CFO · Fractional CEO/CFO · Founder-Operator · Greater Seattle Area

I build businesses,financial systems,and what comes next.

25+ years building, scaling, financing, and turning around companies. Scaled from startup to $30M+ ARR and more than $200M in cumulative revenue, with a career-long focus on finance, operations, technology, and systems.

$0→$30M ARR Scaled
$200M+ Revenue Built
10,000 Homes Completed, WA & OR
25+ Years Operating
Explore Executive Range Get in Touch
Karl and Stacey Ohlemann

An operator first.
A CFO where it counts.

I've spent my career in the ownership and executive seats — building companies, managing capital, leading teams, and making decisions when the answers weren't obvious.

That perspective shapes how I approach finance: visibility, stronger systems, a clear read on the economics, and financial information turned into executive action.

I tend to enter complex organizations by benchmarking the economics, isolating anomalies, and tracing them back to the operating model, incentives, systems, and decisions behind the numbers.

Legal and commercial strategy has been a meaningful part of that work. Over 25+ years I've worked closely with specialized outside counsel across contracts, employment, transactions, and regulatory matters — staying deeply involved in analysis, drafting, negotiation, and risk while retaining responsibility for the business judgment behind the decision.

I've scaled a company from zero to $30M+ ARR, built teams of 200+, raised growth capital, and evaluated private-equity acquisition offers from the ownership seat. Most recently, as CFO of Broadband Development Group, I helped lead a rapid financial turnaround, strengthening profitability and cash performance during a period of high growth.

Complex situations with high stakes and no clear playbook are where I do my best work.

Where I Come From Two family legacies—building from nothing and building something that lasts—shaped how I approach ownership, endurance, and enterprise. Read the story →

Executive Range

Financial leadership across the whole enterprise.

For more than 25 years, I have led finance from the owner, CEO, and CFO seats—often while the company, the team, and the financial infrastructure were all being built at once. My work spans strategy, P&L, FP&A, accounting, treasury, capital, systems, transactions, and executive leadership, with the operating context to connect them.

Structured executive capability self-assessment Breadth review · Not a certification
130CFO responsibilities reviewed
13Finance and enterprise domains
71Expert-level signature strengths

This is not a 71-of-130 score. In a structured review of my experience, all 130 responsibilities were assessed as credible executive leadership capabilities.

The 71 signature strengths are the responsibilities I elevated to the highest tier: areas of repeated, expert-level performance where I can independently exercise difficult judgment, build or redesign the function, diagnose problems, lead execution, and point to meaningful operating examples. The remaining 59 are still part of my demonstrated executive capability—they simply were not singled out as the most defining strengths.

The 13 domains reviewed

Complete executive-finance scope

01Accounting & Close
02AP, Procurement & Vendors
03AR, Billing & Collections
04Payroll, Tax & Compliance
05Treasury, Banking & Liquidity
06Lending, Covenants & Debt
07FP&A, Budgeting & Modeling
08Construction, Project Finance & Inventory
09ERP, Systems, Excel, AI & Automation
10Controls, Audit, Forensics & Risk
11Finance Team Building, Hiring, Training & SOPs
12Capital Raising, Investors, M&A & Transactions
13Executive CFO Strategy, Board, Legal-Commercial & Enterprise Planning

What that breadth looks like in practice

Six public-facing capability pillars synthesized from the full review

01

Enterprise Strategy, P&L & Performance

Multi-year planning, operating economics, pricing, margin, profitability, resource allocation, performance accountability, and executive decisions made from the ownership seat.

02

FP&A, Modeling & Decision Support

Annual budgets, rolling forecasts, driver-based models, scenarios, KPI architecture, variance analysis, and concise recommendations that turn financial information into action.

03

Treasury, Liquidity, Working Capital & Debt

Cash forecasting, daily liquidity, banking structures, working-capital optimization, debt capacity, credit facilities, covenants, lender relationships, and stress planning.

04

Accounting, Reporting, Controls & Risk

Finance-function buildout, close and reporting, policies, internal controls, audit leadership, forensic reconstruction, payroll and tax oversight, and practical risk management.

