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Want a peak behind the curtain into one of the best places to work in cybersecurity and the minds of the innovators behind the industry’s leading security operations platform? Tune in to The Howler podcast!
Hosted by Chelsea Lowman, People Experience Specialist, and Mary Newville, People Experience Senior Manager, the culture duo connects with pack leaders on leadership insights, mental health and overall wellbeing, and how they lead their teams to advance our mission of ending cyber risk.
Aaron Boynton - The Howler
Wed, Apr 22, 2026 8:07AM � 55:38
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Podcast episode, spring day, San Antonio, farmers market, Texas sunset, fashion, IP Wolves, financial planning, cyber security, AI and automation, mental health, leadership advice, urgent vs important, family time.
SPEAKERS
Chelsea Lowman, Aaron Boynton, Mary Newville
Chelsea Lowman 00:04
Hi, welcome to the Howler Podcast. I'm Chelsea
Mary Newville 00:07
and I'm Mary,
Chelsea Lowman 00:09
and welcome to our April episode. We are so excited to have you all listening. Yes, it's the start of spring. Spring. Well, the first official day was last week, because we record, we were recording this in March, and on our team, we did a little perfect spring day icebreaker for one of our team meetings. And I feel like, Mary, you should tell everyone your perfect spring day, because it felt it felt perfect to me.
Mary Newville 00:44
Yes, okay, my perfect spring day as a San Antonio resident would be to wake up. And I think the perfect wake up on the weekend is you get to sleep in, but because you went to bed on time. But sometimes a night out is fun, but somehow it all in a perfect world that works out that you can wake up without, like, sleeping in, so you feel arrested, but waking up and it's like early still. And my perfect day would involve going to the pearl farmers market. If you've been to San Antonio, or you live here, you know, you know. And it would involve meandering around. I probably have a beignet and a jalapeno cheese tamale. Oh, okay, those are my go to like, If anyone comes to the farmers market with me again, if you know, you know, because I will make you buy those items because they're like, or I'll buy them for you because I want you to try them. Yeah, and then, like, hanging out by the Riverwalk and reading a book, and then maybe grabbing food or ice cream still in the pearl, okay? A golden hour? Would a golden hour walk under the big Texas sky to round out a perfect spring day.
Chelsea Lowman 02:11
That sounds so nice.
Mary Newville 02:13
The the sunsets here. Just honestly, I love a good sunset anywhere, and I feel like Minneapolis had really good ones too. But there's something about a Texas sunset. I think it's because it The sky is so expansive, and there's no buildings in the way. It just like goes on forever. It's so pretty.
Chelsea Lowman 02:35
Yeah, is it like? Really colorful?
Mary Newville 02:38
Really colorful? Yeah. So, oh,
Chelsea Lowman 02:46
go ahead, Chelsea. Oh, I was just gonna say we've been having some good sunsets. Some, like, really pretty purple, purple pink sunsets. And also some, like, straight rainbow sunsets, like, I can just see all the colors, yeah, I
Mary Newville 03:03
love a good sunset. Are you a sunrise or a sunset? Person? If you had to choose,
Chelsea Lowman 03:10
I would probably say sunset, because I just am not usually awake to, like, enjoy the sun. Like the sunrise is fun on a trip when you're like, somewhere, like, up to the sunrise, but like in my day today, I'm not like, go sit and watch the sunrise, so I feel like I'm probably a sunset person.
Mary Newville 03:34
Yeah, I think I'd probably be the same if I had, if I was honest with myself, because I think I really want to be a sunrise person. But if we're being realistic,
Chelsea Lowman 03:45
yeah, yeah. And I think yeah, depending on the location and again, like, if I was, I don't know somewhere, like in the mountains or in nature, the sunrise would be really pretty. But feel like, yeah, in my day to day, I think I would prefer the sunset. So Okay,
Mary Newville 04:06
switching gears a little bit. I just want to I was going to say when I got dressed this morning, I was wondering if we were going to show up matching on the podcast today.
Chelsea Lowman 04:16
I didn't even, I know when I saw you in our meeting this morning that you were wearing that shirt. I was like, I That wasn't even on my radar to wear today.
