About Global CFO Solutions

We have sat in the chair you are trying to fill

Global CFO Solutions is a founder-led CFO practice built on three decades of operating experience, not on a methodology deck. We embed inside your business, take responsibility for the numbers, and stay until the thing we were brought in to fix is actually fixed.

Why we exist

Most founders we meet are not short of advice. They are short of someone who will do the work.

The advisory market is crowded with firms that will diagnose your finance function, hand you a report, and invoice you. Meanwhile the model still does not tie out, the close still takes a fortnight, and the investor who asked for cohort economics is still waiting.

We built Global CFO Solutions to work the other way around. We take the CFO seat. We are in your leadership meetings, in your model, in your data room, and in front of your board. When the raise is on, we run it. When the close is broken, we rebuild it. When the books will not survive diligence, we clean them up, and then we make sure they stay clean.

$40M+Equity raised 10xEBITDA sale $1B+/yrReconciliation automated 70Person practice built

The reason we can do that is range. Very few advisors have done both the boardroom half of that list and the trenches half of it. The founders we work with tend to need both in the same week.

Founders reviewing financial projections in a meeting room

Four things that are actually different

We embed. We do not advise from outside.

We join your leadership team as its finance leader, with the same accountability a full-time CFO would carry. That means owning outcomes, not deliverables, and being reachable when something breaks on a Tuesday night before a board meeting.

Boardroom and trenches, from the same person.

Structuring a capital raise with institutional investors on Monday and rebuilding a stalled ERP implementation or redesigning a customer-service workflow on Wednesday. Strategy that has never met an operating constraint is just an opinion.

AI is built in, not bolted on.

We do not run an automation practice on the side. Every engagement asks the same question, which of these hours should a machine be doing? Automating a billion dollars a year of reconciliation taught us the difference between automation that scales a business and automation that just moves the bottleneck.

We are genuinely cross-border.

Eighteen years operating internationally, with bases in Chicago, Cape Town and Nairobi. We have raised capital for emerging-market companies from developed-market investors, built compliance infrastructure across jurisdictions, and run remote finance teams across five countries. We know where a cross-border business actually breaks.

How an engagement runs

No long discovery phase, no army of juniors, no surprises on the invoice.

01

Listen

A free hour. Your business, your five-year ambition, and what is standing in the way. We ask hard questions early, since the expensive mistakes come from the ones nobody asked.

02

Diagnose

A short, structured look at your finance function: books, model, reporting, controls, systems and capital position. You get a ranked list of what is strong, what will break, and what to fix first.

03

Scope

We propose the smallest engagement that solves the real problem: fractional, project or advisory. Deliverables, timeline and fees agreed in writing before anything starts.

04

Embed

We take the seat and do the work, inside your team, your systems and your board pack. You get a CFO, not a consultant with a status update.

05

Hand over

Every engagement leaves something behind: a model your team can run, a close they can execute, dashboards they will actually open. Success is you needing us less.

Cary J. Berman, founder of Global CFO Solutions and fractional CFO
Cary J. Berman
Founder, Global CFO Solutions

Meet Cary Berman, Founder

Helping entrepreneurs build a finance function that gives them the creative space to do what they are best at.

I have been a CFO more times than I can casually mention at a dinner party, and I started out as a founder. I raised $2M in debt and equity and scaled a business to eighty-plus locations across six business units, which is where I learned what it feels like to sign the front of a payroll cheque rather than the back of one.

JumpStartCFO-in-Residence, since 2025 Berman Consulting GroupFounder, since 2014 CFO Centre USAPortfolio CFO, 2023 to 2025 Venture Garden GroupGlobal CFO, 2021 to 2023 SMART Payment PlanCFO·COO·CPO, 2014 to 2022

Since then I have been CFO, COO and CPO across FinTech, HealthTech, SaaS and payments. I have raised more than $40M in equity across twenty-plus campaigns, closed five buy-side and sell-side transactions, and run finance and operations for businesses processing over $1B a year. I led a public company from bankruptcy to a NASDAQ listing. I co-authored the CIM that sold a B2B SaaS business at 10x EBITDA. And I built a seventy-person pan-African consulting practice starting with an empty room.

What founders tend to hire me for is the range. I am as comfortable structuring a convertible with an institutional investor as I am sitting with a customer-service team redesigning how they handle a complaint, and in a growing company those two things are usually the same problem wearing different clothes.

