Joanna Weiss was named CFO of Tampa, Fla.-based Moffitt Cancer Center in May, but her time with the system dates back much further.
Ms. Weiss joined Moffitt in 2006 as the director of internal audit and held several leadership positions within the finance department — most recently as senior vice president of finance — before being appointed to the CFO role. That long experience with the system has benefitted her in multiple ways, she told Becker's.
"When I started at Moffitt, I started in internal audit, so I used to audit processes, so I have always understood how things have worked at Moffitt and that understanding has really benefited me in thinking how those operations translate to financials," she told Becker's. "I would also say that Moffitt's culture is really special. We're a very relational organization. And when you've been somewhere for 18 years and you have a long tenure of team members like we do, you know who to go to, who you're working with. They know you. We know what is important to each other."
Those long-term relationships have served as an important support as she has grappled with the "burden and weight of the role." As CFO, she is the backstop, and the decisions she makes have real consequences on people's lives. Her long-tenured team has assisted her through those difficult decisions.
"They're really good; they help me through things," she said. "They're not as emotionally connected to things as I am because they're not the backstop. So they're able to say 'Ok, well, here are the pros and cons of that,' and evaluating things together is how I have been able to really manage that."
Cultivating relationships continues to be a focus in her role as CFO.
"The one area of folks that I haven't had as much exposure to is our physicians, our faculty, our researchers, so I really made it a priority to get to know them, to understand what it's like living in their shoes."
Ms. Weiss said she is a student of leadership and is always reading a book or listening to a podcast on the subject. One lesson she has learned over the years is the importance of getting to know the person below the surface.
"There's always something deeper to them and if you can understand what that is and connect with them, you'll have a much better way to influence them and for you to know them and come to a consensus easier," she said. "People are at the heart of what we do and being able to know them makes for a much more fun environment, but also a much more productive one."