Mary Newville 04:26
I love your outfit, so we need to talk about it in a second. But for those that are listening, not watching, I am wearing our new IP wolves t shirt. People's wolves Alliance at Arctic wolf they had an indigenous artist in Canada, they commissioned their work to design a logo for us, and it's so pretty. It is the most unique logo. It has this beautiful, like, detailed floral design around our signature wolf triangle and underneath IP wolves is in the. Block lettering of different colors. It's really cute. So we just got them last week, so I figured I would rep on the podcast. So shout out to IP wolves. Do you remember who the artist was? Tell us feel like we should give them a shout out.
Chelsea Lowman 05:12
No, I don't. I don't know, off the top of my head, I could maybe try and look really quick. But yes, I I forgot that we used to be so good at repping our alliances and their T shirts on the podcast, and we need to get back to doing that. So I'm so glad that you wore that shirt, because it's, it is so cute.
Mary Newville 05:35
No, I love it, okay, but we need to. I need to. I love your outfit, and I feel like I want to learn more. So for those of you again that are listening, not watching, Chelsea is wearing what looks like, maybe a basketball jersey. Oh,
Mary Newville 05:53
what I was gonna say was like a cool, like a basketball jersey underneath a cool pinstripe blazer. But as she went to reveal said basketball jersey, I realized it's it says kindness, I love too.
Chelsea Lowman 06:14
Yeah, I was gonna say, I was like, Oh, well, I've actually gotten so I've gotten like, three compliments on this shirt today at work, all from men that have
Mary Newville 06:23
been like, giving sporty. That's, there's something about it that's giving sporty
Chelsea Lowman 06:28
because there's a it's a blue shirt, but it's got a white collar, so I feel like that gives like, sporty vibes. Yeah. And they're all men, like, in their 20s, and have been like, I like your shirt. And I'm like, thanks. I'm like, do you like kindness? Like, I don't know what they like about it. Yes, the shirts Old Navy. The pinstripe blazer is target,
Mary Newville 06:51
okay, love it. I love the look.
Chelsea Lowman 06:54
Thank you. Yeah, I've been trying to just wear my clothes more and like, I'm trying the same, you know, and try things like, I usually would never wear a blazer if there wasn't, like, an important event or something, sure, I'm just gonna wear my blazer with jeans because it's Monday. I love that.
Mary Newville 07:13
Yeah. Do you remember I used to kind of have a order of operations, and on Monday it always were blazer. It was like tight bun and blazer, and by the end of the week, we were like to tease, and somewhere in the middle would be like, dresses.
Chelsea Lowman 07:28
Yeah, do you not do that in Texas anymore?
Mary Newville 07:32
Well, not so well, a couple things. One, I got a walking tread, as you probably know from seeing me bob around in all our recent meetings. So now all my outfits revolve around, what outfit could I Mar? Could I match that was a combination compare with tennis shoes or some kind of comfortable flat so I can get my steps in on my walking tread, um, so I feel like that's kind of like dictated my outfit curation as of late, but it is you saying you're trying to wear your clothes more. I'm trying to do the same. So okay, and like, not buy as much because I have so many clothes I don't need more. I just need to style the ones I currently have,
Chelsea Lowman 08:18
exactly um for the walking pad. I used to, I don't have them here anymore, but I used to just keep, like, a cheap pair of tennis shoes here for, like, when I'd want to go on walks and stuff. And I just bought some, like, cheap ones from Target or something. You don't have to, like, haul shoes, and then you don't have to worry about your outfit, so you can just wear what you want and then put on the
Mary Newville 08:40
tennis shoes I do need to do that you like, a little pair of, like, slip on, like, kind of slide tennis shoes, such, like something. But also, like, I was thinking about all our European friends, and they were the chicest outfits. I don't know if chicest is a word, they were the most chic outfits, Dad shoes. And it just is what it is. So I'm like, I think I just need to embrace that,
Chelsea Lowman 09:06
like your sneakers that you bought or that you wore in Spain, I feel like you dressed those up. Yeah, that was
Mary Newville 09:13
Yeah, totally. So anyways,
Chelsea Lowman 09:17
if you want an offshoot fashion podcast episode, let us know. Mary and I would love to talk about Yeah. Our guest wants to talk about fashion. We'll see
Mary Newville 09:30
Yeah, he could surprise us. We're excited to sit down with Aaron Boynton today. Aaron is currently the SVP of fpna at Arctic Wolf. He's been here for nearly four years. Prior to Arctic Wolf. He worked at Nutanix for nine years, beginning as a small private company, and ultimately going through IPO and large scale growth. Prior to that, Aaron spent his time at Seagate and started his career at the accounting firm Deloitte. Outside of work, his family keeps him busy with two teenagers and a tween. All right, looking forward to this conversation with Aaron. Let's get into
Chelsea Lowman 09:59
it all. Right. Welcome to the podcast, Aaron. We're so excited to have you here. Thank you. Yeah, good to be here. Yes, have you ever been on a podcast before? This is
Aaron Boynton 10:09
my first so
Mary Newville 10:14
well, I'm personally so excited, because I feel like I don't really know you at all. So I can't wait to get to know you better, and for the greater the opportunity as well.
