources, and make decisions that support sustainable enterprise growth and long-term value creation. The position provides strategic finance leadership, builds repeatable processes, develops finance capability, and partners across Accounting, Operations, Commercial, and BI & Automation while maintaining clear ownership boundaries and handoffs.

The role is onsite in Gallatin, Tennessee. It is a full-time position with an annual salary and eligibility for performance-based bonus opportunities based on individual performance and company objectives. Occasional travel to operating locations may be needed.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
• Progressive strategic finance, FP&A, corporate finance, or related experience.
• Strong financial planning and analysis capability, including annual budgeting, long-range planning, forecasting, scenario analysis, and performance management.
• Advanced financial modeling skills, including capital allocation, NPV, ROIC, payback, pricing economics, profitability, and M&A modeling.
• Ability to reconcile strategic analysis to controlled financial data and clearly communicate assumptions.
• Strong executive communication and decision-support skills, including the ability to convert complex analysis into clear recommendations and actions.
• Strong business partnership skills across Accounting, Operations, Commercial, and analytics teams.
• Experience building scalable, repeatable planning and performance processes in a growing or multi-entity organization.
• High proficiency in Microsoft Excel and financial modeling.
• Strong judgment, analytical thinking, problem-solving, accountability, and attention to detail.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree, CPA, or CFA.
• Experience with enterprise planning, performance management, capital allocation, and executive decision support.
• M&A modeling and/or synergy tracking experience.
• Experience operating in a multi-entity, growth-oriented environment.
• Experience working with BI-enabled reporting and governed data models.

Responsibilities

• Lead the annual budgeting and planning process, including balance sheet, cash flow, financing capacity, and strategic milestones.
• Develop long-range plans and scenario models documenting assumptions, ranges, risks, and financial implications.
• Establish a formal handoff from the Controller-owned rolling forecast into strategic planning and scenario work.
• Translate financial and operating performance into corrective actions with clear owners, timing, and quantified financial effects.
• Identify forward-looking risks and opportunities and provide recommendations to executive leadership.
• Launch and maintain an executive KPI scorecard and monthly business review package supported by BI-enabled automation.
• Partner with the Corporate Controller to establish governed definitions for margin, profitability, working capital, EBITDA, and cash.
• Evaluate strategic initiatives and capital requests for strategic fit, cash requirements, return, risk, capacity, NPV, ROIC, and payback.
• Support financing analysis, banking and lender-readiness activities, and executive evaluation of capital alternatives.
• Maintain transparent approval gates and post-investment tracking for approved capital and strategic initiatives.
• Lead pricing economics, margin interpretation, and profitability analysis across entities, products, customers, and channels.
• Recommend commercial or operating actions using finance-governed definitions and reconciled financial data.
• Develop scenarios connecting pricing, volume, mix, cost, and margin assumptions to expected enterprise outcomes.
• Build and maintain M&A models, investment cases, synergy baselines, and financial scenarios for acquisitions, integrations, logistics initiatives, and new ventures.
• Track performance against approved investment cases and communicate variances, risks, and required actions.
• Develop executive-ready business cases presenting alternatives, assumptions, tradeoffs, recommendations, and value implications.
• Provide performance narratives, root-cause analysis, scenarios, recommendations, owners, and expected financial effects to the CFO and executive leadership.
• Support enterprise decisions with financially grounded analysis while maintaining clear accountability for decision ownership.
• Partner with BI & Automation to define approved business requirements, KPI logic, targets, exception rules, and acceptance criteria.
• Use governed dashboards and data models to improve reporting consistency, transparency, and decision speed.
• Ensure strategic finance analyses reconcile to validated financial data and approved accounting assumptions.
• Maintain disciplined handoffs with the Corporate Controller, BI & Automation, the CFO, and executive leadership so financial definitions, data lineage, decision rights, and accountability remain clear.
• Build repeatable FP&A and strategic finance processes without unnecessary bureaucracy, and develop finance capability as the function grows.
• Model sound judgment, accountability, collaboration, and professional conduct aligned with the company’s leadership competencies and core values.

Benefits

• Free employee health insurance
• Company-paid life insurance
• 401(k) match
• Paid time off
• Paid parental leave
• Eligibility for performance-based bonus opportunities based on individual performance and company objectives

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director