John Tunison - Finance Executive
About John
I'm a CFO who has spent the past two decades scaling, transforming, and exiting companies — most often for PE sponsors, sometimes for VC backers, and sometimes as a public-company CFO. The companies have ranged from pre-revenue to $2B+; the situations have ranged from stable platforms to distressed turnarounds; the geographies have spanned three countries I've lived in and over a dozen I've worked in.
The work I do best sits at the intersection of three things: rigorous capital and operational discipline, honest partnership with CEOs and boards, and execution under pressure. I tend to do my best work in companies where the strategic agenda is reasonably well understood internally but unexecuted — bringing the sequencing, resource allocation, ownership clarity, and follow-through that converts diagnosis into measurable outcome.
A few things I bring to every engagement:
-
Repeatable exit experience. I've led two PE sponsor exits end-to-end ($600M+ combined) — one to a public strategic, one cross-border to a Korean conglomerate. I know what makes deals close and what makes them die.
-
Capital structure fluency. I've led debt refinancings, public equity raises, OTC commodity hedging programs, and multi-tranche distressed recapitalizations. Public market experience across NASDAQ and LSE AIM.
-
Talent development. Eleven of the people I've hired or developed are now CEOs, CFOs, partners at McKinsey or Boyden, or senior executives at companies like Shell. That track record matters more to me than most things on my resume.
-
Generalist depth. Before finance, I was a U.S. Navy submarine officer aboard USS Parche — the most highly decorated submarine in U.S. Navy history. The training in crisis decision-making, systems thinking, and operating under classified ambiguity has carried into every CFO role I've held.
A Bit More Personally
I studied German, Political Science, Nuclear Engineering, Business, Finance and Spanish — in that approximate order. I was a foreign exchange student twice. My hobbies are fishing, skiing, ancient history, photography, music, travel, technology, off-roading, and spending time with my wife and kids.
People who know me well describe me as honest, reliable, even-keeled, and curious — the kind of person who gets things done while delegating well, who is comfortable saying "I don't know" when warranted, and who works hard but stays balanced.