Chelsea Lowman 10:25
Yeah, yeah, this will be fun. Well, before we dive into the hard hitting questions, we usually like to warm up with something a little fun. Earlier, Mary and I were talking about our perfect spring day. Then we were talking about fashion. I don't know if you're a big fashion guy or not, so let's not go there. For the April Howler newsletter that we send out company wide, we asked PAC members to share about a recent trip or vacation that they've gone on. So we were wondering, is there, has there been a trip in the last couple of months, in the last year that really stands out, or maybe just like a super memorable trip period?
Aaron Boynton 11:08
Yeah, I'm gonna go straight to the super memorable trip. Yeah, two summers ago. So I have three kids, so my wife and three kids, we went to Germany, and we moved to a couple other spots in Europe as well. My sister was living there, and my wife had some family things going on in Germany too. So we, we took the whole family there for two weeks, and it was an awesome trip in the summertime. And we've always said that's the pinnacle of our of our traveling. It's like it's never going to get better than that. With our kids, they're getting better. They expect. Sorry, how old are your kids? So I've got a 16 year old, so he's a junior in high school, so we're already, like, not so cool with him. Yeah, he's cool to us. We're not so cool to him, right? I've got, I've got a freshman who's definitely that way. He's 14. And then my daughter, she still thinks I'm pretty cool. She's She's 10, she's in fifth grade. So when we went about two years ago, and it was like a great age to travel with them, and they all thought we were cool at that point. So it was great.
Mary Newville 12:18
And I feel like it's it there. They can carry their own luggage. They can help read maps or research restaurants. Like, yeah,
Aaron Boynton 12:25
yeah, yeah. And like, we asked each of them, what do you want to do today? And they would, they would sort of plan the day for us. Ate a lot of kids food, but that was fine.
Mary Newville 12:38
I do. I definitely like a parent. Dream of mine from an apparent someday is I want to have my kids pitch to me are, like a vacation proposal, kind of have, like a little business case competition, if you will,
Aaron Boynton 12:54
Shark Tank thing. I like it. Tell me where we should go and why.
Mary Newville 12:58
Yeah, okay, um, okay, I actually was on my short list of things to ask you, because I was remembering when we talked with Susan a couple months ago, she had shared in another life that you two had worked together, and I know she had worked for, I'm forgetting which organization, but in somewhere in Europe, maybe London, I think. Did you also work abroad? I did,
Aaron Boynton 13:21
yeah, actually. So Susan and I met there. So I my first part of my career, I spent nine years in public accounting at Deloitte. Go to the last of the later years, I did a program they had, like an exchange program, where you go work internationally for a couple of years and kind of learn different culture, learn different work styles. And so I went to London, which is, like the most popular place to go, obviously, because I speak English. And so Susan and I, we went. We were there at the same time. I think she got there a year before me. Okay. And oddly enough, so when we moved there, my I had my son was three months old, and when and I was there for two years. My next son was three months old when we moved back. So we had our second child. There was a great work experience, especially a great life experience. Yeah, and Susan and I. The funny thing is, we, we both. We were working on the same, same clients at the same time and and we got, both of us got sent to Russia, and she had brought her husband, Pat and I went. My wife had a little baby. Susan didn't have kids yet, but so we were all going to, my wife is going to come over. We're all going to spend time in Moscow together while I was working there, and I don't know if you remember, but when there was a volcano in Iceland, so while Susan and I were there, a volcano in Iceland erupted, and they shut down air traffic all over Europe for a week, like there is no planes in the air, because they are worried that the ash would like. Rub the jet engines or whatever. And so my wife couldn't come, and Susan and I were like, how the hell are we going to get home? And so we were like, looking at taking trains across Europe, and like, how do we how do we do it? But ultimately, they opened up the airspace and got out of there. But yeah, that was that was our fun story together,
Chelsea Lowman 15:22
a really fun adventure. If you had taken a train from Russia to London, but it would have been adventure. You could have stopped, you know, had little but at that point you probably just want to get home.
