Why Rodrigo’s Journey Matters For Modern CFOs

As a CFO, you are not just the guardian of the balance sheet anymore, you are a key architect of how your business responds to technology, risk, and new opportunities. That is why the story of Rodrigo Mazorra Blanco, and his Reforge Cycle, is important for you. It shows in very concrete terms how financial skills can be repurposed into technology leadership, how a finance professional can move from spreadsheets and sovereign debt to AI, data products, and tech ventures, without throwing away previous experience.

This is directly relevant to CFOs who are trying to navigate digital transformation, AI projects, data initiatives, or new tech enabled business models. You might not want to become a programmer, but you do need a clear playbook for how finance talent, and your own career, can adapt to a world where code, product thinking, and systems thinking increasingly drive enterprise value.

From Coffee and Sovereign Debt To Data and AI Products

Rodrigo’s career starts in a place many CFOs can relate to, traditional finance, complex deals, and real economic activity. He worked on product management and operations for coffee plantations, then moved into Colombia’s Ministry of Finance, where he helped structure 3.8 billion dollars in sovereign debt. This is familiar territory, large transactions, risk, stakeholders, and a lot of responsibility.

Later, he went to London Business School for an MBA and joined a structured credit desk. During the 2008 to 2011 financial crisis he traded distressed debt. At that time, the edge in markets started to move away from relationships and manual models, and towards mathematics, algorithms, and code. Rather than staying still, he followed the signal and trained himself deeper in technology, earning a PhD in Computer Science and becoming what he calls a data native operator.

For a CFO, the lesson is simple. The environment will not wait for you. Market edges keep shifting towards technology and data, and your real risk is not one single disruption, but a slow erosion of relevance if you do not move with these shifts. Rodrigo’s path shows that it is possible to respond, without abandoning your finance foundations. Instead you extend them into new domains.

Tech Enabled Ventures Built On Finance Foundations

After shifting into computer science and tech, Rodrigo did not walk away from finance, he reassembled it with new tools. He co designed Platam, a credit engine that originated 12 million dollars for underserved mid market borrowers. That is a very clear example of finance and technology integration, risk models and underwriting logic translated into software.

At Hexis, he co led the development of an AI powered predictive nutrition engine that raised 2 million pounds. At Safiri, he rebuilt financial operations in a transport tech platform for Africa, helping the team raise 850 thousand dollars. At Conception X, he helped turn academic IP into investable deep tech companies. Across all of these, you see the same pattern, use finance thinking, but apply it in data, AI, and new products.

For a CFO, these are not distant startup stories. They are case studies in how your own company might look when finance and technology are properly connected. Think about your credit processes, your pricing engine, your working capital flows, even your route to market. Many of these can become software driven, and your finance expertise can guide that change.

Breaking Into Tech Companies, Without Starting Over

Rodrigo captured his lessons in a book, “Breaking into Tech Companies: A Finance Professional's Playbook”. The subtitle is important, a no nonsense guide to landing high value roles in technology businesses without starting over. A lot of mid career CFOs and finance leaders quietly fear that to be relevant in tech they must erase what they have done, or go back to being a junior again. The book argues the opposite, you reuse and reforge what you already know.

This is especially relevant if you are thinking of a future role as a CFO in a technology company, or if your current business is going through an AI or software heavy transformation. The book gives practical ideas on how to map your skills to tech roles, how to talk the language of product and engineering, and how to present your finance background as a strength in this world, not a weakness.

The Reforge Cycle, A Practical Loop For Career Reinvention

At the center of the book sits what Rodrigo calls the Reforge Cycle. At its heart, it is a loop that applies systems thinking and an agile mindset to your own career. Instead of a one time career change, you continually refine and redirect your skills as the environment evolves. For a CFO, this is a useful mental model. You are used to annual budgets, rolling forecasts, and monthly closes. Think of your career and your team’s skills as something you run in similar cycles.

Step 1: Sense The Environment Clearly

The first part of the Reforge Cycle is sensing. In practical CFO terms, this means building a clear view of how technology is actually changing your business model, your cost base, and your revenue engines. It is not about reading generic AI headlines, it is about concrete signals. For example, maybe your customers are moving to subscriptions, your competitors are layering analytics on their services, or your board is asking stronger data reporting.

