Events

Today’s CFO is expected to do far more than manage the numbers. As companies scale, raise capital, enter the public markets, pursue acquisitions or prepare for an exit, finance leaders increasingly sit at the center of some of the organization’s most consequential decisions.
 
This panel brings together experienced CFOs and finance leaders who have guided companies through pivotal stages of growth and transformation. Drawing on firsthand experience navigating private financings, public offerings, M&A and other major inflection points, the panel will explore how the CFO role evolves as a company—and its ambitions—grow.

Learning Objectives

Speakers:

Matt Padfield
CFO 
SambaNova

Matt is the CFO of SambaNova, a unicorn artificial intelligence semiconductor and software company powered by its proprietary Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) architecture.  Its platform delivers ultra-fast, energy-efficient AI inference compute to data centers.  He leads the financial and operations teams to support the company's next stage of growth, from operational rigor to strategic decision-making and capital allocation. He brings deep finance leadership from high-growth semiconductor and technology companies, most recently as Group Vice President of Corporate FP&A at Coherent, and previously VP of FP&A and Corporate Development at Synaptics, where he served in an acting CFO capacity and led $1B+ in M&A activity.

Mahesh Karanth
CFO
Sonatus, Inc. 

Mahesh Karanth is a seasoned financial executive who brings over 30 years of expertise to Sonatus, having held leadership roles in both multinational public and private companies. He has a distinguished track record in financial leadership, particularly in IPOs, M&A, fundraising, investor relations, business planning, and compliance.
 
At Sonatus, Mahesh oversees the Finance, Legal, and Human Resources teams. Before joining Sonatus, Mahesh served as CFO of Rockley Photonics, where he successfully took the company public in 2021. His extensive experience includes senior leadership positions at Achronix, Enlighted, InvenSense, Telsima, Hewlett Packard, and Compaq. He also served as a partner at Ernst & Young.
 
Mahesh currently sits on the board of Mixx Technologies. He holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bangalore University and is a certified public accountant (CPA), chartered accountant (FCA), and company secretary (ACS).

Karen Moran
CFO
Wellth

Karen Moran is the Chief Financial Officer of Wellth, a developer of a digital healthcare platform designed to improve treatment adherence through behavioral economics.
 
She is a finance, strategy, and operations executive with over two decades of experience scaling across Series B to post-IPO technology companies. She has held CFO and senior finance roles at Alteryx, Domo, and SAP/SuccessFactors, building operating rigor that enables companies to scale.
Karen is a proven fundraiser and operator. She has raised over $1 billion of growth capital during her career. She joins Wellth to bring discipline and financial storytelling to a company redefining what engagement in healthcare can do.
 
In her free time, she loves to travel and aspires to make it to Antarctica (which would make it 7 out of 7 continents visited). She is also passionate about supporting access to affordable education and serves as the Treasurer of the Irvine Valley College Foundation.

Moderator:

Davina K. Kaile
Partner
Pillsbury

Corporate and Securities partner and global leader of Pillsbury’s Capital Markets and Public Companies practice, Davina Kaile has guided public companies and late-stage private companies across a wide range of sectors, including technology, e-commerce, life sciences, financial services and retail in many high-profile, multibillion- and multimillion-dollar deals.

Davina has extensive experience in capital markets transactions, IPOs, mergers and acquisitions and tender offers, reverse mergers, divestitures, going private transactions, SPAC and deSPAC transactions, SEC reporting and compliance, stockholder engagement and proxy matters, Section 16 and 13 reporting, and corporate governance and general corporate matters. She represents issuers, underwriters and placement agents in IPOs and follow-on offerings, shelf, registered direct, and confidentially marketed public offerings and other equity financing transactions, including Rights Offerings, PIPE, ATM, and equity line transactions, and represents acquirors, acquirees, and financial advisors in mergers and acquisitions, tender offers, strategic investments and divestitures, and de-SPAC transactions. Davina also has extensive experience advising on ‘33 and ‘34 Act reporting and compliance, proxy matters, stock exchange compliance and initiatives, and corporate governance issues, including in connection with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Dodd-Frank Act.

Event Details:

Tuesday, September 15, 2026
3:30pm - 4:00pm Registration | Networking
4:00pm - 5:00pm Presentation
5:00pm Networking followed by a Keynote Speaker - please register separately for this.