05

Capital, Transactions, Investors & Boards

Growth capital, financing alternatives, transaction readiness, diligence, private-equity evaluation, board communication, investor materials, and legal-commercial coordination.

06

Systems, Teams, Automation & Transformation

ERP and finance-system design, integrations, data governance, automation and AI, finance-team building, hiring, training, SOPs, process redesign, and turnaround execution.

Additional operating depth · Construction and project finance · Job cost and WIP · AP and procurement · AR, billing and collections · Inventory · Payroll, tax and compliance

Operating Range

Go wide enough to see the system. Deep enough to change it.

My work has never stayed inside one function. I can move from liquidity, capital structure, and operating economics to contracts, technology architecture, AI workflows, and organizational risk—quickly, and without losing the detail that makes a decision executable.

The common thread is systems thinking: understand the whole, identify the governing constraints, and go deep where the outcome turns.

01

Finance & Capital

Liquidity, FP&A, treasury, financing, margin, transactions, and enterprise economics.

02

Build & Transform

Company formation, scale, turnaround, operating systems, teams, and institutional readiness.

03

Technology & AI

Build-versus-buy decisions, automation, agentic workflows, integration, governance, and adoption.

04

Judgment & Risk

Commercial agreements, outside-counsel coordination, governance, stakeholder alignment, and decisions under uncertainty.

Career

25+ Years of Building

The progression is consistent: build the operating model, create financial visibility, connect the systems, strengthen the economics, and lead through the decisions that follow. The roles changed; the work increasingly expanded across the enterprise.

MAR 2026 — PRESENT

KSIG Advisors

Nationwide · Based Greater Seattle Area

Principal · Fractional CEO/CFO

Independent interim and fractional executive practice providing hands-on CFO leadership nationwide to founder-led, PE-backed, and growth-stage companies navigating leadership gaps, growth, turnaround, capital needs, operational complexity, and ownership transition.

  • Hands-on CFO leadership across FP&A, cash forecasting, reporting, working capital, treasury, capital planning, lender and board readiness, and finance systems
  • Leads exit-readiness and value-creation programs that strengthen financial credibility, reduce owner dependency, improve operating discipline, and prepare companies for transactions or liquidity events
  • Supports PE sponsors and boards with forecast visibility, investment-thesis execution, management accountability, and decision-ready reporting
  • Deploys finance technology, AI-enabled workflows, automation, and data controls where better systems can materially improve speed, accuracy, and enterprise value
  • Selective CEO-level operating support through transformation, transition, turnaround, and ownership preparation

JUN 2025 — JUL 2026

Broadband Development Group LTD

Pacific Northwest · Multi-State

Chief Financial Officer

Multi-state turnkey engineering and construction provider of broadband and fiber infrastructure, supporting federally funded infrastructure programs.

  • Led the company's financial turnaround, moving from a net operating loss to strong net profitability within twelve months
  • Drove substantial revenue growth while meaningfully improving gross margin through pricing discipline and cost restructuring
  • Identified and executed significant expense reductions across multiple cost categories
  • Built the finance function from the ground up: FP&A, accounting, treasury, financial reporting, executive dashboards, 13-week cash forecasting, and liquidity planning
  • Moved management reporting from cash basis toward accrual and strengthened lender-facing reporting and institutional readiness
  • Built and led a multi-bank financing strategy supporting equipment and working-capital needs
  • Experience with financial compliance and reporting for federally funded broadband infrastructure programs, including BEAD-related environments
  • Delivered direct board-level financial analysis and strategic recommendations to ownership

OCT 2023 — PRESENT

BlackBoxx.ai

Independent AI Systems Lab

Principal · AI Systems and Automation Architect

Independent AI Systems Lab building and pressure-testing practical agentic systems, automation, orchestration, and AI integration across real-world business workflows — applied to finance, research, executive decision support, operations, and business-process automation. blackboxx.ai →