Aaron Boynton 15:36
Yeah, yeah. If you could do it leisurely, like I would, I would love to go back and do it leisurely, actually, you needed to get home. I was like, gosh, I just need to get out of here.
Mary Newville 15:46
Okay. Well, not me like adding to our my mental list of like, how do we make that a thing at Arctic wolf that we can do study abroad programs, if you will.
Aaron Boynton 15:58
It was such an amazing life experience. And yeah, I've all I'll always think fondly of those years for sure.
Mary Newville 16:08
Okay, I have to ask too before I move on from this question. But you said when you all went for your family vacation a couple years ago that your wife had some really cool things going on. We can totally cut this out. What I'm so curious. What did she have
Aaron Boynton 16:25
going on there? Oh, yeah, so that was actually great. So her her grandfather, so my mother in law's dad was a German Jew, and he he left in 1939 and moved to Colombia and ended up marrying a Colombian woman who's still alive in like 1949 or something. Yeah, I know. And then they moved to the states in the 50s, and my mother in law was born here, so she's half Colombian, half German Jew, but so his whole family in this town. This is, like a really long story, but in this town, town is called velte, but it's in northern Germany, and like, five years ago, they started researching, like a high school kid actually did a project like, what happened to all the Jews in our town? They didn't know, because there's nobody left. It's a small town, but there's nobody left. And so they were doing some research. And my, my wife's aunt, was actually went to see her father's place and met up with this guy. And apparently they're doing this whole thing across Europe where they're like, commemorating where the Jews were where they were before Nazi Germany. And so they decided to do a dedication of their old house and and they put these, these brass blocks in the ground, so there's cobblestone streets, but they put these brass blocks in the graph commemorating each of them. And so my, my, I guess my grandfather in law's name was Eric Frank, and so he was a family of 11 people there, and like they all went different places. Some of them went to us, some went to UK. Some perished. Unfortunately, in Germany, it kind of commemorated that family. And it was really neat because he had, he had six kids or seven kids. And his siblings all had kids, and so there was, like, all these people from all over the world came for this commemoration. And there was there's people from Latin America, people from Australia, people from Israel, like all of them there for the same thing. And that was why we went there in the first place. My sister happened to be living in Germany, because her husband's in the army, so we got, we got to see that, and that was like the most moving thing I've ever experienced in my life. I personally emotional. Yeah, it felt odd for me, because on one hand, like things that happened are so awful, and it's like, it's like, hard, you know, like, looking at it, you really realize how terrible. I mean, it kind of comes to life and the same hand, the same time, I'm, like, none of us would be there if that didn't happen. So it was like, a really like for me, it was like, and I wasn't expecting it, but it was like, the emotions were, like, really high. And, you know, I, I'm not even blood related to these people, but, you know, except for my kids, I'm like, they wouldn't be there without that. So it's like, Oh, my God, wouldn't be I think about the trip from Germany to he tried to come to the US that, at the time, the US was saying, No, we're full. And so the ship went to Colombia, and he ended up in the US. Anyways, 20 years later,
Chelsea Lowman 19:46
wow, yeah, yeah, that's so beautiful and so special that your kids got to experience that too. Was amazing, yeah? So that was
Aaron Boynton 19:56
part of, part of the amazing vacation that I took too. I.
Chelsea Lowman 20:00
Wow. Okay, love I don't know how finance now, but we are. We're going to make the transition because we do want to get to know you better and what you're leading here at Arctic Wolf. But before we dive into current state, take us back a little bit when you were younger. Were you always interested in math and accounting and finance? Like, how did, how did we get us? How did we get here? Take us on a little journey.
Aaron Boynton 20:33
Yeah. So I did not grow up wanting to be an accountant or in finance. A lot of us grew up thinking that, but I always wanted to be a baseball player. And you know that that's, of course, is a long shot. I didn't give up till I was probably the end of high school. I kind of, and that's not happening, Aaron, but, but no. So I went to school and I played baseball in school, and I thought, I might as well, might as well get a job and and do something worthwhile while I'm going to school, instead of just play baseball. And so I studied finance and finance and accounting, and I know I've always had been good at math, probably because when I was a kid, like I had memorized all the stats on every single baseball card, and so that was my thing, and it was sort of a natural spot to jump into. And I that's what I went to work at Deloitte. And I would say over the years what I want to be when I grow up, that was constantly changing, but that's sort
Chelsea Lowman 21:40
of my path here. I'm curious. Obviously, you mentioned you were, you've been good at math, which props to you. I wish I was just not really good at math. I had to try really, really hard you were good at math. There was obviously the stats part of sports that got you into accounting. And now fast forward, you're here. Was there any point throughout your accounting career that you were like, Hmm, is there anything else I'd have interest in trying? Or once you were in it, you were like, this is for me.
