As Chief Financial Officer at Advara HeartCare, Annika Haddock has built a team that is embracing technology to drive change. Andrea French, Principal Consultant at Allura Partners, sat down with Annika to find out how she builds finance teams, why curiosity beats credentials, and what the rise of AI means for the modern finance function.
When Annika Haddock hires for her finance team, years of experience and a long list of qualifications barely register. What she looks for is curiosity.
“I look for people who are curious and open to learning; people who think differently about problems and have a desire to understand,” she says. “I’m less concerned about the years they’ve been working or whether they have experience in my industry.”
Annika moved into the role of Chief Financial Officer at Advara HeartCare, having stepped up from Head of Finance in late 2025. For the better part of a decade, she has worked in finance across private healthcare, initially at GenesisCare, where she rose from Senior Accountant to Head of Finance for Oncology Australia. Before healthcare, she managed television production budgets and financing for NBC Universal across Sydney and London, and she began her career in audit at Deloitte.
While Deloitte was foundational and NBC Universal fun, what drew her to healthcare was both the sense of purpose the sector offers and the chance to work at the meeting point of commerce and finance, in organisations tackling two of the country’s heaviest disease burdens: cardiovascular disease and oncology.
“I really enjoy working with very clever people: clever clinical people, clever technical people, and trying to solve problems together,” she says. “That’s what I love doing.”
Since stepping into the CFO role, Annika has deliberately built a team that is unafraid of change, and excited to drive it.
That instinct is being tested by the disruption now reshaping the profession. “One of the biggest challenges in finance at the moment is AI,” she says. “There’s always going to be some form of disruption. I’m sure CFOs felt the same when spreadsheets arrived. But in this environment, the ability to talk to being involved in a project or using a tool centred around automation is becoming almost more important than being a very good technical accountant.”
At Advara, she says, the work is only just beginning, and the team is approaching it on two fronts. The first is patient and clinician experience: which tools can genuinely improve it. The second is a reframing of the question most finance functions are asking.
“Instead of asking what jobs AI will replace, we ask what we can automate so we can spend more time on the complex tasks.”
Annika says the strength of her team has helped her win the confidence of the wider business, which in turn lets her operate at an executive level.
“The executive and managers will “pick up the phone or email and say, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about doing this. Can you help me run the numbers? I want to make sure it makes sense.’ That’s valuable for an organisation, because it means we’re making informed decisions and finance is in the room for them.”
It also lifts her out of the detail. “It frees up my time to operate at the executive level, rather than chasing an invoice that hasn’t been paid. Having people in place who own their space and are constantly finding better ways of doing things is incredibly valuable.”
Leading this kind of team has meant changing how she manages. Where she once believed her job was to provide clear structure and map out the pathway, she now sees leadership as communicating the destination and trusting a “clever, curious person to figure out the best way there”.
“I really value a team that is empowered to work autonomously, and I can be the lighthouse in terms of the guidance of where we’re going,” she says.
The benefits run two ways: fresher thinking and deeper ownership. “If someone has an idea, and they know they have complete autonomy and permission to move forward with it, they’re more likely to be engaged and to want to deliver on it.”
Getting here, she concedes, has been a lesson in letting go, and one that could only have come with time.
It has also been a lesson in how hard it is to hire well. “What’s tricky is that the people in my network are at a similar level to me. So, if I’m trying to hire a finance manager, maybe someone four to five years post-qualified, they’re not going to be in my immediate network. And if the people in my network do have someone good, they’re not going to give them up.”
Advertising for a junior role taught her the rest. “By the time I’d trawled through 200 applications and found the best people, they’d already taken other jobs,” she says, “and the whole thing had pulled me away from my actual CFO function”.
That experience is why she partnered with Allura Partners exclusively to recruit 3 key roles within her finance team, Assistant Accountant, Financial Accountant (recently converted from a contract role to permanent), and Finance Manager.
“It’s less about outsourcing a task than about working with someone who knows me and the kind of team I like to build,” she says. “They don’t feel they have to send 10 or 15 candidates for me to review. They’ve already done that. They just bring me their best pick.”
For finance managers wanting to reach the next stage of their career, Annika’s advice is to invest less in technical qualifications and more in developing your unique soft skills.
“Once you’ve got the baseline technical accounting and IT knowledge that everyone has, the only thing that sets you apart is the value you bring through who you are and how you build relationships.”
If you already work somewhere you love, she says, challenge yourself. “Spend time with people you don’t usually spend time with. Go and sit with the sales team or the marketing team, ask questions, find out how the business actually works, then think about how you can use your soft skills to add value.”
And if you are not passionate about the business you are in, look around. “If you don’t have a passion for what the organisation does, you’re less likely to sit with someone and learn the business. You’re just not going to be interested in it.”
“If working somewhere you value matters to you, find a way in, use your skills to make an immediate impact, and learn the business while you’re there.”
Get the job you want. Build the team you need.