  • Built a governed 16-agent operating environment spanning 15 functional domains, two active AI runtimes, explicit communication routes, capability ceilings, and live control testing
  • Evaluates AI-native finance platforms against data integrity, auditability, permissions, workflow fit, integration depth, and decision usefulness
  • Maintains a strategically selected portfolio of 23 Web3 TLDs, all minted on Polygon, including .blackboxx and .moonvault; evaluates programmable namespaces for agent identity, authentication, delegated access, and continuity
  • Researches and assesses emerging technologies—including AI infrastructure, local inference, agent frameworks, digital identity, Web3, and finance systems—against practical operating requirements
  • Diagnoses live-system reliability failures and contributes reproducible evidence to open-source maintainers, with three BlackBoxx-identified improvements merged or shipped upstream

2021 — 2025

Nils Bernard

Greater Seattle & Central WA

Founder · CEO · CFO

Founded and operated a premium custom home building company serving high-end residential markets. Managed complex construction job costing, project-level P&L, WIP accounting, and cash flow across multiple concurrent builds. Board member, Central Washington Home Builders Association.

  • Connected project budgets, procurement, committed costs, job-cost reporting, WIP, billing, and cash requirements across concurrent custom-home projects
  • Led commercial decisions across estimates, contracts, change orders, project margin, vendor commitments, and construction risk

2007 — 2020

Macadam Floor & Design

Greater Seattle Area, WA

Founder · CEO · CFO · Head of Strategy, Innovation & Technology

Founded and built Washington State's premier professional flooring and design company. An industry-leading AEC firm serving the Greater Seattle market's largest and most prestigious builders, including Fortune 500 clients across the Pacific Northwest.

  • Scaled from $0 to $30M ARR with over $200M in cumulative revenue
  • Achieved #2 market position in Washington State within seven years
  • 200+ employees across multiple locations at 50%+ YoY growth
  • Nearly 10,000 homes completed across WA and OR
  • Built and led the accounting, finance, treasury, FP&A, reporting, control, and business-systems infrastructure required to support multi-location scale
  • Raised growth capital; negotiated all lines of credit and financing instruments
  • Managed liquidity, working capital, lender relationships, capacity planning, pricing, procurement economics, and enterprise risk through sustained high growth
  • Negotiated major customer and vendor agreements, managed outside counsel across specialized legal matters, and directly led commercial, contract, and business-risk strategy
  • Evaluated and declined acquisition offers from two PE firms — the company subsequently achieved its highest revenue performance

2000 — 2007

Chase International, Inc.

Portland, OR / Vancouver, WA

Co-Founder · Head of Strategy, Innovation & Technology

Co-founded a flooring and design business that evolved into a national network of independently owned stores organized as a buying group.

  • Evolved the operating business into a national buying-group model serving independently owned stores
  • Secured national contracts with leading U.S. flooring manufacturers and built a private-label product program
  • Developed a multi-state sales-agent network and the commercial infrastructure to support national relationships

1998 — 2000

Nike, Inc.

Beaverton, OR (WHQ)

Manager, Nike Retail Special Orders · Corporate IT Super User

Promoted from NikeTown Portland to Nike World Headquarters at age 22 to create, centralize, and lead Nike Retail Special Orders.

  • Built the national operating model for Special Orders across all U.S. Nike Retail, Outlet, and Employee Stores
  • Designed workflows and systems for sourcing products unavailable through individual stores; trained teams at NikeTown locations and new-store openings
  • Helped develop the program's early internet-based purchasing capability during Nike's transition toward retail e-commerce
  • Served as a Corporate IT “Super User,” translating between IT, developers, business leadership, retail operations, employees, and consumers during new-system implementations

KSIG Advisors

Interim and fractional CFO leadership—nationwide.

I routinely step into interim and fractional CFO engagements across the United States, working directly with owners, CEOs, boards, and private-equity sponsors when the business needs experienced executive finance leadership at a consequential moment.

The mandate may begin with a CFO vacancy, cash pressure, sponsor concern, lender requirement, stalled transaction, systems problem, or the need to professionalize before a liquidity event. I work inside the business to establish financial truth, decision cadence, and accountability—then build durable finance capability that can outlast the engagement.

Institutional-grade financial leadership, delivered with the accessibility and operating judgment of a founder who has carried the P&L.

