Some leaders are defined not by the opportunities they inherit, but by the ones they create. They are propelled by a drive that doesn’t fade with a new title or a larger office, a discipline that wakes them before the alarm sounds, pushes them to solve the problems hidden inside the solutions, and turns organizational distress into a proving ground rather than a deterrent.
In corporate finance, where many executives manage risk by minimizing exposure, there is a rarer kind of leader who moves toward complexity with the clarity of a surgeon approaching a critical case: steady, analytical, and certain of the next step. These are the CFOs who don’t simply safeguard enterprise value; they expand it. They don’t just interpret the numbers; they extract the story, the warning, and the opportunity embedded within them. And when volatility hits, they are the ones who chart the path forward, then rebuild the financial architecture stronger than before.
Hernan Rizo is that kind of leader.
A Dream That Crossed an Ocean
Twenty-six years ago, a young man from Colombia made one of those quietly seismic decisions that only reveal their true size in hindsight. Hernan left everything familiar behind and moved to the United States, not with connections, not with a safety net, but with a vision of what his life could become if he worked hard enough and smart enough to earn it. The American Dream, for him, was never a guarantee. It was a challenge he accepted with both hands.
He built his academic foundation with precision. A degree in Finance and Accounting came first, followed by an MBA from the University of Texas, an institution that sharpened both his intellect and his instincts. But the real education, he would later say, came from the field. It came from sitting inside struggling organizations, watching how money moves, how decisions ripple, and how the difference between survival and collapse is often a matter of discipline and clarity applied at exactly the right moment.
Today, that young man who crossed an ocean with a dream serves as Chief Financial Officer of Titan International Inc., a critical minerals manufacturing company at the center of U.S. Defense and Space systems. Hernan is not maintaining the status quo at Titan; he is rewriting it. In 2026, the company is set to double in both revenues and employees, powered by new technology that Hernan helped position Titan to harness. The man who arrived in America with ambition and a plan is now steering a company whose work reaches the highest levels of national strategic importance.
Away from the boardroom, Hernan’s world is equally intentional. He got married almost 20 years ago and is raising two sharp, college-bound children on a sprawling 16-acre, ranch-style, property in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It’s a home that feels like the physical expression of the life he set out to build. For Hernan, the career and the family are not competing forces. One exists because of the other.
Where the Career Found Its Spine
Every defining career has a moment where it stops being a collection of jobs and becomes a point of view. For Hernan, that moment arrived early- in the realization that organizations are not run by spreadsheets. They are run by people, shaped by systems, and steered by decisions. The numbers are not the story; they are evidence of the story. Once he understood that, every role he took became more than financial management. It became about organizational transformation.
Hernan stepped into the professional world at Merrill Lynch in 2002, joining the investment banking division and absorbing the pace and precision of high-stakes financial work. Three years later, his entrepreneurial instinct took over. He founded his first company in Texas, focused on helping oil and gas firms access the private equity capital they needed to grow. But proximity to these businesses quickly revealed a harder truth: money alone was not the bottleneck. Leadership, structure, and strategic clarity were. So, he stepped into the CFO seat inside these organizations, determined to solve the actual problem rather than the surface one.
That instinct led Hernan, in 2008, to Tatum CFO Partners, the largest professional CFO organization in the country at the time. He became the youngest member ever to make partner, a milestone that spoke not to ambition alone but to the rare depth of judgment he had already developed. Over his years at Tatum, he rotated through companies of every size, sector, and stage of life- turnarounds, high-growth startups, private equity-backed operations, companies navigating bankruptcy, and businesses reaching for international markets. Each rotation added a new layer to his understanding of what a CFO truly is: not a guardian of numbers, but an engine of value and a steward of execution.
That understanding crystallized into a philosophy Hernan carries to this day. “Bring clarity where there’s complexity, create stability where there’s uncertainty, and build trust through transparency and service.” It reads simply. The career it produced is anything but simple.
Built for Fire
Hernan has never been drawn to the comfortable middle of the corporate spectrum. His reputation has been forged in the places most finance leaders quietly sidestep- companies in transition, organizations in freefall, businesses racing through growth faster than their systems can handle, and enterprises being rebuilt after collapse. He has worked across manufacturing, healthcare, oil and gas, and technology, carrying the same conviction through every industry: that disciplined financial leadership makes its greatest impact precisely where the pressure is highest.
