Rodrigo Velasquez

As Founder and Chief Financial Strategist of Tailwinds Finance, Rodrigo is passionate about helping small businesses achieve their growth potential through strategic financial leadership. With over 15 years of experience in financial strategy and technology integration, he has developed a modern approach to fractional CFO services that combines professional expertise with innovative solutions.

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Holding an MBA with a Finance specialization from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, his academic excellence extended to real-world impact when he served as an MBA lead consultant for the World Bank, developing business models for solar micro-grid initiatives in developing nations.

 

In the corporate sphere, his diverse experience spans multiple industries including pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, ed-tech, technology, and media, with roles at Fortune 500 companies like Paramount Global and Abbott Labs. At Paramount, he led the development of an innovative cloud financial operations function, leveraging both technical and financial expertise to achieve significant cost optimizations. His trajectory in the technology space is highlighted through his work at the prominent unicorn tech company, ServiceTitan, where he helped fuel their path to IPO in December 2024. There, he provided strategic financial guidance to technology executives, focusing on product roadmap development and resource capacity planning, while evaluating the financial impact of strategic technology investments.

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His comprehensive experience includes successful collaboration across entire organizational ecosystems - from accounting, human resources, and legal teams to operations, sales, marketing, and technology departments. This cross-functional expertise extends to managing relationships with external stakeholders, including suppliers and institutional investors, providing him with unique insights into the challenges and opportunities that exist across the whole business spectrum. At Elastic, he managed global financial operations for cloud services, while at Blackboard, he supported C-Level executives through a comprehensive worldwide data center migration and subsequent exit strategy development with a leading private equity firm.

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Through his extensive experience in financial strategy and operations, Rodrigo excels at transforming complex financial data into actionable business insights that accelerate growth. His expertise in financial operations, technology integration, strategic planning, and operational efficiency, combined with his ability to bridge departmental perspectives, makes him uniquely qualified to guide growing businesses. Understanding the challenges businesses face across various industries and growth stages, he is dedicated to providing strategic financial leadership that enables companies to thrive without the overhead of a full-time CFO.