Visit KSIG Advisors →
NationwideU.S. engagements
Interim + FractionalEmbedded leadership
Founder + SponsorDirect accountability
Build + OperateNot advisory-only
01

Interim & Fractional CFO

Own the finance seat through leadership transition, growth, vacancy, or sponsor-driven change—covering FP&A, reporting, treasury, capital planning, team leadership, and day-to-day executive decisions.

02

Turnaround, Liquidity & Working Capital

Build a 13-week cash view, stabilize liquidity, improve cash conversion, reset cost and pricing decisions, manage lender communication, and create a weekly performance cadence.

03

Exit Readiness & Liquidity Events

Strengthen reporting, normalize earnings, improve EBITDA defensibility, reduce owner dependency, prepare diligence and transaction materials, and ready the business for a sale, recapitalization, or other capital event.

04

PE Sponsor & Board Accountability

Translate the investment thesis into operating metrics, forecast visibility, cash discipline, 100-day priorities, board-ready reporting, clear variance explanations, and management accountability.

05

Value Creation & Valuation Improvement

Improve gross margin, cash conversion, earnings quality, reporting credibility, recurring operating discipline, and management infrastructure—the elements that support stronger and more defensible enterprise value.

06

AI, Technology & Automation Deployment

Select and deploy finance systems, AI-enabled workflows, automation, and data controls with practical attention to permissions, auditability, human review, integration depth, and adoption.

From urgent intervention to durable value creation.

Some assignments begin as a short-term leadership need. Others become a 6–24 month transformation or exit-readiness mandate. The work is scoped around the business outcome—not a fixed package—and can expand or contract as the company stabilizes and internal capability grows.

When I step in

  • The CFO seat is vacant, underpowered, or in transition
  • Liquidity, covenants, working capital, or lender confidence require immediate attention
  • A PE sponsor or board needs clearer execution and accountability
  • The financials are not yet ready for banks, investors, or buyers
  • A transaction or liquidity event is approaching
  • Finance systems and manual workflows have fallen behind the business

What the engagement builds

  • Reliable cash, forecast, margin, and working-capital visibility
  • A management cadence with decision-ready reporting
  • Banking, capital, covenant, and board readiness
  • More durable earnings quality and value-creation discipline
  • A stronger finance team, systems architecture, controls, and SOPs
  • A more transferable company with less owner and key-person dependency
01

Assess

Establish financial truth, immediate risks, decision gaps, and the operating mandate.

02

Stabilize

Protect liquidity, clarify priorities, restore cadence, and address urgent stakeholder needs.

03

Build

Create the team, reporting, systems, controls, automation, and accountability model.

04

Prepare

Ready the business for sustained operation, leadership transition, financing, or transaction.

Discuss an Engagement →

KSIG can coordinate independent legal, tax, accounting, M&A, capital, technology, and operating specialists when the situation requires them. KSIG provides executive and strategic-finance services and does not act as a law firm, accounting firm, investment adviser, broker-dealer, lender, or M&A intermediary.

Technology & AI

Technology has always been part of how I operate.

  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03

01

Nike · Business ↔ Technology

At Nike World Headquarters, I was designated a Corporate Information Technology “Super User,” translating between developers, business leadership, retail operations, employees, and consumers during major system implementations. I built and led Nike Retail Special Orders, centralized the operating model across U.S. Retail, Outlet, and Employee Stores, and helped develop its early internet-based purchasing capability as Nike moved toward retail e-commerce.

02

Founder-Operator · Systems as Operating Leverage

As a founder, CEO, and CFO, technology became part of how I built and scaled companies—not a separate IT function. Across operating businesses, I designed and connected finance, reporting, procurement, job costing, WIP, cash planning, executive dashboards, and operational workflows. Those systems helped support growth from startup to $30M+ ARR, 200+ employees, multiple locations, and more than $200M in cumulative revenue. The objective was always practical: stronger visibility, tighter control, faster decisions, greater capacity, and a business that could scale without losing command of its economics.