Aaron Boynton 22:10
So I would say at the beginning of my career, I often, I often would wonder if there's something greater that I should be doing. No, I I never seriously looked into anything else. But, you know, I think when you're when you're fresh out of college, and, you know, working long days with lots of numbers, somebody can sometimes seem a little monotonous. And I definitely had those days when my mind would wander like, okay, when my Should I try to get into sports management or something? Something else, yeah, but, you know, ultimately, I always liked what I've done, and, you know, the love of members and, no, I some of the things I love about Arctic Wolf is, no, it's a place where you can make an impact. You can build things. So that's, you know, that's always been, maybe that's competitive part of me, I don't know, but that's always been a ton of fun for me, that that side of being in business world,
Mary Newville 23:10
okay, I'm curious when you talk, I mean, that's one of my favorite parts about being an Arctic wolf too, is like we get to build, create. We're writing the story. It's not written for us, your area of the business is somewhat of, like, I don't want to say it's a black box to me, but like, the day to day is just I'm not as familiar with. So what are when you say, like, you enjoy getting to build, what are some of the things that you and your team have built here at Arctic wolf that you're especially proud of?
Aaron Boynton 23:40
Oh, gosh. So, I mean, we're constantly building and we're constantly sort of iterating on what we do. So if I just think back to, like, what the finance team has done here, so taking, taking me out of it. But you know, I think when, we first got fpna, it's probably been a little over five, maybe six years ago, it was probably a little bit of the Wild West in terms of how money is spent. You know, people aren't planning, and people, you know, are kind of just going with their gut instinct. And as you grow, it gets more and more important to have structure and have have guidelines, and then be able to, you know, make sure the dollars are going in the right space. I mean, when you're a when you're a 200 person company, or 300 person company even, is like, you can kind of see it, everything that's going on. But now, you know, well over 3000 people, it's much different. And so really summarizing what's going on in the world and bringing that up to a consolidated level, and then, and then, more importantly, you know, planning, planning for the future, planning. You know, what do we need our where do we need our cash to be? Do we need our cash to be? You know, how should our billings look? How should our spend look? Those are all things that, effectively, the fpna team built from scratch here, and not really in that long time either. I mean, it was, I think, I think it was six years ago when we hired our first fpna person. And so that's fairly rapid growth.
Chelsea Lowman 25:24
Okay, so interesting. I know you touched on it a little bit in what you were just sharing. But for those that aren't as familiar with FP and I and what that even means, could you just briefly kind of dive a little deeper into what that is and the difference between traditional accounting? Susan kind of talked a little bit about it when we had her on as well. But would love to hear your perspective as the leader of DNA here.
Aaron Boynton 25:49
So yeah, I'm a good person for that, because I spent most of my career in accounting. And, you know, accountants sometimes called bean counters, are really Oh. Are really, I'll say, keeping score. Know, how, how did it? How did things fall out? And fpna, which stands for financial planning and analysis, is really planning the future, and so that the most important part of the future is understanding the past. So that's where the analysis comes in. And so you want to understand how the business performs, you know what, what's working, what's not working, and you want to make sure you're planning a to invest the dollars in the right spots and be planning for the health of the company. And so that's, that's the difference. It kind of the past, kind of mostly sits with Susan, I say, although my team, so we always analyze, like, when Susan analyzes the past, it's like dollar to dollar, how you know what happened? And when my team analyzes the past, it's more like we had an estimate for what was going to happen. Why? Why did that or did that not happen? And and so we're kind of looking at refining what we're going to be know how we look at the future.
Mary Newville 27:07
So your team, you're tasked with gathering these insights based on the past, predicting the future. How do you then effectively communicate what you're seeing with the rest of the organization in such a way that, like, it makes a change,
Aaron Boynton 27:23
yeah, and that's, that's probably where the challenge comes in. And, you know, I always say, the simpler we can make it, the better. And so, like, there's, there's a ton of work, you know, my team right now has been working the last couple of months, building out a certified data set for our ARR working with sort of biz apps and that team. But, you know, getting all this data, you know, we have 10,000 customers, plus or minus, getting data on all those customers and putting it in a readable format, and so somebody can look at it at a one pager and understand what's going on in the business. And that's the challenge. So making something simple, simple to understand is, I mean, because it's easy to get lost in details when your business is as big as ours. So making it simple, that's a real challenge.
