Building Teams, Driving Enterprise Value, and Leading Through Transformation: With CFO Kari Dixon

Episode Guests & Host

Host: Amy Pack — AccruePartners

Guest: Kari Dixon — CFO, MCA

Introduction

Amy Pack: Welcome back to Building People, Companies, and Careers. I'm your host, Amy Pack. Here at AccruePartners, we are passionate about bringing together candidates, clients, consultants, and thought leaders in the Charlotte community, the Carolinas, and beyond. Today I'm joined by Kari Dixon, CFO of MCA. What makes this conversation especially meaningful is that we've watched Kari's career grow over 15 years across many of our clients. We're excited to hear her story. Welcome, Kari.

Kari Dixon: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Amy Pack: Kari, the role of the CFO is changing dramatically within today's landscape, with regulation, compliance, and technology all evolving at once. Identifying the right talent is essential to moving organizations forward. I'd love to dig into all of that, but I always like to start with the classic question: tell me about yourself, so our listeners can hear a bit about your journey.

Kari Dixon: Happy to share. I'm Kari Dixon, CFO of MCA, and I would describe my career as a series of intentionally running toward the right challenges and figuring things out along the way. I've been fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful mentors and champions throughout.

I started my career very traditionally at PwC in the Baltimore office. That's where I was first introduced to private equity, portfolio companies, and large publicly traded organizations. Most importantly, it's where I met my husband, Ryan, which was the best thing that ever came out of those years. We eventually relocated to Charlotte with PwC, and from there I spent the majority of my career in private equity-held portfolio businesses, focused on transformation, value creation, and M and A roll-ups. I also served as CEO for a period, which was a wild and formative experience. Through all of it, I've been fortunate to build fantastic teams and work alongside exceptional people.

Amy Pack: I learned something new today. I didn't realize your time at PwC was so focused on PE-backed companies. That really explains the trajectory of your career and what laid the foundation for everything that followed.

Kari Dixon: It really did. It was a tremendous way to begin a career. I graduated during the recession, and many of us were simply grateful to have roles that didn't disappear. Early on, I had the opportunity to work with a company that had gone private, a KKR-held portfolio business that had gone from public to private as part of an M and A roll-up strategy. I had a wonderful mentor there named Andy Schulman who pulled me along. It was a great experience.

Defining Career Moments and the Art of Taking Chances

 Amy Pack: You've touched on your background in PE-backed companies and your time coming up through public accounting. What were some of the defining moments that shaped how you operate as a CFO today?

Kari Dixon: That's a great question. I mentioned earlier the idea of running toward fires, and over the course of a career you develop an instinct for which fires are worth running toward and which ones to avoid. You learn from both.

One of the most significant experiences was at a business called Form Technologies, where I had an incredible mentor named Keith Wideman. He gave me the space to grow, try new things, and take chances on myself as he was simultaneously taking chances on me. When I left there, he helped me find my next opportunity at a publicly traded company focused on M and A. Midway through my tenure, both the FP and A leader and the investor relations leader departed at the same time. The CFO came to me and asked if I'd be willing to take on both roles simultaneously. I said yes.

Building a career is really a series of taking calculated chances on yourself. Before saying yes, I always asked three questions: What kind of professional growth is available here? What experiences, good and bad, will I be exposed to? And do I have someone in my corner?

When I eventually left to become a first-time CFO, I joined a company that was preparing to go public. We completed all the necessary work, including drafting the S-1s and bringing in bankers during the SPAC era. Then the capital markets began to deteriorate. The CEO who recruited me came to me and said he was transitioning to private equity and believed I should take his role as CEO. I thought hard about it and said yes. It was an absolute whirlwind, going from leading finance professionals to managing operations, sales and marketing, HR, legal compliance, and board and investor relations. But I always tell people: growth in your career is like building muscle in the gym. It hurts, and it takes consistency and dedication.

Developing Talent and Building a Career Development Legacy

Amy Pack: Our podcast is called Building People, Companies, and Careers, and there really is an art to it. Too often people expect others to build their careers for them rather than actively seeking growth. You had someone who challenged you and took a chance on you, and you've clearly paid that forward. What is it that makes that kind of leadership distinctive, because not every leader has that skill set, and not every employee understands what it looks like?