You can do simple, regular sensing routines. Once a quarter, sit with your CIO, CTO, and product leaders. Ask three basic questions, what technologies are starting to matter for us, where do we see cost or margin pressure, and what skills are we missing. Over time, those conversations will reveal patterns that matter more than one off articles or conferences.

Step 2: Map Your Transferable Assets

The second part is mapping. As a CFO you already have a portfolio of assets, your knowledge of capital markets, risk, cash flow, controls, negotiation, and strategic planning. The Reforge mindset asks you to map these onto the new environment. For example, credit risk knowledge maps very well to building lending platforms, receivables products, or underwriting engines. Budgeting and forecasting maps to building internal analytics tools or data products for the business.

Take a blank sheet and draw three columns. On the left write your current strengths, such as structured problem solving, investor relations, M&A execution, or treasury. In the middle, list tech trends affecting your company, like automation of reporting, embedded finance, or AI driven decision support. On the right, write how each strength could be repurposed into one or two tech enabled initiatives. This sounds simple, but when you see it written down, you start to notice concrete moves you can make.

Step 3: Run Small Experiments, Not Huge Bets

The third element of the Reforge Cycle is experimentation. Agile thinking suggests you learn fastest through small, fast cycles. For a CFO, this can be uncomfortable, because you are trained to reduce variance and avoid surprises. Still, you can run experimentation in a controlled way. Instead of trying to transform your whole finance function at once, you can pick one or two well defined pilots.

For example, you might experiment with an AI assisted forecasting tool only for one business unit, or you might pilot a new credit scoring model for a narrow customer segment, before expanding it. These small tests let you learn about the tools, the data quality you have, and the change management required, without committing your whole budget or reputation upfront.

Rodrigo’s ventures reflect this approach. Platam started with a specific mid market credit niche. Hexis tackled a clear predictive nutrition problem. Safiri focused on a defined transport finance challenge in Africa. In each case, the team learned quickly, then scaled what worked.

Step 4: Integrate Learnings Into Your Core Role

The final part of the cycle is integration. After you run experiments and build new skills, you fold those learnings back into your core CFO responsibilities. Maybe you discover that certain operational data signals are leading indicators of revenue, and you bake those into your monthly dashboard. Maybe your AI forecasting pilot reveals that your old cost center structure is not helpful, and you adjust the way you classify expenses.

This is also where career value compounds. Instead of being a finance leader who tried one digital project, you become a CFO who repeatedly runs these cycles, and each one improves the next. Over a few years, this approach can completely change how your board, CEO, and investors see you. You are no longer only the cost checker, you become a co architect of tech enabled strategy.

What A CFO Needs To Know, And Actually Do

Concepts are helpful, but as a CFO you probably want a short list of actions that fit into your already busy calendar. Below are some concrete, practical steps that apply the Reforge Cycle to your reality, with examples so it feels less abstract.

Action 1: Reframe Your Finance Team As A Product Team

Most finance teams are organized around tasks, close the books, run payroll, prepare board packs. To adapt to technology shifts, start to see your team as a builder of internal products. Management reports, dashboards, planning tools, and risk models are all products, they have users, and they should improve over time.

For example, instead of sending a static monthly PDF report, work with your IT or data team to create a simple interactive dashboard that commercial leaders can explore themselves. You do not need to code it, but you can sponsor the project, specify the key metrics, and test it with users. Over a few cycles, this changes the culture of your function from reporting the past, to enabling decisions.

Action 2: Identify One Tech Adjacent Venture Inside Your Company

Look for an internal initiative where your finance skills are crucial, but where technology is also central. Perhaps your company is considering launching a subscription model, integrating with a partner’s API for payments, or automating customer credit checks. Volunteer yourself, or a trusted team member, as a joint owner of the business case and design.

