When Terry Valdivieso joined Atlantis Management Group in 2015, the company was about a quarter of the size it is today. The Mount Vernon, New York-based convenience store operator now owns 190 locations and is a wholesale supplier to about 150 more.
Founded in 2006 with just four stores in the Bronx, Atlantis has gradually expanded its footprint to cover four East Coast states. It now employs about 1,200 people. Valdivieso says the company’s continued growth trajectory has kept her on board over the years.
Like many CFOs, Valdivieso got her start in public accounting, and she says she first became acquainted with Atlantis as a client. She was hired as controller in 2015 and promoted to CFO a year later.
In an interview with CFO.com, Valdivieso talks about managing financials through several acquisitions, staying on top of cybersecurity threats and how she approaches succession planning.
Terry Valdivieso
CFO, Atlantis Management Group
First CFO position: 2016
Notable recent employers:
- Grodsky, Caporrino & Kaufman, LLP
- American Community Bank
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
DAN NIEPOW: You were working at an accounting firm before you joined Atlantis. What appealed to you about the company?
TERRY VALDIVIESO: To be honest, I did not think I would ever work for a c-store company. But my background was in real estate, and since Atlantis owns a lot of our real estate, it ended up being a good fit. Before this job, I was working in public accounting and auditing, and I was working on a review for Atlantis. The company’s CFO at the time said, ‘Next year, we’re going to need an audit, and we need your expertise.’ That’s when I made the decision to leave public accounting and go into the private sector. I kind of took a leap of faith; I was four months pregnant when they hired me. But the owners of the company have been great, and the CEO and I work very well together. We balance one another out.
It was a much smaller company when I started. It was great to start at that level. It was a place where I could help grow the company. Ten years later, I did just that.
What’s kept you there over the last decade?
It’s the growth. The company is always changing, and it keeps me on my toes. I like a challenge. Every year, there’s something new. We might be implementing a new system one year, and then integrating another acquisition the next.
Plus, I’ve poured a lot of time and effort into this company. A lot of long nights, a lot of time building out a team.
On your LinkedIn page, you wrote that you “built the entire financial accounting and operational infrastructure from the ground up.” Talk me through how you pulled off such a big transformation, and any lessons learned along the way.
I cut it into chunks, basically. When I had dinner with the owners and they offered me the CFO role, the question I asked them was, ‘Where do you want to be in the next five to 10 years?’ They said they wanted to double in size. My head was turning, and I told them we definitely could not do that with the systems we had. We would need a revamp.
The first phase was to rethink our money handling. In a retail company, you have to have control of cash. So, we got ‘smart safe’ technology installed. With that in place, managers didn’t have to go into bank branches to deposit daily funds.
From there, I started working on ERP implementation. Back then, we were still on QuickBooks, which is great for smaller companies, but not larger ones.
I’d say, for anyone going into a growth phase company, the key is figuring out your timeline and then working backwards from there.
You’ve led through several acquisitions during your tenure as CFO. What sorts of characteristics do you look for in M&A targets?
When the owners and I were evaluating a potential target, we always looked at whether it would fit into our model and geographical area, mainly. But we also looked at locations that would allow future buildouts. We weren’t just looking for kiosk locations, but locations on larger pieces of land that we could build out into a 3,000-square-foot convenience store.
Much has changed in the tech world since you became CFO at Atlantis. How do you think about managing cybersecurity and fraud risks these days?
On the cash handling side, installing ‘smart safes’ was a good first step. For checks, we did at one point see an uptick in fraudulent checks, but now about 98% of our accounts payable is all ACH.
As for cybersecurity, we make sure everyone on the team remains vigilant. We’re careful about permission levels for employees, and we password-protect several things. Hackers come at all angles; they do phone calls, texts, emails. There’s a lot of phishing out there. So, we do training to create awareness among employees.
How are you thinking about succession planning at Atlantis?
I have a core team that I've had for years now. We had a 2017 acquisition — probably one of our largest — and pretty much everyone on my team has been with me since that acquisition. A lot of the team is from that old company.
I have a few people I’ve been training and coaching. If the time comes, I do have someone in mind as a successor.
