If you are holding your finance function together through follow-ups and workarounds, or you keep solving the same problem and it keeps coming back, it helps to know who you would be working with, and what changes when you do. Charlise Manuel Papusseco believes some of the hardest finance problems are not purely finance problems. They are also problems of leadership, ownership, communication, and how people work together, and they show up in the numbers last. She learned this over more than 15 years leading finance functions, much of it in nonprofit and charter school organizations, where finance cannot operate in isolation. It has to connect with programs, people, and priorities that are constantly shifting. She saw that strong finance teams need more than sound accounting and good processes. They need people who exercise judgment, create accountability, communicate clearly, and help others do their best work. The professionals she hired directly stayed, grew into greater responsibility, and, in several cases, went on to lead teams of their own. She has also lived the long hours finance roles can normalize, and she came away convinced that strong performance should not depend on overwork. Work with Charlise and you get a partner who starts by understanding what is actually happening before recommending what should change, then stays close enough to the work to help you carry it through. People who have worked with her know her for staying calm in complex situations, teaching clearly, and asking the questions that surface what is really going on. She is also the founder of PayablesCentral, a separate company focused on bringing greater visibility and control to accounts payable operations, and a graduate of Cornell University, where she studied Economics and Law & Society. Outside of work, one of Charlise's favorite facts to share is that she has a twin brother, which usually prompts the same three questions: "Are you close?" "Who's older?" and, her favorite, "Are you identical?"