His appetite for these environments is not recklessness dressed up as confidence. He makes a clear distinction between risk that is well-governed and purposeful versus risk that is simply impulsive. Strategic acumen matched with executional discipline- that combination is what keeps organizations moving forward when the terrain shifts beneath them without warning.
At Titan International, that philosophy is operating at full force. Hernan is steering the company’s transformation from a family-owned enterprise into a world-class manufacturing operation. Under his financial stewardship, Titan is actively partnering with the U.S. Federal Government to secure domestic processing and refining of rhenium, germanium, and other critical minerals, building supply-chain resilience, reducing American dependence on foreign sources, and contributing to national security in ways that extend far beyond any quarterly report.
The Test That Proved the Philosophy
When COVID-19 arrived, it did not ask organizations whether they were ready. It arrived without notice and demanded an immediate answer from every CFO in the country. Hernan’s answer came in stages, each one deliberate.
The first move was protecting liquidity- tightening cash management, renegotiating terms with partners, optimizing working capital, and re-forecasting financial models on a weekly basis to keep pace with a market that was rewriting itself in real time. Alongside that, Hernan made transparency a cornerstone of the response. He communicated clearly and consistently with teams, lenders, and stakeholders, ensuring that no one was navigating the uncertainty without a shared understanding of the plan. In a moment when confusion was spreading faster than clarity, that kind of communication was itself a form of leadership.
Once the organization was stable, Hernan shifted the lens from defense to offense. He accelerated digital transformation, automated processes that had long been done by hand, restructured parts of the business to run leaner and faster, and eliminated non-essential costs while leaving intact every investment tied to future growth. What emerged on the other side was not the same company that entered the crisis; it was a stronger, more agile, and more modern version of it. Hernan had turned a defining test into a defining chapter.
The Human Architecture of Leadership
Ask Hernan about his leadership style and he will not talk about authority. He will talk about service. In his world, the responsibility of leadership flows upward- from the organization to the leader, not the other way around. He exists not to sit above his team but to clear the path in front of them, to develop the people around him rather than control them, and to measure his own success by how well others are thriving.
That same philosophy governs his approach to balance. He brings to his personal life the same intentionality he brings to a financial restructuring- planning ahead, communicating clearly, and adjusting quickly when circumstances demand it. Every evening, without exception, he cooks dinner for his family. It is a ritual, a boundary, and a statement of priority all at once. According to Hernan, a leader who exemplifies true balance allows his staff to follow suit, and when everyone feels empowered, the organization as a whole performs better.
Paying It Forward
Hernan’s leadership does not stop at Titan’s doors. He serves on the board of the CFO Alliance, a community built by CFOs, for CFOs, where he gives his time and experience to help new and emerging finance leaders find steady ground in one of the most demanding executive roles that exists. He knows the weight of that seat better than most. The scope is broader today, the stakes are higher, the timelines are tighter, and the strategic expectations have grown beyond anything the traditional CFO role once required. Hernan’s mission is to make that transition less isolating for those who are stepping into it for the first time.
The Principle That Holds Everything Together
When Hernan is asked to distill 25 years of experience into something transmittable, he does not reach for a framework or a formula. He offers a mantra: Stay curious, reliable, trustworthy, and deliver results. Four words that carry the weight of a career.
He believes in momentum over perfection- in taking the next right step rather than waiting for the ideal one. He believes that trust is the infrastructure that makes performance possible, and that real progress belongs to leaders who choose to elevate the people around them before elevating themselves. Those are not borrowed ideas. They are the principles he has stress-tested across five industries, dozens of organizations, and more cycles of growth and disruption than most executives encounter in a lifetime.
At Titan International, those principles are already producing results that the industry is sitting up to notice. And in the lives of every team member, board colleague, and emerging CFO who has crossed his path, the impact runs deeper than any metric can measure.
Hernan did not simply come to America and succeeded. He arrived, built something from nothing, and spent his career making sure others could do the same.
