INTERIM, PROJECT AND FRACTIONAL STRATEGIC FINANCE AND FP&A LEADERSHIP
Financial Clarity you can act on.
I help CEOs, CFOs and Boards replace guesswork with a forecast they trust focused on driver-based planning, honest scenarios, and reporting that answers the questions before they’re asked. Twenty years of Fortune 500 enterprise FP&A available when you need it.
NYC Metro
Miami
Remote
Currently accepting new engagements
Decision-Ready Financial Leadership • Board-Level Clarity • Defensible EBITDA & Cash • Early Identification of Risk • Strategic Flexibility • Decision-Ready Financial Leadership • Board-Level Clarity • Defensible EBITDA & Cash • Early Identification of Risk • Strategic Flexibility •
Decision-Ready Financial Leadership • Board-Level Clarity • Defensible EBITDA & Cash • Early Identification of Risk • Strategic Flexibility • Decision-Ready Financial Leadership • Board-Level Clarity • Defensible EBITDA & Cash • Early Identification of Risk • Strategic Flexibility •
AT A GLANCE…
Ruby Road was not built in a day.
Twenty years building judgement and credibility.
Hundreds of board presentations, forecasts and strategic plans.
Thousands of executive decisions supported.
You benefit
DAY ONE
20+ years
Corporate FP&A at Paramount Global and Viacom
CEO
CFO
BOD
Directly supported earnings prep, Board packs and Investor Relations.
$5B+ Enterprise Planning
Led budgeting, forecasting, and long-range planning across $5 billion in business at a global Fortune 500 company.
15 years
Nonprofit Treasurer and Executive Trustee: stewardship in practice
Hedi Hruby
Principal, Ruby Road Consulting
Former Sr Director, Corporate FP&A Paramount Global / Viacom
NYU Stern MBA Finance
Booth - Prospective CFOs
Yale - Women on Boards
“I tell you not only what the numbers say, but what they mean, what might be missing, and what decisions actually need to be made.”
Hedi Hruby, Principal, Ruby Road Consulting
IS THIS YOU?
You don't have a data problem. You have a decision problem.
Most leadership teams I meet aren't short on spreadsheets. They're short on a version of the numbers everyone believes. These are the moments people call me.
“Every forecast we produce is wrong within a month.”
Your plan is built on last year plus a percentage, not on the operational drivers that actually move the business. So it can't flex when reality does.
“Two teams give the Board two different numbers.”
Finance and operations are working from separate sources. Meetings get spent reconciling rather than deciding.
“We can't see far enough down the cash runway.”
No rolling 13-week view, so liquidity decisions are made late, under pressure, with less optionality than you had a month ago.
“Our Board pack raises more questions than it answers.”
Forty slides of output and no narrative. Directors are auditing the deck instead of engaging with the strategy.
“We're heading into diligence and I'm not confident.”
Raising, selling or refinancing with a model and a quality-of-earnings story that haven't been stress-tested by anyone outside the building.
“We need FP&A leadership, not a full-time hire.”
The work is real but it isn't a headcount yet. Or your FP&A lead just left and the close, the budget and the Board meeting didn't move.
WHAT I DO
Finance that functions as a decision engine.
Three connected areas of work. Most engagements start in one and pull the others along as the picture gets clearer.
01
Plan & Forecast
Build a forecast the business recognizes and leadership will defend, grounded in drivers, not in last year's file.
Driver-based forecasting
Budgeting & annual planning
Long-range planning (3–5 year)
Scenario & decision modeling
Cash flow & liquidity forecasting
02
Measure & Decide
Turn performance data into a small number of metrics that actually change what the leadership team does next.
Performance metrics & KPI design
ROI & profitability analysis
Quality of earnings
Resource allocation & trade-offs
Business case development
03
Report & Withstand Scrutiny
Reporting built for the audience that matters most, namely Boards, investors, lenders and acquirers.
Management & Board reporting
Investor and earnings support
Valuation: operating, start-up, exit
Operating model design
Finance transformation & process design
WHERE TO START
Three defined ways in.
Fixed scope, fixed timeline, a named deliverable at the end. If none of these fit, we'll shape something that does.
START HERE IF YOU ARE UNSURE
Forecast Confidence Assessment
An outside read on whether your planning process can be trusted, and exactly where it breaks.
Timeline
4 - 6 Weeks
YOU END UP WITH
A written diagnostic of your forecast process, inputs and owners
Accuracy look-back: where forecasts missed and why
Ranked list of fixes by effort and impact
90-day remediation roadmap
START HERE IF THE FORACAST IS THE PROBLEM
Rolling Forecast Rebuild
Replace the static annual budget with a driver-based rolling forecast your operators help build and therefore believe.
Timeline
8 - 12 Weeks
YOU END UP WITH
Driver-based model, documented and handed over
Rolling forecast cadence with clear owners
Scenario layer for real risks and upsides
13-week cash visibility
Training so your team runs it without me
START HERE IF THE BOARD REPORTING IS THE PROBLEM
Board-Ready Reporting Framework
A reporting pack that gives directors the story, the risks and the decisions, not forty slides of output.
Timeline
6 - 8 Weeks
YOU END UP WITH
KPI set tied to strategy, with definitions agreed
Board pack template and executive dashboard
Narrative structure for financial commentary
Anticipated-questions prep for the CEO and CFO
SELECTED WORK
Recent Engagements
Client names withheld. Happy to talk through any of these in detail on a call.
