Team spirit

‘For us being Argentinian, he’s a really good role model because he got to where he is while protecting his family and continuing to be humble,’ Sosa says. ‘It’s difficult to get to where he is that way.’ And just as Messi sets an example, so does she to her team of 17 finance professionals working for the sportswear brand in Bogota.

‘I try to use myself as an example,’ she explains. ‘When I say we need to be a good business partner, it’s because I’m doing it as well. They see me working closely within different areas of the company. Leading by example is really important.’

Globetrotter

Sosa’s career to date is quite the travelogue. After university in Argentina, she worked in consultancy, then internal audit for Banco Empresario de Tucuman. Then came a spell in audit for a member of the BDO alliance before a move to Cyprus, following her husband (also an FD), to work in consultancy again. It was during her three years on the Mediterranean island that Sosa took and passed her ACCA qualification.

Her husband then took a job in Bogota, so Sosa went too, this time working as a freelance advisor on cash management and IFRS compliance before becoming head of finance and administration for IT company Softline. She was there for four years before moving to media giant Discovery as FD overseeing finance for a huge swathe of Latin America. After the company merged with Warner Bros, another film and TV behemoth, she pitched up at Adidas, where she has become a first-team fixture.

The company is performing well in Colombia,  selling through around 100 stores. In addition to her day job, Sosa also finds time to teach accounting and finance at universities in the region.

People-centred

While in Colombia, she has also managed to add to the family squad with a girl, now 12, and a boy of nine. Adidas is ‘very people-orientated’, a good place to be an FD with a family life.

Naturally this is important for Sosa, not just personally, but also for other women in the Adidas team. Ensuring female colleagues receive the time they need to deal with family matters is critical, because that’s what she needs too, she says. ‘We don’t want to lose the perspective of women being mothers and wanting to be successful professionals.’

It’s all part of being a team-orientated culture in an organisation utterly focused on sports participation. Even when Sosa hosts a team townhall off-site, all gatherings kick off with sports.

‘It’s not that we are experts,’ says Sosa, who is a keen amateur tennis player and gym-goer. ‘But it tells everyone that anyone can practise any sport. ‘None of us are going to be Messi. We want to have fun together and that is the way we try to build a culture here at Adidas: everything is team play. It’s not just a motto – we practise. We work a lot based on teams and cross-functional teams building together and making agreements together.’

Doubles

Team play integrates neatly with Sosa’s approach that finance must be a partner in the business. She has direct-report financial controllers based in functional departments, such as retail. Having controllers out on the pitch, as it were, is not about ‘policing’ the company, she stresses. Finance, she says, must be an enabler, not a blocker. That places communications skills at the heart of the finance process.

She says that partnering means you need to learn to influence others, generating trust in you as a partner and then building together. ‘I encourage my team not to say no, but instead to say “let’s find together the best way to do it”,’ she adds.

Finance members must pursue a diplomatic route, encouraging growth while maintaining integrity. ‘Build something that is going to work for both sides,’ she declares.

It’s the same for Sosa herself. ‘A key role is that the finance director should be the right hand of the CEO in any company, especially when you are growing sustainably. And that is the way we grow. The way we grow is not short term, it is more mid- and longer-term decisions that we are making – and making together.’

Tech and talent

The main risks she currently faces are less to do with business performance than with the underpinnings. Finance needs to engage with artificial intelligence and it needs to manage talent retention. On the tech front, she says finance is ‘behind’ the broader company and its use of AI. ‘The business is capitalising much more, and we need to catch up in order to truly be a business partner.’

And then there is talent. Holding on to good people has become harder. Values have shifted among young people, with many seeking the training and knowledge of finance in a large company to then take into their own entrepreneurial projects. She says the company is working on helping finance staff ‘understand and see how they can develop their careers’.

‘For us, it was, “This is amazing and I’m thinking about being CFO.” Many are not thinking like that now. It’s a more entrepreneurial way of thinking.’

And that links directly to the way Sosa views success. She keeps a personal ledger, not of promotions, bonuses or job titles, but of the people she has supported. The score is impressive: she has so far helped 4,080 through teaching or mentoring in finance departments.

‘That is the way I measure my success,’ she says. ‘If I am able to change the life of someone for good, then I am successful.

‘I love walking in the street and someone coming up to me and saying, “Oh, Claudia, you were my teacher. Thank you. You don’t know how much you helped me.”’