2023 CFOs of the Year honored at Seaport Hotel (PHOTOS)

The Business Journal honored its CFOs of the Year at the Seaport Hotel on Thursday to celebrate the best financial leaders at entities across Massachusetts.

The annual F. Gorham Brigham Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award went to Ellen Richstone, a former longtime CEO who now serves on a series of boards. Richstone’s career as a CFO included time at Honeywell Bull, Brooks Automation, Augat and Rohr Aerospace.

Richstone evoked Brigham, for whom the award is named, in touting the importance of mentorship in the industry — a value in the award itself and its recipient each year.

“This award made me spend a lot of time thinking about Gorham,” she said, noting that Brigham, who died in 2016 at 101, took female executives under his wings long ago when the industry was far more male-dominated.

“He was an amazing person and epitomized many values I've worked to emulate over my career,” she said.

Richstone said she carries a sense of responsibility of helping others through her involvement in advocacy groups: the Boston Club, Athena Alliance and Deloitte’s Board-Ready Program.

Richstone was one of a dozen honorees celebrated on Thursday. There were 11 winners of the CFO of the Year award, which includes financial leaders across industries and company sizes.

Four honorees work at private companies: Graeme Bell at Valo Health, Luigi Testa at LinkSquares, Noreen Crandall at ISG, and Puneet Mahajan at Suffolk. Another two, Erica McLaughlin at Cabot Corp. and Allison Dorval at Verve Therapeutics, are at public companies.

Four others work for nonprofits: John Perkins at the Boch Center, Jill O'Connor at New Bedford Community Health, Anthony Ferullo at Endicott College and Andy Vidal at Roxbury Community College. Another honoree, Adriana León, works at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission.

Honorees emphasized how much of their career success is thanks to those around them: their coworkers, their families and their mentors.

“You don’t make it to this point in your career if you don’t have a strong support structure,” Ferullo said.

León said, “I wouldn’t be here without supportive management who made sure I figured out what my skills were and fostered that,”

In Crandall’s case, the family support goes a step further. She’s worked at ISG with her two brothers for the past two decades.

“My journey has been intertwined with that of my two outstanding brothers, Bob and Pat,” she said.

Crandall urged financial leaders to collaborate with other departments at their companies, while Bell suggested working hard every day — moving surely along, little by little — to find success. O’Connor said she’s sought to lead by example and to establish a unifying culture.

McLaughlin touted a variety of experiences to gain career expertise.

“You have to be humble and surround yourself with people you can trust,” she said.

“Being committed to the cause is crucial to success,” said Perkins, who said his job at the Boch Center takes him through a lobby with portraits of An Wang, the late cofounder of Wang Laboratories who with his wife was the main benefactors of the Wang Theatre.

Other advice was less orthodox. Testa said he regularly sits in a tub of ice water, becoming able to extend his plunges to a few minutes from what used to be a few seconds.

He does it, he said, to train himself to “focus and ignore the noise” — in this case, his body, “which is telling you you’re going to freeze to death.”

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