In this episode of CFO Weekly, Shirley Shu-Hurley, Chief Financial Officer at Hillsborough Transit Authority (HART), joins Megan Weis to explore why the finance seat is evolving from scorekeeper and controller into what Shirley calls the “decision architect” of the organization. Shirley is a finance leader with two decades of experience helping organizations navigate complexity, transformation, and growth. With credentials as a CPA, CFA, and MBA, she has built her career at the intersection of finance, operations, governance, and strategy, partnering with executive teams and boards to build scalable financial infrastructure, strengthen decision making, and create long-term value.

Drawing on a career that spans the energy sector, an entrepreneurship-focused MBA at Durham University Business School, a fractional CFO and strategy consulting practice, and finance leadership at a global donor-advised fund foundation, Shirley shares how she now applies that experience to public finance at HART. She unpacks her framework for evaluating organizational capacity, why she reframes finance's role from gatekeeper to system thinker, how governance can accelerate rather than slow decision making, and what mindset the CFO of the future will need.