Member Spotlight- Nicole Ayotte, Controller, NewStore

Each month, we spotlight a member of Controller Collective whose engagement is highly valued by their peers in the community. This month, we are highlighting Nicole Ayotte, Controller at NewStore. 

Nicole, what led you to where you are today?

I took a pretty traditional accounting path- after graduating and earning my Masters in Accounting, I joined the EY Commercial Audit practice with a focus on clients in the software, manufacturing, and healthcare spaces. I worked with startups and public companies and saw a lot of different types of businesses. Over time, I realized I didn’t want to continue my career in audit and technical accounting and instead wanted to get closer to operations within organizations. I started looking at tech startups to join. I knew it was key for me to find a hiring manager that would be a strong mentor to me as resources are much more limited when joining a startup. I ended up joining NuoDB and was fortunate to find a mentor in John Wagner, CFO at the time that really accelerated my career. He helped me with the transition going from a Big Four to 25 person startup. I helped scale the company to 85 people with international operations and had the opportunity to create UK and Ireland subsidiaries. I often wore many hats, and no task was too small. 

Five years ago, I joined NewStore, where I currently serve as the Controller. NewStore is a retail tech company headquartered in Boston with operations in Germany, so I’ve been able to maintain that international aspect that I really enjoyed from NuoDB. It’s a larger scale org, so there’s more challenges with technical accounting, people, and operations. Since we offer an enterprise software platform solution, the technology is complex and it’s exciting to see the product mature and expand with different customer use cases. It’s been a great 5 years, and I’ve really enjoyed being the Controller here. 

A few years ago, I also helped start a fitness business with a friend. I am co-founder and CFO at MyStryde, a treadmill studio in Boston. It’s been a great way to develop my operational skill set in a consumer service  business. 

What do you enjoy most about being a Controller?

I’ve enjoyed the position of where a Controller sits operationally in a business. I have had the opportunity to build teams and processes from the ground up. As I’m close to anything with a financial impact, there are limited operational activities I’m not aware of. I stay informed on these activities by working with people from other departments and build cross-functional processes and experiences. 

In my current position, my role includes overseeing accounting and FP&A. We have a Strategic Business Partner Program that meets monthly with all budget owners and discusses financial updates for their department. For example, I might review the marketing program budget for the year to understand how much has been spent to date, how much are we planning to spend, do we need support for reviewing vendor contracts, etc. We also look at the KPIs and metrics closely with the team to understand the ROI for marketing initiatives.  

What are some career challenges on your radar?

I’m trying to chase that IPO experience! We’re hopeful at NewStore that we can all get there as an organization. Our founder has taken two other companies public in the retail technology space.

When an IPO happens, a lot of specialists get involved, from legal, banking, and investors all the way to building out an SEC reporting team and working closely with auditors. I want to get that exposure to working with specialists that support IPOs. It would be a great learning experience to prepare an S-1 filing. At NewStore, we’re putting processes in place that would meet the requirements of a public company. For example, we are a client of a Big Four audit firm, so that makes us accountable and compliant from US GAAP financial reporting.

What are your learnings from 2020?  

Being able to pivot and be flexible in so many aspects has been critical. As an organization, we had to take a pause and understand how the pandemic would impact operations, how we would work together remotely and how individuals were affected personally. 

For me, it took a while to get into the groove of where to work. I have a young daughter, so no childcare was challenging; it took the whole organization being flexible and understanding to make this work, and I tried to maintain that mentality with my team as well. Wherever we could, we tried to provide support to each other on the individual level and back to the business. We shifted priorities in the accounting and finance department and delayed our audit so we could provide additional support to the business especially during March 2020.

What are you hoping to accomplish in 2021?  

On a personal level, I’m welcoming my second child in May! I am continuing to define myself as a working mom. My husband and I are continually navigating how we as working parents find the right balance prioritizing each of our careers and raising our two kids.

I’m also focused on supporting the organization for growth after the pandemic. Our goal this year is to accelerate the business!

Why did you join Controller Collective? 

I enjoy having a network of peers to reach out to for questions. I try to be active by both asking questions and providing responses to others when helpful. Not all topics are relevant to my day-to-day, but it’s interesting to see what’s happening in other businesses of different sizes or industries. The Slack group is well organized with different channels you can follow by topic. There’s people all across the country that I’ve connected with, so it’s really easy to build dialogue and have that 1:1 conversation.