The CFO as Decision Architect

In this episode of CFO Weekly, Shirley Shu-Hurley, Chief Financial Officer at Hillsborough Transit Authority (HART), joins Megan Weis to explore why the finance seat is evolving from scorekeeper and controller into what Shirley calls the “decision architect” of the organization. Shirley is a finance leader with two decades of experience helping organizations navigate complexity, transformation, and growth. With credentials as a CPA, CFA, and MBA, she has built her career at the intersection of finance, operations, governance, and strategy, partnering with executive teams and boards to build scalable financial infrastructure, strengthen decision making, and create long-term value. Drawing on a career that spans the energy sector, an entrepreneurship-focused MBA at Durham University Business School, a fractional CFO and strategy consulting practice, and finance leadership at a global donor-advised fund foundation, Shirley shares how she now applies that experience to public finance at HART. She unpacks her framework for evaluating organizational capacity, why she reframes finance's role from gatekeeper to system thinker, how governance can accelerate rather than slow decision making, and what mindset the CFO of the future will need. What You'll Learn: Why the CFO role is evolving from financial operator to decision architect How to evaluate an organization's true capacity to execute its strategy A framework for classifying constraints as hard, policy, or preference Why an action-biased mindset produces better decisions under uncertainty How grassroots AI literacy programs build trust and adoption across teams Why system thinking will separate strategic CFOs from financial operators What the CFO role will look like in the next two to three years Learn More About Shirley: Shirley Shu-Hurley on LinkedIn Hillsborough Transit Authority (HART) Website Episode resources: Personiv's Website Personiv on LinkedIn Personiv on Facebook Personiv on Twitter If you enjoyed this episode, then please either: Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts Follow on Spotify Instructions on following, rating, and reviewing CFO Weekly are here. Previous guests include: Tom McDermott, CFO at Career Certified, Claire Bramley, CFO at Teradata, Chris Miles, Founder of Money Ripples, Ranil DeSilva, CFO & COO at CARE, Jordan Grumet, Financial Independence Expert & Host of Earn & Invest & William Washington, Global CFO at Baker McKenzie Check out some of our most recent episodes: Driving Value Beyond Finance with Tom McDermott Why CFOs Are the Chief Everything Officers with Claire Bramley Why Traditional Financial Advice Fails and What To Do Instead with Chris Miles NGO Finance Secrets: CARE’s $900M Strategy with Ranil DeSilva What Lights You Up? with Jordan Grumet Become a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with William Washington If you are interested in joining CFO Weekly as a guest, please complete this form: fame.so/cfo-guest CFO Weekly is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so