03

BlackBoxx.ai · AI Systems and Automation

Through BlackBoxx.ai, I now apply that operating discipline to AI. I architect and pressure-test governed multi-agent environments, agentic workflows, automation, model and application integrations, authority boundaries, validation controls, and human-review checkpoints. The work spans finance, operations, research, legal analysis, executive support, and decision-making. The goal is not maximum automation—it is a better operating system in which routine work moves faster, exceptions surface earlier, consequential decisions remain traceable, and accountability stays with a person.

Nike

Corporate IT Super User

Business ↔ technology translation and early internet commerce.

MIT Sloan

Executive Education

Management · Innovation · Technology · AI

BlackBoxx.ai

AI Systems Lab

Agents · Automation · Orchestration · Integration

Independent AI Systems Lab · Since October 2023

BlackBoxx.ai

Principal | AI Systems and Automation Architect

BlackBoxx.ai is where I build and pressure-test practical AI systems—connecting agents, applications, people, controls, and decisions across real business workflows. The work combines operating-model design with hands-on system architecture, testing, diagnosis, and implementation.

The current environment coordinates 16 specialized agents across 15 functional domains through an orchestrator, with 34 explicit directional communication rules and capability ceilings that block destructive actions outside each agent’s role. Claude Code and Codex operate side by side. Permitted and denied paths are tested live rather than assumed.

I also evaluate AI-native finance platforms through a CFO’s lens—data integrity, auditability, permissions, workflow fit, scenario speed, integration depth, human review, and whether an executive could act on the output without rebuilding it first.

My technology-finance work also includes build-vs-buy analysis, cost-center and internal-recharge design, technology ROI, security and customization tradeoffs, and aligning infrastructure decisions with long-term operating economics.

16Specialized agents across 15 domains
34Explicit directional collaboration routes
6Destructive capability classes denied by default

Conceptual architecture · how an agentic workflow is structured and pressure-tested

  1. 01

    Business Inputs

    Finance, operations, and research inputs entering a defined workflow.

  2. 02

    Specialized Agents

    Task-scoped agents with defined tools and responsibilities.

  3. 03

    Validation & Exceptions

    Checks and tolerances, with judgment routed to a human.

  4. 04

    Executive Decision

    Reporting and decision support delivered to the operator.

Current Work → Technical Architecture → Lab Notes →

Credentials & Recognition

Affiliations

MIT Sloan

Executive Education — Advanced Certificate for Executives (ACE) in Management, Innovation & Technology · In Progress

CMA Candidate

Certified Management Accountant · Becker Professional Education · IMA

Harvard Business Review

Advisory Council — Member

Fast Company

Executive Board — Member

Shadow Ventures

Startup Advisor — AEC Technology & Built Environment

Fiber Broadband Association

AI & ML Working Group · Deployment Specialists · Middle Mile Working Group

CXO 2.0 Award

2024 Business Leadership Excellence Award

Association for Corporate Growth

Seattle Chapter · Member

Association for Financial Professionals

Member

National Small Business Association

Leadership Council · Economic Development Committee

Small Business Technology Council

Member · Leadership Council

American Bar Association

Member · Business Law, Contracts, Governance & Risk

How I Operate

The same leadership pattern, measured four different ways.

Four independently developed behavioral instruments describe different constructs, but their results converge around the same operating pattern: strong drive to influence outcomes, fast action, comfort with change and ambiguity, competitive ambition, high independence, persuasive energy, and a protective, people-building component.

The counterweight matters. Extreme drive can compress listening time, outrun detail, or feel overpowering. My strongest operating model pairs speed and accountability with deliberate dissent, capable specialists, strong systems, and verifiable data.

View DiSC Workplace Profile →

Everything DiSC Workplace

Di · Strongly Inclined

Near outer edge

Strength of signal: The dot sits near the outer edge at the D/i boundary—the model's strongest inclination band. That means the Di tendencies are especially pronounced; it is an intensity indicator, not a percentile or a “better than” score.

What it means: Bold, direct, fast-moving, persuasive, opportunity-seeking leadership. Action, Results, and Enthusiasm are expected Di priorities; Challenge is an additional priority the report specifically identifies as unusual for the Di style.