Mary Newville 28:18
Yeah, I can imagine. And then also, what are like, some I don't know if leading indicators are the right words, but how do you separate quote, unquote, like, the signal versus the noise? Because I'm sure you could zero in and be like, Wow, these numbers are trending down. Or, how do you know, like, how do you all help distill what really matters?
Aaron Boynton 28:41
Yeah, you're looking at that's definitely more of an art than a science. So, so I was actually just working with some my team on this earlier, but you have, you have to look at it from different angles. So if you're looking at top line performance, you know, you might, you might look at rep performance. You might look at geographic performance, you know, how is it going in different geos? You might look, you might look at how the different products are performing. And so you kind of have to piece together a bunch of different views. You might look at Pipeline, right? You might look at, you know, how did our pipeline perform? And so you have to look at a bunch of different views in order to really form an opinion. And that's that's where it becomes more of an art than science. You know, you can do the science to get the numbers of the science, but really interpreting it and coming to a conclusion is much more especially when you're dealing with the future. I used to have a boss who so I say, the only thing I know about the forecast is going to be wrong. It's just a matter to what degree
Chelsea Lowman 29:49
I love that. Do you prescribe to that now? Oh, I try
Aaron Boynton 29:55
to get as right as possible. Yeah. Yeah, so, but it's a constant, constant reiteration, because just by the nature of predicting the future, it's never going to be perfectly right. And you may have no you may have varying degrees, you may have assumptions that were incorrect, but what you want to do is you want to learn from those and change in the future.
Chelsea Lowman 30:21
Is there anything that makes financial planning like unique to the cyber security industry versus other tech companies or other like SAS orgs?
Aaron Boynton 30:35
There's some uniqueness with cyber for sure, one thing that makes us unique is, obviously we have a sock that's supporting our customers. So I think there's very few businesses that have have that. And if you're like expanding to cyber in general, I mean, one of the things that makes it so intriguing from a finance perspective is it is constantly changing. You know, if you think about what cyber is. It's trying to stay a step or two steps ahead of the bad guys. And, you know, there's, there's constant movement because of that, you know, it's constantly a moving target. And so things move fast. And you know, that's, that's one of the things that makes cyber so intriguing.
Chelsea Lowman 31:21
Did you have an interest specifically in getting into cyber security, or did you kind of land here through connections and career path, and now, now you love it,
Aaron Boynton 31:33
so I would say both. So I did have interest in cyber security. So when, when you're I'm based in California, by the way, so I'm in Silicon Valley, lots of tech companies here from cyber I mean, any kind of, any kind of tech companies here, all size, etc. But if you look at the industries that have staying power, I mean, the fact that it is changing so much means that it's going to be here for a long time. Nobody's ever going to solve cyber security? And, you know, basically, it's almost like, if you think about FDA forecasting, it's almost like that, like you have to just iterate and get better. And, you know, and you want to, you want to be the one who gets the next step ahead in sort of creating the right, the right cyber platform.
Mary Newville 32:22
Yeah. Dustin's out in the SF area, right? Did you work with Dustin our CFO in a prior life?
Aaron Boynton 32:29
Or, yeah, I did. Yeah. So my my last job was at Nutanix, which is, it's a company here in the valley, and I worked there for nine years, and Dustin worked there for the last eight of those years, so he and I worked together for quite a time.
Mary Newville 32:47
Okay, got it. What is small world with you? Are you originally from Minnesota? No, no, oh, you have Susan in London, but she's from Minnesota,
Aaron Boynton 32:59
exactly, exactly. So when, when, yeah, so when I would, I was, I was in accounting, transferring over to fpna and and we needed somebody, and preferably somebody in Minnesota, I knew exactly who I would call, if that ever. And after some, you know, Susan had was at uhg forever. And no, she was, she was ready to come take on the challenge. And, you know, do something. I think that the cyber industry really spoke to her, know, something that really makes a difference.
Mary Newville 33:34
Yeah, um, well, if you ever want to put a good word in for us with Dustin. We can task, but we want him on the podcast so bad. He has the best stories,
Chelsea Lowman 33:48
good stories. Yeah, you guys can't convince them. No, he keeps telling us No. So if you could, yeah, if you and Susan could just put in a nice little word.
