Agile Bottom Line: The Spreadsheet Stories Episode #1

We’re kicking off Season 11 of Our Agile Tales with an eye-opening conversation with Nevine White, Senior VP of Finance at Greater Technology Together and a member of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table. Nevine has spent nearly two decades guiding organizations through the shift from rigid annual budgets to adaptive, rolling financial frameworks that enable true business agility.

In this episode, Nevine shares how her journey began in the telecom industry when a bold CFO literally tossed out the company’s annual budget, sparking a search for a better way. That search led to adopting rolling forecasts and experimenting quarter by quarter - breaking and remaking processes along the way - to create a more nimble, data-driven, and responsive organization.

In this first episode you will hear Nevine's candid stories about the messiness of transformation:

• What it felt like to see six months of budget work thrown in the trash.
• Why annual budgets—rooted in 1920s manufacturing—no longer fit today’s fast-paced business environment.
• How rolling forecasts differ from “mini-budgets” and why many companies get them wrong.
• The cultural and change management challenges that arise when finance stops dictating numbers and starts empowering managers to decide in real time.
• How aligning finance with agile IT practices unlocked a “spiral of goodness” across the organization.

Nevine's insights highlight that there’s no one-size-fits-all playbook for financial agility. Instead, transformation requires experimentation, iteration, and courage to question the sacred cows of yearly budgets. Her experiences demonstrate how finance - often seen as the last function to change - can become a catalyst for business agility, resilience, and innovation.

About Nevine White:
Beginning her 35-year career in telecom engineering, Nevine moved on to leading the FP&A function for TW Telecom for two decades. There she championed powerful changes in financial planning that enabled an agile and effective management structure by eliminating traditional budgets. After the sale of the company, Nevine continued this work with Live Future Ready, leveraging her experience to support organizations in their financial transformation efforts across various industries. In 2019, Nevine joined Hargray Communications Group as the VP Accounting, before taking on building the Finance and Administrative functions for a broadband start-up. She is currently the Senior Vice President of Finance at Greater Technology Together, a leading network and security as a service firm. 

Recognized for her experience in finance agility and building effective teams, she has been featured at conferences and on podcasts, and enjoys sharing her learnings and experiences with all who are seeking to meaningfully change and enable their teams. 

You can follow Nevine on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nevinewhite/

Podcast music courtesy of www.purple-planet.com

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