Kari Dixon: I think it's something you can develop, and it starts with choosing the right bosses for yourself. When I go into any interview, I will interview the other person harder than they interview me. And it should be that way. You're making at minimum a one-year commitment to a new professional adventure. That demands serious evaluation.

The other resource that changed how I think about leadership is a book called Extreme Ownership, written by two Navy SEALs who translated military leadership principles into team management. I heard about it on a podcast and have recommended it to everyone since. The core principles that resonated most deeply with me were mission clarity, meaning everyone understands what success looks like; decentralized command, meaning decisions can be made well even when I'm not in the room; and being a force multiplier. We actually have those principles posted on our office wall today.

But beyond frameworks, genuine care matters. People can tell immediately when your interest in their development is not authentic. You have to walk the walk. I've been fortunate to build strong teams, and those team members go on to build strong teams of their own. It creates a powerful cycle. I view these as 20- to 30- to 40-year relationships. My goal is to leave behind a generation of future CFOs, COOs, and CEOs. That's the legacy I want.

The CFO Role in Private Equity: Value Creation, Talent, and the Nine-Block Framework

Amy Pack: CFOs in private equity companies sit at the center of growth, capital allocation, and execution. How do you define the CFO role at an organization like MCA, where you're in a high-acquisition, PE-backed environment?

 

Kari Dixon: At its core, the CFO role is about value creation, and that is consistent whether you're in a PE-backed company or a publicly traded one.

The first priority is complete alignment with investors. In the PE world, that means your deal team. Understand their deal model thoroughly. Why did they choose this platform? What growth rates do they see? What is the five-year vision? Your investors can be among your strongest allies, and building a true two-way partnership with them is essential. You need to learn from them, and you also need to evolve the narrative as the business grows.

The second pillar is talent. Even in this AI-driven era, nothing replaces great people. I frame it with what I call my nine-block, a three-by-three framework covering people, process, and technology. In PE businesses, you always start with stability across all three. Without a stable foundation, nothing else gets done. From there, you simplify. Many PE organizations are built through roll-ups, which means integrating 50-plus different businesses onto a single platform. You have to keep that process simple. Then, at the highest level, it's about enabling growth.

Data is now a fourth dimension in that framework. If you're approaching an exit without complete mastery of your data, you're in trouble.

Finally, the CFO is a business partner. Finance is the connective tissue of a company. It is the one function that touches every other function. The real magic happens when you sync up priorities across functions and translate them back into the value creation thesis. And as my CEO Vince Foody puts it, M and A is about building stronger teams faster. When businesses come together and ask why they are genuinely better together, that is where enterprise value is created.

Where CFOs Get It Wrong: ERP Over-Reliance, Foundation Gaps, and Credibility

Amy Pack: Where do you see CFOs get it wrong most often?

 

Kari Dixon: I'll tell you, I've made most of these mistakes myself. Number one is confusing ERP and tech stack with business process. This is probably the biggest misconception in the industry right now. Everyone believes that getting on the same ERP is the secret sauce. That is partially true, up to a point, and then you hit a wall of business process complexity. In a PE roll-up with 55 different ways of doing things, you cannot let technology distract you from the underlying process work. The best outcomes happen when technology and process improvement advance together.

Number two is neglecting the foundation. The foundation is a strong accounting team, a solid controllership function, and the bench strength to absorb growth. You cannot chase shiny objects if your core reporting infrastructure is not right. In a PE environment, your sponsors have full visibility into your financials at all times. Private companies may have a 30-day shot clock to close the books; public companies get 90 days. Either way, you must be able to call your business accurately, both on the top line and the bottom line. That is your credibility. It demonstrates that you understand how the business makes money, when it will make more, and where the risks are.

Building High-Performance Finance Teams: Grit, Bedside Manner, and Honest Counsel

Amy Pack: You mentioned talent as one of your core pillars. The accounting and finance talent market has been challenging for several years now and will remain so for the foreseeable future. What do you look for when building finance teams to drive performance and serve as true business partners?