Mary Newville 33:57
Tell me so easy and fun,
Aaron Boynton 34:01
I'll put in a good word.
Chelsea Lowman 34:06
Public note that he has is turning us down. So pressure, yeah, nothing like a little peer pressure before we switch to some leadership chit chat. Just curious. We've been talking about forecasting future. Obviously, AI is the future. AI is the moment, I guess, right now, I'm curious how AI and automation, like the role you see that playing in fpna, and how that's going to change for you and your team moving forward and how you work.
Aaron Boynton 34:43
Yeah, I mean, quite simply, it's a game changer. And I this is one part of the future I wish I could predict is how exactly it's going to be a game changer, but I know it's going to be a complete game changer. So I think, you know, with my team, I think. And everybody's really willing to embrace it. There's the the amount of insight that you can gather with one of these tools, like Claude or copilot. It's incredible. And Claude, you know, anthropic Claude, in the last, I don't know, last month, or maybe two months, they've really made strides and in, in how you can use it on data. Because it used to be, it was just kind of an LLM, where it, you know, basically predict something based off what it knows from the internet. But you can sort of see it changing in terms of reasoning and taking large data sets. And, you know, I talked earlier about, you know, trying to predict the future based on the past. And you can give it a large data set and and coax it, ask it to tell you what it thinks. And it's pretty good. I've been tinkering around with it, and you can, you can give it some data and not what I'm trying to do right now is like, okay, summarize it in something simple. For me, I want to tell the story simply, and it'll, it'll come out with something. And I would say maybe 75 to 80% there. And but you just, you can tweak it and say, Hey, what about this? And Claude will be like, Oh, good point. And so it learns with you. Yeah. So at this point, I mean, there's pockets in the finance org where we're using AI already, you know, to do certain tasks. But I think over the next year, and probably a lot sooner than that, we're going to find some things that really, that really will enhance the work that we do. I'm really excited about it. I think it's, it's a, potentially, a lifetime change in how work is done.
Mary Newville 36:52
Yeah, I can totally see that. And especially in work like yours. Were some of the things you've been talking about today, like forecasting, and it's that art versus science, like with the wealth of data and the speed at which the system can work. And I wonder too, if it could help surface insights that we might miss, or because of confirmation bias, we might like look over and looking for something else.
Aaron Boynton 37:19
So yeah, totally, I, I, I thinking of of, like AI as it is today, to be the best thing to ever happen to finance since Excel and that. I mean, that's a long time ago, but just the amount of insights, and the ability of a person to do a ton of work, like a ton of analysis insight. It's just, I mean, it's really going to amplify it, yeah.
Mary Newville 37:47
Well, I love the analogy of comparing it to another tool, because I, you know, there's like, some fear out there with AI and, of course, like, there can be good and bad and pros and cons to everything. But I think that analogy of, it's like, Excel, the power of a tool that can be used for,
Aaron Boynton 38:06
yeah, ultimately, and, you know, Excel changed the way finance people work. I mean, everybody's got Excel open all day now. And I would expect that, you know, and it'll be short order a year, two years, everybody will have an AI agent open as well doing helping them do their work.
Mary Newville 38:28
Okay, here's just, oh, go. I was
Chelsea Lowman 38:31
just going to quickly say, I love how universally it's known how important Excel is to finance like as soon as Mary and I can't even do a quarter of what you all can do in Excel. But as soon as you said that, we were both like, no, like, just made a big statement. It was Excel. I'm always in awe of what our finance partners Mary and I was like, can you make this happen for our budget spreadsheet? And it's like, boom, boom, done. We have
Aaron Boynton 39:04
some wizards, some Excel whizzes.
Mary Newville 39:06
Yeah, I was gonna ask, like, a kind of silly question, but when you hire it, are there any like Excel? You know how the product team will have to do, like, real time, like performance reviews, not performance reviews, but they'll give them a problem to solve. Do you make sure, are there like formulas that you're like, I need to make sure that you can do XYZ.
Aaron Boynton 39:31
Are you focused on that in interviews, honestly, typically, if people are interested in finance, they've tinkered enough to where they're pretty good, or they can learn really quick. Okay, so, you know, I think in terms of finding the right people, I I'm more and more come to this. Like the best thing to have in the fpna world, especially, is, like a curious mindset, because you really to get that, to get. Next insight to understand what's going on, like, you have to ask the next question that really is what separates people.