Say you are in manufacturing and a pilot project is testing IoT sensors to predict machine failures. You can help design the financial logic of that project. What is the cost of downtime, what pricing model makes sense if you turn this into a service, how should you think about payback periods. At the same time, you sit with the technical team to understand what data is available, what the algorithm can really do, and what risks exist. Over time, this is how you learn the language of tech projects without feeling like an outsider.

Action 3: Build Your Own Personal Learning Sprint

Rodrigo formally studied computer science, but you do not have to. Still, you should pick a focused three month learning sprint around a technology that directly impacts your role. It might be data analytics for finance, AI in forecasting, or cloud cost management. The goal is not to become an engineer, but to be able to ask good questions and see the limits of the tools.

For example, you could set a simple plan, every week, spend two hours on a specific topic, maybe one hour watching or reading, and one hour trying a tool with sample data. Over three months, that is roughly 24 hours of structured learning. You probably spend more time than that in status meetings that do not move the needle. This kind of deliberate learning is exactly what the Reforge Cycle encourages, small, repeated upgrades instead of waiting for a big sabbatical that never comes.

Action 4: Use Reforge Thinking In Talent Decisions

The way you hire and develop your finance team can also follow this cycle. Look for people who are comfortable learning new tools, who ask questions about data flows, and who show curiosity about product and customers, not just accounting rules. When you review development plans, add at least one tech adjacent skill for each person. It can be basic SQL, understanding your data warehouse, or learning how your CRM connects to your billing system.

One practical example, if you are promoting a controller to a broader leadership role, pair them with a product manager or data lead for three months. Ask them to observe how roadmaps are made, how user needs are gathered, how experiments are run. They will bring that thinking back into how they manage budgeting and performance.

Why The Reforge Cycle Works For Non Finance Professionals Too

Although Rodrigo’s book is written for finance professionals, the ideas are broad. The Reforge Cycle applies to operations leaders, marketers, HR heads, and really anyone whose function is being touched by technology, which is almost everyone. As a CFO, you can champion this model across the executive team. It gives a shared language that is practical, a loop of sensing, mapping, experimenting, and integrating, instead of vague talk of transformation.

For example, you might share the core ideas with your CHRO and design internal development programs that reflect it. Or you work with your COO to identify where operational data and finance data can together feed better AI tools. In this way, the finance function becomes a driver of organizational learning, not just a consumer of tech projects launched by others.

Supporting The Next Generation Of Thinkers

There is also a broader impact angle that might resonate with you. Seventy percent of profits from Rodrigo’s book are directed to training children in reasoning, writing, and structured thinking. For a CFO who cares about ESG, talent pipelines, and the future of the workforce, this is significant. Systems reconfiguration in the economy does not happen only inside one company, it also depends on how the next generation learns to think and solve problems.

If your organization already supports educational programs, you might see alignment here. Reasoning, writing, and structured thinking are at the heart of both finance and technology. Supporting that kind of learning in children contributes indirectly to a future talent pool that can move across disciplines, just like you are trying to do with your own team.

Simple Summary For Busy CFOs

So, what should you take away from Rodrigo’s journey and the Reforge Cycle, if you only have a few minutes to remember the essentials. First, your finance background is not a barrier to technology, it is an asset, if you are willing to reframe it. Rodrigo moved from sovereign debt and distressed credit into AI and tech ventures by continually learning and deliberately connecting his old skills to new problems.

Second, the Reforge Cycle is a simple loop you can apply, sense how technology is changing your world, map your existing strengths to those shifts, run small controlled experiments, and then integrate what works back into your core role. You can apply this to your own career, and to how you run your finance team and tech projects.

Third, you do not need grand, dramatic moves. Regular, modest steps, a quarterly conversation with tech leaders, one focused pilot project, a three month learning sprint, and a more product like view of your finance outputs can compound into a significant shift over a few years. The key is to start and then keep cycling.

Finally, remember that these ideas are human, not just theoretical. Rodrigo’s ventures like Platam, Hexis, and Safiri all show concrete examples of finance logic turned into technology products, often in challenging environments. As a CFO, you are in a strong position to do something similar in your own context. Treat your skills as material to be reforged, not relics to be defended, and you will be better prepared for the next wave of change, instead of caught off guard by it.