Aziz Megji recently stepped into the chief financial officer role at Asana after serving as the company’s head of strategic finance and financial planning and analysis.
Before becoming CFO, Megji led areas including planning, forecasting, investor relations, treasury, corporate development, and capital allocation. He previously held senior finance leadership positions at RingCentral, NVIDIA, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Asana is a work management platform that helps organizations coordinate work across teams. As companies begin incorporating AI into important workflows, Asana is exploring how its platform can support collaboration among employees and intelligent agents.
During our conversation, Megji discussed how AI is helping finance teams spend more time producing insights, why CFOs should give CEOs greater clarity about investment trade-offs, and how operational efficiency can create room for future growth. He also explained why aspiring CFOs should actively pursue assignments that take them outside their comfort zones.
What excites you most about stepping into the CFO role at Asana?
I have been CFO for approximately six months and have been at Asana for about a year and a half. What excites me most is the dramatic shift happening across software as customers move beyond experimenting with AI and begin embedding it in mission-critical workflows.
Asana has an opportunity to expand from supporting collaboration between people to coordinating work among people and AI agents. Helping the company navigate that transformation and use it to drive its next stage of growth is incredibly exciting.
How is the CFO role changing as AI reshapes software companies and the way people work?
Finance teams have traditionally spent significant time gathering information, producing reports, running analyses, and completing manual reconciliations and entries. AI can automate much of that work and synthesize information quickly, helping finance professionals move from analysts to producers of insights.
Work that previously took four days might now take one, giving the team more time to develop recommendations and drive change. Finance should also lead AI adoption internally, which is why I encourage my team to become fluent in AI tools and use them to improve areas such as payroll, revenue accounting, and investor relations.
How can CFOs become stronger strategic partners to their CEOs?
CFOs are sometimes characterized as gatekeepers whose job is to say yes or no. The strongest CFOs help CEOs understand investment trade-offs and determine how to allocate resources in ways that accelerate growth while supporting free cash flow and margin expansion.
That requires transparency, healthy debate, and the courage to challenge assumptions. The CEO is the architect and artist of the company’s strategy and vision, while the CFO helps translate that vision into investment priorities, hiring decisions, resource allocations, and trade-offs. By creating clarity instead of friction, CFOs build trust and become involved earlier in important decisions.
What financial and operational challenges come with scaling an AI-first company?
There are two parts to this challenge: how we deliver AI capabilities to customers and how we use AI internally. Delivering AI introduces inference, large language model, and computing costs, which can result in lower gross margins in the near term. Finance leaders must weigh those costs against the potential for stronger customer relationships, increased consumption, and long-term growth.
Internally, every AI investment should be tied to measurable productivity improvements or financial returns. We need to invest where the evidence is strong, stop projects that are not creating value, and establish governance that gives us visibility into AI usage and costs.
What does resilient growth look like in today’s changing technology landscape?
Resilient growth begins with adaptability. As customer interest in using AI has increased, we have compressed our planning timelines from 18-month road maps to six-month intervals. That allows us to move resources more quickly, increase productivity, and keep pace with changing customer needs.
Resilient growth also means accelerating growth efficiently. Greater efficiency creates capacity to satisfy margin expectations while continuing to invest in innovation and other long-term priorities. AI has helped us pursue faster growth with roughly the same headcount, an opportunity that may not have existed a year or two ago.
How did your experience leading strategic finance and FP&A prepare you for the CFO role?
My career began in strategic finance, where I worked on mergers and acquisitions, business transformation, investment priorities, and long-term strategy. I later moved into FP&A and investor relations, which gave me a broader perspective and helped prepare me for the CFO role.
FP&A provides a front-row seat to the entire organization. It teaches you what drives the business, how to make resource and budget trade-offs with imperfect information, and how to build strong relationships with functional leaders. Combined with my strategic finance and investor relations experience, it taught me to understand the company’s operations and communicate its performance clearly to investors.
What skills or traits does a good finance leader need today?
Technical finance expertise is the starting point. CFOs must ensure that financial results are accurate, transparent, and supported by appropriate controls. Communication is equally important because finance leaders must explain complex information clearly to executives, board members, and investors.
Finance leaders also need curiosity, a deep understanding of the business, and the courage to challenge assumptions. I prefer to lead through knowledge and influence rather than through control of the budget. At the same time, people should trust that they can bring the CFO difficult questions, mistakes, and challenges without automatically being told no.
What advice would you give aspiring CFOs?
Continue stretching yourself and taking on work that makes you uncomfortable. Raise your hand for broader responsibilities, develop the insights behind your work, and present them to more senior leaders. Pay attention to their questions, and be willing to admit when you need to return with an answer.
Those experiences reveal your blind spots and build confidence over time. Don’t become discouraged when something doesn’t go perfectly. Keep going, find mentors, and continue expanding your scope. In an AI-driven workplace, communication, confidence, and the ability to turn information into useful insights will become increasingly valuable.
Aziz Megji recently stepped into the chief financial officer role at Asana after serving as the company’s head of strategic finance and financial planning and analysis.
Before becoming CFO, Megji led areas including planning, forecasting, investor relations, treasury, corporate development, and capital allocation. He previously held senior finance leadership positions at RingCentral, NVIDIA, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Asana is a work management platform that helps organizations coordinate work across teams. As companies begin incorporating AI into important workflows, Asana is exploring how its platform can support collaboration among employees and intelligent agents.
During our conversation, Megji discussed how AI is helping finance teams spend more time producing insights, why CFOs should give CEOs greater clarity about investment trade-offs, and how operational efficiency can create room for future growth. He also explained why aspiring CFOs should actively pursue assignments that take them outside their comfort zones.