Kari Dixon: My priorities have evolved slightly over time, but the top three have remained constant. Number one is grit. Nothing beats it, and I genuinely don't know if you can teach it. I think someone either has it or they don't.

Number two is bedside manner. Finance teams need to earn business intelligence from their partners across the organization, and no one shares information freely with someone they don't trust or enjoy working with. The best finance professionals communicate a clear message: I am here to help you, not to indict you.

Number three is honesty, specifically the courage to say the hard thing when no one else will. Being the unpopular voice in the room can be a lonely position. I learned this the hard way, both as someone who should have spoken up sooner and as someone who needed others to tell me more. The principle I carry now is this: it is not 'I told you so,' it is 'I did not tell you enough.'

Beyond those three, technical finance skills are teachable. Leadership and people management can be developed. But grit, genuine care for colleagues, and the courage to be honest are qualities I will not compromise on when hiring.

Amy Pack: At AccruePartners, we talk about grit constantly when identifying talent. You either have it or you don't. And we see it show up differently across disciplines. In public accounting, grit looks like billable hours and relentless follow-through. For our clients, finding people with both grit and intellectual curiosity is consistently the hardest part of the search process.

Kari Dixon: Absolutely. You can pick up on grit in an interview if you know what to look for. I always begin by asking someone to tell me about themselves as a person, not their career. Where they choose to start, and how they talk about the people in their lives, tells me a great deal. There is no right or wrong answer. It is an open canvas, and watching someone navigate that question reveals more than any technical question ever could.

What I'm really trying to understand is what happens when something goes sideways, because in every organization, something eventually does. Will this person be resilient? Will they come to me with a problem and a proposed solution? Or will they simply tell me they don't know how to proceed?

AI and Technology in Finance: Enabling People, Not Replacing Them

Amy Pack: Let's shift to technology and AI. It is all-consuming in today's environment and increasingly central to the finance function across the enterprise. How are you thinking about leveraging AI to drive better decisions and efficiency?

Kari Dixon: It is genuinely a tough question. In finance, FP and A, and information systems, the work is about transforming data into insights and then using those insights to guide business partners on decisions. AI should change where the work happens, not eliminate the thinking entirely.

At minimum, AI should automate what is repeatable and consistent. My philosophy is that you take the people you have, reduce their burden through AI, and then ask them: what do you want to do with this capacity? How can we use your talent to drive the business forward?

I'll be honest, this reminds me of the offshoring wave ten or twelve years ago, when organizations rushed to move everything offshore without having their business processes in order. If you offshore a broken process, you get broken results. The same is true with AI. If you automate a poor process, you will scale the problem.

The ROI question is also something I've been actively researching. How do you measure the return on AI investment? How many tokens is a given AI agent consuming, and what are you actually getting back? Is it driving a measurable outcome, or is it simply a compelling tool that has not been rigorously evaluated? I believe we are still in very early stages as a profession.

Someone at an AccruePartners breakfast compared AI to the early internet. Nobody knew what it was, and companies had to decide whether to engage. I believe you have to engage with AI. But do it thoughtfully, because costs can escalate quickly.

Amy Pack: Are you at a point where you're measuring AI adoption within your organization? We hear consistently that lack of adoption is a major obstacle, and it requires significant change management.

 

Kari Dixon: Yes, and here is what we are seeing. In every function, there are a few people who are genuinely excited about AI. There are others who fear it will take their jobs. And then there is a large group somewhere in between.

What we have done is pull together the enthusiasts from each function into an AI council, and we are applying a framework similar to a CapEx approval process. Just as you would evaluate a capital expenditure with a clear rationale, a projected ROI, and organizational alignment, we are applying that same rigor to AI proposals. What do we need this for? What is the expected return? Should we build an AI agent or is this a one-time application? That discipline ensures we are being intentional rather than reactive.

We are a service business, so AI will not replace our frontline team. For us, the question is how we enable our back office to take on more complex work, support integration of new acquisitions, and build organizational bench strength. It is really about elevating what our people can do.

The Future of the CFO: From Finance Transformation to Full Business Transformation

Amy Pack: As you look ahead, how do you see the CFO role continuing to evolve, and what capabilities will define the next generation of finance leaders?