Predictive Index

Captain · Extremely Wide

A > +2σ · C < −2σ

Strength of signal: Captain is one of 17 reference profiles, not a rank. The important intensity signal is that PI calls the full pattern “extremely wide.” The chart places Independence/Dominance above +2 standard deviations and fast pace/low Patience below −2—positions more extreme than roughly 95% of the norm sample on those drives.

What it means: A big-picture problem solver who wants ownership, change, variety, and rapid results; highly independent, forceful in overcoming obstacles, comfortable with risk, and able to make decisions and accept responsibility under pressure.

ADVanced Insights

Natural D · 99 / 100

Very high · Near ceiling

Strength of signal: A 99 is near the ceiling of this instrument's Decisiveness scale, and the report explicitly classifies it as “very high.” It is not a claim of 99th-percentile leadership effectiveness; it measures the strength of the behavioral preference.

What it means: Very fast, assertive problem solving in new or unprecedented situations; command, urgency, self-starting, directness, and willingness to accept risk. An Adaptive D of 63 shows meaningful moderation of that natural intensity when the environment calls for it.

What drives it: Economic 92 and Political 80 are both classified “very high,” indicating exceptional motivation for practical return, bottom-line results, influence, ownership, and control of outcomes. Theoretical 61 is “high,” adding a strong drive to learn, understand systems, and build knowledge that can be put to work.

Enneagram Institute RHETI

Type 8 · 28

8-point lead

Strength of signal: The 144-question RHETI profiles all nine types. Official guidance says a 3–4 point lead usually makes the primary type clear; Type 8 scored 28 versus 20 for Type 3—twice that separation. This is a strong, unambiguous primary-type signal, not a population percentile.

What 8 / 3 / 2 means: A dominant Challenger, followed by Achiever and Helper themes—not three equal types. Eight supplies independence, courage, decisiveness, and protection; Three adds ambition, adaptability, and execution; Two adds generosity, mentoring, and investment in people.

Intensity, not superiority These instruments describe how strongly behavioral preferences are expressed. They do not measure intelligence, financial competence, ethics, or guaranteed performance. Career scale, operating outcomes, and specific work remain the evidence of capability.

These are interpretive summaries of third-party-developed instruments, not certifications, performance ratings, or employment-selection conclusions.

Education

Academic Foundation

MIT Sloan Executive Education

Advanced Certificate for Executives (ACE) · Management, Innovation & Technology

In Progress

CMA Candidate

Institute of Management Accountants · Becker Professional Education

In Progress

University of Washington

Finance & Business Management Coursework

University of Oregon

Lundquist College of Business · Business Administration & Management Coursework · 1993–1997

Where I Come From

"The people who build lasting things do it through will, over time, with no guarantee of an easy path."

My story starts before I was born. My father, Siegmar Karl Ohlemann, escaped East Germany at 14 — separated from his parents and brother, crossing into the West with nothing. He made his way to Canada, became the fastest 800 meter runner in North America, won Silver at the Pan American Games, and carried Canada's closing ceremony flag at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

He trained under Bill Bowerman at the University of Oregon alongside a young Phil Knight, and remained a lifelong friend of both men. He's named in Bowerman and the Men of Oregon — the book that documents the founding of Nike.

My grandfather on my mother's side, Nils Bernard Hult, was a businessman and philanthropist whose impact was permanent enough that the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon carries his name today.

I grew up inside two legacies: a man who built everything from nothing across three countries, and a man who built something that outlasted him. That combination shapes how I think about building businesses.

Married to Stacey for over 28 years. Three daughters. A miniature goldendoodle named Rover. We renovated a circa 1888 home in Roslyn, Washington — one of the most unique small towns in the Pacific Northwest — where we are proud full-time residents.

Let's talk.

I'm currently open to the right full-time CFO or senior executive finance opportunity, fractional CEO/CFO engagements, and select strategic advisory roles.

If you're looking for an experienced operator who can connect finance, strategy, operations, technology, and execution, I'm always open to the right conversation.

View CFO Résumé → View DiSC Workplace Profile →
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LinkedIn karl.ohlemann@outlook.com (425) 575-8833 ksigadvisors.com