SAAS FP&A TRANSFORMATION
FP&A transformation for a high-growth software business
$200M revenue
scaling fast
fragmented data
TTHE SITUATION
Financial and operational data lived in separate systems and separate versions of the truth. Every executive question triggered a reconciliation exercise before anyone could answer it.
TWHAT RUBY ROAD DELIVERED
Built a centralized reporting framework that unified financial and operational data into a single source of truth and then layered driver-based forecasting and executive dashboards on top of it.
TRESULTS
Executive dashboards, driver-based forecasting, Board reporting and 13-week cash visibility, all running off one agreed set of numbers.
Partnered with
Chief Financial Officer
MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT
Five-year operating plan for an independent film company
Market expansion
Difficult distribution landscape
TTHE SITUATION
The company wanted to scale into an expanded market launch, but the distribution environment was deteriorating and the financial case hadn't been tested against it.
TWHAT RUBY ROAD DELIVERED
Advised on financial strategy and operational scaling, and built a five-year annual operating plan that held up against a realistic view of the distribution market.
TRESULTS
Leadership went into the expansion with a plan that priced in the downside rather than assuming it away.
Partnered with
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
NONPROFIT
$12M capital expansion under cost pressure
Construction program
Tariff-driven material inflation
TTHE SITUATION
A religious nonprofit was mid-way through a $12 million capital expansion as material costs rose sharply on the back of tariffs.
TWHAT RUBY ROAD DELIVERED
Ran financial tracking and construction budgeting alongside the Treasurer and Board and supported the donor-facing side of the program.
TRESULTS
The expansion progressed responsibly despite cost escalation, with the Board able to see and govern the exposure as it moved.
Partnered with
BOARD OF DIRECTORS & TREASURER
ABOUT HEDI
Twenty years at the center of business.
For over two decades at Paramount Global and Viacom, I worked in corporate FP&A supporting the CEO, CFO, Board and Investor Relations. My work shaped how the company understood performance, planned for the future, and communicated with the market.
What I'm known for, and what I value most, is helping the C-suite ask better questions. That usually means stress-testing strategic thinking, challenging assumptions, and creating space for an honest understanding of what is actually happening.
Alongside the corporate work, I've spent fourteen years in nonprofit financial leadership as Executive Trustee and Treasurer, which is where I learned what stewardship and accountability feel like when it's your community's money.
I founded Ruby Road Consulting in 2025 to keep doing that work, for leadership teams who want a finance partner rather than a report.
2025 -
Principal, Ruby Road Consulting
Fractional, interim and project FP&A leadership
2003 - 2024
Senior Director, Corporate Financial Planning
Paramount Global, ViacomCBS and Viacom; Content Licensing, Media Networks, Filmed Entertainment, EPIX
2001 - 2003
Manager, Corporate Strategy
Showtime strategic initiatives, operational assessment, M&A
2012 -
Executive Trustee & Treasurer
Kane Street Synagogue, Brooklyn, built operating reserve in excess of $1M
2023
Outstanding Citizen Citation
New York City Council, for community and nonprofit service
MBA
NYU Stern School of Business
Finance and Marketing · BA Brandeis University
EXEC
Chicago Booth — Executive Program for Prospective CFOsds (2021)
Yale SOM — Women on Boards (2019)
AI
AI for Finance Specialization
Scenario analysis, machine learning foundations, AI-enhanced financial analysis
HOW IT WORKS
We start with a conversation.
01
A 30-minute call
You describe what's breaking. I tell you plainly whether I'm the right person, and what I'd look at first. No pitch deck.
02
Determine scope
Objective, deliverables, timeline and fee before any work starts. Fixed fee wherever the scope allows.
03
Work, then handover
I work alongside your team in your tools. Everything is documented so your people own it when I step out.
Project
A defined outcome with a start and an end, a rebuild, a Board framework, a diligence-ready model.
Fractional
Ongoing senior FP&A capacity a few days a month. Executive judgment without the executive headcount.
Intirim
Cover a vacancy or a leave without losing the close, the budget cycle or the Board calendar.
COMMON QUESTIONS
The things people ask first.
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You get twenty years of enterprise-level judgment for the specific stretch of work that needs it, without adding permanent cost or waiting out a search. When the work becomes a real headcount, I'll say so, and I'll help you write the role and hand over cleanly.
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Usually within two weeks of a signed scope. The assessment needs about four hours of your time in total; a forecast rebuild needs a weekly working session with the people who own the drivers. I'm there to reduce the load on your team, not add to it.
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Almost never at the start. I work in the tools you already have; your ERP, your spreadsheets, your BI layer. If a platform genuinely is the constraint, I'll show you the evidence rather than the vendor list.
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Most engagements are with companies between roughly $10M and $500M in revenue, plus nonprofits and family enterprises of a similar scale. What matters more than size is that a real decision is riding on the numbers.
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Yes, and it usually works better that way. They own the historical numbers and the close; I own the forward view and the story the Board hears. I'm not there to take anyone's territory.
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Both. I'm based in the New York metro area and Miami and work remotely with clients anywhere in the US.
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Fixed fee for defined-scope projects, a monthly retainer for fractional work, and a daily or weekly rate for interim cover. You'll see the number on the one-page scope before anything begins; no hourly surprises.
An honest read of whether I can help.
LET’S TALK
Twenty years of enterprise FP&A experience, applied to whatever is standing between you and better financial decisions. Tell me what you're working through, and I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right person to help.
