Cfo Thought Leader

Of all the CFO career routes that our finance leader guests have shared with us, very few have have rendered a path as circuitous as the one blazed by Joan Hilson, CFO of Signet Jewelers Limited, the world’s largest specialty jewelry company. When Hilson assumed the CFO role at gem giant Signet in 2019, she was entering a business that had charted several evolutionary chapters—including an early one that she knew only too well. Back in the mid-1980s, Hilson had left public accounting to become controller of a 100-store chain of jewelry stores known as Sterling Jewelers. The regional chain would soon thereafter complete an IPO that put it on a path to grow to more than 1,000 stores, a feat that it would accomplish in part through the acquisition of several chains, including Kay Jewelers. Later, the business would be rebranded as the Signet Group. In 1992, when Hilson left the jewelry retailer to accept a vice president of finance position with Limited Brands, she had no clue that her career would eventually le