Today I serve as JumpStart's first CFO-in-Residence, providing embedded finance leadership across its HealthTech and SaaS portfolio, and I hold fractional and interim CFO seats for venture-backed and emerging-market growth companies. I have previously been a Portfolio CFO with The CFO Centre USA and Global CFO of Venture Garden Group / Vibranium Partners.

The international thread is not a line on a resume, it is most of my adult working life. Eighteen-plus years across the U.S., Africa and Asia. I am a member of the Nairobi Angel Network, I mentor female entrepreneurs and finance professionals in Kenya, and I have swung a hammer on Habitat for Humanity builds in Cape Town. I split my time between Chicago, Cape Town and Nairobi, and I work with clients globally.

I hold a B.A. in Economics and Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an MBA in Finance, Marketing and Entrepreneurship from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, and executive education in FinTech Transformation and Strategy from The Wharton School.

19 yrsFinTech & Payments
16 yrsHealthTech
13 yrsSaaS / BaaS
18 yrsInternational
17 yrsVenture & Private Equity

Overlapping domain depth across a thirty-year career.

Three bases, one practice

Chicago, Cape Town and Nairobi, chosen because that is where the work is, not because they look good on a map. Our engagement history spans the United States, Africa and Asia; today our focus markets are the United States, East Africa and Southern Africa, with a Latin America practice we are actively building. We run engagements the way we have run global teams for years: remote-first, time-zone aware, and physically present when presence is what the moment requires.

Beyond the engagements

  • Nairobi Angel Network, member of the collaborative investing platform supporting the East African startup ecosystem.
  • Mentor to female entrepreneurs and finance professionals in Kenya.
  • Habitat for Humanity / Global Village, builds in Cape Town, South Africa (2015, 2017).
  • MBA, Finance, Marketing & Entrepreneurship, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business.
  • B.A., Economics & Statistics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
  • Executive Education, FinTech Transformation & Strategy, The Wharton School.

What clients say

A few notes from people Cary has worked directly with, there are more where these came from.

"I worked directly with Cary, and he was a great partner throughout our engagement. He helped us build our financial model, was always flexible and available when needed, and consistently brought strategic insight to the business. He also contributed thoughtful ideas around additional monetization opportunities, which added real value beyond the core financial work. Cary was professional, sharp, and easy to work with. I'd highly recommend him."

Matthew Kovelan Co-Founder • CEO • Strategy & AI Lead, Tappi April 17, 2026

"Cary is much more than a traditional CFO. What sets him apart is his ability to bring absolute clarity to complex data. He doesn't just build great financial models; he challenges them. He digs into the assumptions to ensure they hold up under pressure, ensuring the business isn't just looking at numbers, but at a viable path forward. If you want a financial leader who acts as a true strategic partner, Cary is the best in the business."

Rose Wughanga CEO & Founder, VycePay March 21, 2026

"I've had the chance to see firsthand how Cary shows up for organizations, and what stands out most is his ability to bring clarity and discipline to complex financial situations without losing sight of the bigger picture. As a financial advisor and fractional CFO, he doesn't just manage numbers, he helps companies build the habits and systems that drive long-term success."

David Sokoll Regional Food System Wizard March 17, 2026

"I've had the pleasure of working with Cary and have seen firsthand the value he brings as a financial advisor and fractional CFO. He combines strong financial discipline with strategic insight, helping companies build clearer financial structures and make better long-term decisions."

Abigail Sackey Co-Founder & CEO, Sackan Farms March 16, 2026

"Having worked with Cary Berman for 4 years, I witnessed firsthand his exceptional financial leadership during his tenure as our CFO, skillfully navigating the complex financial world of unemployment insurance solutions. His work ethic and attention to detail is unmatched."

Getulio Cruz Co-founder and CPO, Blue Rook October 24, 2023

The stack we build on

We are not tied to any vendor. We recommend the stack your business can actually operate.

ERP & Accounting

NetSuiteSage IntacctQuickBooksMicrosoft DynamicsOracleXeroDeltek

Business Intelligence

Power BITableauMetabase

CRM & Finance Ops

SalesforceHubSpotRampBill.comADP

The first hour is free. So is the honesty

Tell us where you want the business to be in five years and we will tell you, plainly, what your finance function needs to become to get there.

Book a free 1-hour consultation