Nasdaq’s CFO says leaders must learn AI—not just their teams

Good morning. Companies are increasingly calling on CFOs to help steer AI strategy and deliver real value.

Sarah Youngwood, EVP and CFO of Nasdaq, doesn’t view AI as a standalone initiative. Instead, she sees it as an embedded capability—one that is reshaping everything from market infrastructure to internal finance operations. Over the years, AI has been a transformative force for Nasdaq. Once known primarily as a stock exchange, the company has evolved into a large-scale software and technology provider for the financial industry, which has helped fuel its return to the Fortune 500.

Nasdaq’s New York headquarters sits above Times Square, where the company’s screens beam market signals to the street. Earlier this month, I visited Youngwood, who works a few stories up in a 26th‑floor corner office with large windows and a sprawling view of the Midtown skyline. The finance team sits right outside her office, where they can easily collaborate.

Today, Nasdaq’s strategy centers on three pillars: architecting modern markets, powering the innovation economy, and building trust across the financial system. Youngwood argues that AI sits at the core of all three. Nasdaq Verafin’s Agentic AI Workforce platform, launched last year, is now used by 650 financial institutions.

The approach is beginning to deliver results. Nasdaq landed at No. 470 on the Fortune 500 this year, returning to the ranking five years after its 2021 debut.

“AI is only as good as your data,” Youngwood told me. Her advice for companies embarking on an AI journey is to first focus on the data. The next step is training your team and measuring their engagement—and leaders have to undergo training themselves. “If you don’t do it yourself, you’re not going to appreciate how extraordinary this technology is, and you also need to lead by example,” Youngwood said.

She also emphasized that you can’t stop at the first iteration. If you accept that it is an iterative process, you can end up with something that works really well, she said.

In finance, AI is going to continue to be “incredibly powerful” for forecasting. Combining macro assumptions, pipeline data, and leadership actions to enable real-time decision-making is one of the most exciting use cases, she said. But its impact spans everything from cash allocation to invoice processing and beyond. Governance and human oversight are essential to the process, she added.

I also spoke with Youngwood about how finance employees at Nasdaq now earn belts for AI proficiency the way martial artists do, how her career background informs her decision-making, and her approach to technology investment. You can read the complete article here.

Youngwood also offers advice to Gen Z when it comes to AI. You can see a clip of our studio interview here.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com