Cfo Thought Leader

Not unlike that of many of his CFO peers, Derrek Gafford’s career path has been shaped in part by geography—specifically, by having its origins in a city that was at once home to a state college, the corporate headquarters of a marquee company, and a Big Four accounting office populated with new college grads.In Gafford’s case, the city was Boise; the college, Boise State; the marquee company, grocery giant Albertsons; and the Big Four accounting house, Deloitte.“I had worked my way through Boise State in an Albertsons grocery store, which actually paid for a lot of my education,” explains Gafford, who upon graduating with an accounting degree would end up nabbing a job with Deloitte’s Boise office.“Originally, the only job that I had ever really wanted was to work in finance at Albertsons,” he continues, “and guess what company became the first account that Deloitte assigned me to?”After about 2 years with Deloitte, Gafford joined Albertsons’ internal audit staff, from which he eventually advanced to oversee