From Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to Energy Transformation: Connagh Hopkins
Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. Connagh shares her fascinating and unconventional journey from working on the global licensing for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to navigating Australia’s energy transformation.
In this episode:
Who Wants To be a Millionaire success (powered by Lotus123)
The Consolidated 10 year plan at Western Power
Scenario planning and Inflation challenges in utilities
How we are stacked: 65 person finance team at Western Power
The power and challenge of AI in finance
Connect with Connagh Hopkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connagh-hopkins-a9b3871/
Connagh Hopkins is Head of Business Planning and Reporting at Western Power, where she oversees the FP&A function for one of Australia’s largest electricity network operators. With more than two decades of experience across utilities, property development, not-for-profit, retail, fuel, and media sectors in both the UK and Australia, she’s known for her focus on commercial strategy, cross-functional collaboration, and building high-performance finance teams.
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CFO Grammarly – behind their $1 billion in non-dilutive financing and how we do FP&A
Matt Hudson became CFO of Grammarly – the popular writing assistant tool – after the company acquired Coda (a productivity tool)- of which he was a founding member. Now as CFO at Grammarly he is overseeing rapid change at the company which has over 40 million daily active users and $700m in revenue (and a 50 person finance team). Finance is helping pioneer a company vision of AI redefining every business application and workflow, “reinventing productivity”. To this end, in May 2025, Grammarly raised $1 billion in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst to fund sales and marketing costs and strategic acquisitions. Since then, Grammarly acquired email startup Superhuman (July 2025). You sense more is coming.
In this episode
Grammarly $1billion non-diluted growth investment explained
Being a founding member of Coda (acquired by Grammarly)
How my product expertise plugs into finance
Joining YouTube when it was around $140million in revenue to $3billion by the time I left ( $36 billion today)
Will CFOs see an explosion of costs because of AI
FP&A set up at Grammarly and biggest KPIs
Bonding over a love of Chili’s
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Why Financial models are essential even at early stages of a company – Lauren Pearl
Lauren Pearl is a Business Strategist and CFO Advisor who helps startup teams build data-driven businesses. The 3x founder with over 13 years of startup leadership experience now serves as CFO, advisor, and instructor for over 300 growing companies. She also runs the podcast “Growth Minded CFO” and offers a free course on financial modeling.
In this episode:
Financial models at startups
Sniffing out BS at startups
Storytelling as a pitchdeck
Getting startups to engage with finance
Free financial modeling course
Being a punk band roadie
Functionality of Excel
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenepearl/
Daily CFO newsletter: https://www.laurenpearlconsulting.com/newsletter
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What Keeps Excel as the heart of business: Chandoo
Today’s guest barely needs an introduction. Purna Duggirala (aka, “Chandoo”) is a celebrity in Excel circles. Since 2004, Chandoo has been regularly sharing everything he learns working with Excel training hundreds of finance teams, and had roles including as Data Lead, Remuneration Modeling & Analytics for the New Zealand government.
The 16-time Microsoft MVP runs Chandoo.org , which aims to “make you awesome in Excel and Power BI” getting 250,000 visitors per month from all over the world and his YouTube channel has 750,000 subscribers. His stated goal is “to make you awesome at Excel and Power BI”, and produces the go-to Excel resources from blog posts and videos to full online courses.
My Excel Journey and Community building
Skill gaps in FP&A Teams
Power BI vs Excel vs Python
Copilot – advantages and limits
My favorite Excel function
Check out https://chandoo.org
Chandoo’s Free Data analyst course: https://chandoo.org/wp/free-data-analyst-course/
Connect with Chandoo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/purnaduggirala/
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Top 10 Burning Questions in FP&A
In this special episode Glenn is joined by Nate Saperia to answer the 10 most burning questions in FP&A. Nate brings nearly 20 years of finance experience including at Accordion, Spruce Finance, Hess Corporation and GE. At Saperia Consulting Nate specializes in real-time dashboards, financial planning, and interim CFO/FP&A leadership.
The questions:
Q1: How can I use AI in FP&A?
Q2: What do you think of FP&A solutions?
Q3: How can you get to driver based decision making
Q4: Fastest levers FP&A teams can pull with margin pressures rising?
Q5: How can an FP&A function trust the financial data it’s using when it doesn’t control the data?
Q6: Should the CTO or CFO own the data?
Q7. Skills to get from M&A Financial due diligence to FP&A?
Q8. FP&A Internship, what advice?
Q9. Things I wish I had known earlier in FP&A?
Q10. What’s the future of Excel in FP&A?
FP&A Today is the podcast for Financial Planning and Analysis. The weekly show dives into the challenges and opportunities within the world of FP&A, interviewing FP&A leaders, CFOs and other finance pros in order to give you the freshest insights and takeaways. Each week our top guests provide actionable advice about financial planning and analysis – from career goals to navigating challenges, and powerful Excel tips.
Our weekly show provides unrivalled insights for navigating FP&A.
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