Paul BarnhurstFP&A Expert Empowering Finance Professionals to Excel Everday

Skills transfer further than titles.

2 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, the speaker explains how a Stanford chemical engineering graduate transitioned into a career as a fractional CFO. While at Stanford, they worked on a research project with a professor focused on building new cities in the Middle East, specifically analyzing special economic zones and compiling a global database of such developments. This exposure served as their entry point into project finance, leading to a two‑decade trajectory in finance without ever practicing chemical engineering professionally. The speaker reflects that their engineering background still informs their approach to evaluating companies, especially in understanding scientific aspects and technical risks, such as avoiding costly chemical mishaps in industrial operations.

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You studied chemical engineering at Stanford. How does a chem-e end up in Fractional CFO Services? I ended up doing some research work while I was at Stanford on project finance. There was a professor I was working with at the time, really interesting guy who's doing work on building cities from scratch in the Middle East. Was the first project I did with him was looking at special economic zones around the world, how these cities were being built and creating a database of all the different countries in the world and the cities that they were doing that. So that was my introduction to the world of finance and it led led to, you know, one finance thing after another. And here I am, not ever having done any chemical engineering in my career, 20 or so years later. I do like to think that the engineering background helps me to think about companies, gives me a better understanding of the science that they're working on a lot of the time. And sometimes that does have implications for the finance too. I mean, you don't want to buy the wrong chemical, then have your plant explode.