 

Kari Dixon: When I was coming up, the CFO role was very much about reporting and numbers. Then it transitioned to data and insights. Today, I see CFOs being held accountable, and rightly so, for transformation, and not just finance transformation.

Finance transformation has always been the starting point because you need trustworthy numbers before anything else. Not perfect numbers, but trustworthy ones. From there, digital transformation asks: can you translate all the data in the business, not just debits and credits, into actionable insights? The next frontier, I believe, is full business transformation: consistency and efficiency in business processes across the entire enterprise.

CFOs are uniquely positioned to see the entire playing field. We can identify when functions are drifting in different directions and work to realign them. Part of that is also knowing when to hand off to the COO, the CRO, or the CEO, and when to engage the PE sponsor for transformation investments.

I hear from many bankers that PE-backed businesses are not ready for exit because the roll-ups were never fully integrated. Business processes remain fragmented, and significant EBITDA is being left on the table. That integration work is increasingly landing on the CFO's desk, and I think it will only become more central to the role.

Culture, M and A Integration, and Building Organizations That Last

Amy Pack: When you're doing that many acquisitions over time, and the business processes are vastly different, you also have cultures layered on top of each other. That creates its own category of complexity.

 

Kari Dixon: It really does. Culture is everything. Everyone knows the phrase 'culture eats strategy for breakfast,' and it is especially true in PE-backed or publicly traded roll-ups. You don't need to be a multi-billion-dollar revenue company to go public anymore. Many of these businesses came together at great valuations and are now struggling to grow because the cultural foundation was not established.

At MCA, I was genuinely surprised when I walked in. I kept asking myself for almost a full year: is this real? And it is. A strong, authentic culture is a true market differentiator. It is why founders who sell their businesses feel confident saying that their people will be in good hands. It is why top talent wants to come work here. That culture predated me, and it was one of the things that attracted me to the role.

Amy Pack: And that is what helps you attract the best people. Culture is the foundation of talent acquisition.

Kari Dixon: Absolutely. It really does make the difference. A great culture is self-reinforcing.

Rapid Fire: Career Lessons, Leadership Principles, and Charlotte Favorites

Amy Pack: Let's move to our rapid-fire round. What was your first real career lesson?

Kari Dixon: It is important to fail, and fail fast. Learning how to fail, regroup, and show up the next day ready to win is one of the most valuable skills you can develop. Resilience is built through failure, not in spite of it.

Amy Pack: What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

 

Kari Dixon: Bad news doesn't age well. I got that from Tim Ryan, who led PwC. I was leaving the firm, and they arranged a meeting with him to see if I would stay. I was straightforward with him: I told him I wasn't changing my mind, but that I would not waste the opportunity to ask what guiding principles had shaped his remarkable career. That was one of his answers, and I have repeated it hundreds of times since.

Amy Pack: What is the leadership trait you value most in others?

Kari Dixon: Candor. Full stop. Give me hard news and we will work through it together. Tell me what is actually happening so I can be your partner. I value relationships where we can cut through the noise, have the hard conversation, and make the hard call. That is the only way to move forward quickly and make real impact.

 

Amy Pack: What is the saying you are known for?

 

Kari Dixon: I reserve the right to get smarter. My team hears it constantly. It means: I will make the best decision I can with the information available today. When you know more, bring it to me and we will make a better decision together. Being a nimble, agile executive means you are willing to course-correct when the situation calls for it. Changing your mind with new information is not weakness. It is leadership.

 

Amy Pack: And finally, what is your favorite lunch spot in Charlotte?

 

Kari Dixon: I am a creature of habit, so my go-to spots are Pastino's and Zeituni in the Ballantyne area. Pastino's is an Italian cafe right in the Ballantyne Bowl, and Zeituni is a wonderful Lebanese restaurant nearby. If you have never been, you need to go.

 

Amy Pack: We are making a trip to Ballantyne. Kari, it has been a genuine pleasure hearing your perspective and seeing the impact you've made on so many people throughout your career. Thank you for sharing your lessons and your time today.

 

Kari Dixon: Thank you so much for having me. I truly appreciate it.