The supportiveness that comes from a spouse who can align with their partner’s professional desires and personal development, and is willing to grow alongside them in all aspects of life, is the glue that holds relationships together. For CFOs, this can take many different forms, and though it is seldom taught in business school, being able to identify this in a spouse is incredibly important for executives who also want to have families and cultivate lives outside their leadership roles.
Shannon and Bill Nash are two West Coast-based finance leaders who are married and have three boys. Though they were both previously CFOs until Shannon’s career change in August, this bond is evident despite their major differences in CFO archetypes.
Shannon is an attorney and active CPA who currently sits on three boards and has held four different CFO positions since 2010. Most recently, she served as CFO of Wing, an on-demand drone delivery service that is owned by Alphabet.
Bill is a former lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and a leadership instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy. After the Navy, he pursued a career in business, earned his MBA and got his first CFO position in 2013 as a divisional CFO at UCB Pharma. He currently serves as CFO of Ursa Major, an aviation and aerospace company that produces high-performance propulsion engines used in things like rockets and missiles.
Though the two met in high school around 1985, they were able to reconnect shortly after and begin their story. They have three boys ranging in their late teens to mid- to late 20s. As they professionally complement each other and have helped one another develop their careers as finance leaders, they have also found a way to sustain successful, independent and noteworthy careers. At the same time, they were able to instill strong values in their children and support each other’s journey to a CFO role — key points of emphasis for finance leaders struggling to balance parenthood, marriage and executive responsibilities.
Building character, supporting one another and passing values on to kids
Both Bill and Shannon agree that early on, they never thought they would both end up with the same job titles, let alone the same career path. “When we got married, we never saw this career path coming because I was practicing law and Bill was a submarine officer in the U.S. Navy,” Shannon said.
“Bill was always supportive of me from day one in my career goals, which I appreciated him for because in the military it’s common for spouses to stay at home, so our situation was a bit unique when looking at those around us at that time, but he always encouraged me to pursue my professional goals and pursue whatever career path I wanted,” she added.
During his service, Bill spent months at sea at a time and was unreachable while Shannon was building a career of her own. “That’s how our marriage started,” she said. “It was up to me to run our finances at that point to make sure all of my bills, as well as his bills, were up to date because when he was at sea, there was no way I was able to communicate with him for several months at a time.”
Though it was a grind, it helped their relationship develop character and appreciation for their success today. Shannon commended her husband on his ability to give her autonomy in her career choice and the ability to instill that value in their kids.
“I think one of the biggest lessons we learned along the way, and it’s something we try to instill in our boys, is that your plan in life has to be flexible, because the way your life looks in your twenties or early in your career is not going to work out how you envisioned it at that point, and that’s OK,” she said.
Bill reiterated Shannon’s idea of envisioning good values and said it was something that they made sure they both made time for throughout the growth of their careers. “I was able to have the time to coach a number of my kids as they grew up in sports, and it was because Shannon and I worked together to make sure we both spent quality time with the kids and helped them with their challenges.”
Working together
Both commended the other’s ability to help them and make them a better CFO, primarily because they come from vastly different backgrounds and were able to play off each other’s strengths after-hours to make sure they understood things outside of their realm of expertise completely. “I think there’s a lot of value in connecting with people with different working backgrounds than you, but I don’t think you can get more technical than Shannon’s skill set as a lawyer and CPA, and she has tax experience,” said Bill.
Bill said that after his time in the military and his subsequent pursuit of business education, he always felt a bit behind the curve because of his late transition into the corporate world. Shannon’s support during this process was a big part of his successful transition. “When I got out of the Navy and started interviewing for jobs, I realized very quickly that I was behind on my understanding of business,” he said. “I had been in the military for eight years, so her ability to help me transition to the corporate world and get accustomed gave me confidence and was super helpful.”
Shannon said Bill’s combination of skills acquired from earning his MBA and engineering skills from his Navy service benefitted her in nearly every CFO role she had. “I would ask him about products or business decisions that were hard to understand and ask him to explain it to me in plain English,” she said. “It was natural for us to talk about what worked well in our working environments and teams, what didn’t and it was such a great resource to have a spouse that could communicate about work challenges like a colleague.”
The couple said they haven’t needed a formal limit on talking about work at home, crediting the other’s ability to communicate and respect their spouse’s autonomy. “There are plenty of things that one of us is interested in that the other isn’t, and I think that has helped us balance work-talk at home,” said Bill. “I like to play golf and she teaches Zumba for example, so we can talk about those things, but when she asks me to dance… let’s just say you don’t want to see that.”
Shannon said Bill’s ability to support the family through his interests has allowed them to appreciate his impact and, more importantly, miss it when he is gone. “Bill loves to cook, it’s soothing for him and as a family, we love and appreciate this hobby of his,” Shannon said. “It’s how he releases stress — he makes gourmet meals, he’s always sauteing or sous-vide-ing something, and when he’s away for business, we feel his impact because we are ordering in when he’s gone — and it’s never as good.”
Approach to personal finance
As the two became CFOs, they both said they approached their finances not differently in terms of strategy when compared to their peers, however they were much more cost-aware, particularly before earning executive titles. Shannon said Bill’s focus on paying off debt and investing conservatively for the long haul was something she was grateful for at the time and also wasn’t something she or her peers were talking about.
“Early on in our marriage, we did everything on our own, our managing, budgeting and investing, and thank goodness Bill was so interested in those things when we were in our 20s,” said Shannon. She also said that Bill was “really serious about investing from the very beginning” in things like IRAs and other long-term investments, as well as allocating much of their income towards paying off her debt.
“I had student loans and he didn’t, so any of the extra money we were making early in our marriage went to paying off debt,” Shannon said. “I was working at a big law firm and my coworkers were jealous and joked with me that I could go work any job I wanted to because I had no debt, and that was because of Bill’s idea at that time of sacrificing a bit now so we can have a bit more later.”
Bill said his approach to their finances wasn’t all that different from his non-CFO peers, but this approach helped them create the flexibility that allowed their careers and families to grow simultaneously. “I think it’s a great philosophy to pay yourself first,” Bill said. “We needed to save early on, and we tried to max out all of the tax advantages and savings with IRAs and 401ks. Our son has special needs, so we set up a special needs trust for him that has been great for him and our family.”
“I am not a great stock picker, but I always was sure that we weren’t over-indexed on anything, and that our investments were conservative while we were paying off as much debt as we could,” he added.
Now, as the couple uses a financial advisor, Shannon said a third party involved in the mix of a family’s finances with two CFOs at the helm acts as a “referee” in the decision-making process.
“I call our advisor an advisor/marriage counselor,” Shannon said. “Bill and I don’t necessarily always agree on our investment strategy anymore, so as we’ve been able to make more money and allocate it in different places we’ve had to outsource some of the work behind that. I used to do our tax returns for years, too, but now that it’s become too much to do, having a third party in the room when we are making long-term financial decisions is just as valuable as having another CFO there, too.”