Mary Newville 40:09
And you're saying, I feel like that's, you know, not universally. I mean, I feel like that that is kind of universally applicable. Like, if you're curious and trying to think one step ahead that's going to help you advance in any field, that's how you learn, right? Yeah, totally. Okay, switching gears here a little bit. You had dropped that pearl of wisdom from a leader earlier, who said forecasting always wrong. What degree curious on your leadership journey, what's some of the best leadership advice you've been given that shaped how you lead your teams today?
Aaron Boynton 40:50
I'd say one of the most important, I'm not even sure where I heard it, but the most important paradigm or who I heard it from first, I should say. But like the most important paradigm is really understanding what is important and what understanding what is urgent and and knowing that urgent is not always important. And in order to get ahead of the important stuff, no, you have to be you have to be very, I say, purposeful with how you allocate your own time to make sure the important stuff doesn't suffer because of things that are urgent, and being able to decipher which is, which is really important.
Mary Newville 41:36
Yeah, we're big fans of the urgent pride, urgent, important prioritization matrix. I don't know if you read like the Eisenhower. I think it's called the Eisenhower. There's different names, but where you kind of map into which quadrant
Aaron Boynton 41:51
they fall into, spending your time based off of, you know, what, which buckets are falling into each
Mary Newville 41:57
Yeah, it's kind of interesting, but that is, like, an incredibly hard thing to do, just I would think generally, in our world of content distraction and lots going on and people being parents and spouses as well as full time workers or students, but especially in a startup environment like our Dick Wolf, that is extra, extra hard, because there's just so many things that are Urgent, it
Aaron Boynton 42:20
becomes harder to think about what's important in the long term if you're always putting out today's fires, yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 42:27
How do you model that for your team? Like, are there certain questions you ask them to help guide them as they're trying to work on their prioritization matrix? Or, or, what does that kind of look like when you're
Aaron Boynton 42:40
leading, so we're constantly challenging as to what, what it is that we do. So like constant process improvement, because I think especially in finance, I mean, probably in any GNA function, you tend to you have business support, things that you have to do. And sometimes, you know those can become so automatic that you don't think about them. You don't think about like, how am I doing this? And maybe this, if this takes 20% of my time today, but it might be important to rethink how you do it. So it might be urgent that the task needs to get done, but important to think about, rethink about how you do it. So we constantly are striving to find different things where we can sort of do improvements on on our work styles, or improvement on our tasks that we have to do. And AI is another one. You know, I think here in the next month or two, probably probably in a couple months. Now we're gonna have a show and tell. Now, how does everybody use AI in their jobs today? Because there's gonna be a ton of great people have a ton of great ideas on this. Yeah, just gonna be sharing. And some people will be like, oh, did you think about this? I'm just be like, Oh my gosh, that's a great idea. I don't know why. I didn't think of that.
Chelsea Lowman 44:01
Oh, I feel like I'm definitely in the latter. Like, anytime someone does something with AI, I'm like, Whoa. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. I feel like I'm still very much an early adopt. I use it, but it's not my first thought. Like, it hasn't. I haven't gotten to that point yet to be like, Oh, let me consult AI, but we'll get there.
Aaron Boynton 44:26
Yeah, it's happening. For me. It's happening more and more. I mean, I've seen the last month even like my mindset has shifted where, you know, I I spent a couple hours last week just sort of peppering AI with questions about something and just evolving my
Mary Newville 44:44
own thinking. Yeah, is your go to model, Claude? You mentioned that earlier.
Aaron Boynton 44:53
I think Claude has come the furthest. But you know, also use copilot. That's.
Chelsea Lowman 45:02
Okay, well, before we get to our rapid fire questions, we always like to touch on mental health and well being. So just if you could share what does well being look like to you? How does it feel? How do you model that to your team? Just kind of a general, General. What does mental health and well being mean to Aaron,
Aaron Boynton 45:26
yeah, so I will say that my team puts in a lot of hours, and everybody works really hard, and that is at the same time rewarding and exhausting. So you have to, you have to take care of yourself, and that can mean different things to everybody. You know, for me, personally, spending time with my family is really important to me, and making sure, you know, I have kids that aren't going to be at home forever, and so enjoying those years of making sure I'm present with them, you know, making sure I have some time just about every evening, at least with them, and also in the mornings, that's that's really important for my mental well being. And then I also know I am in southern, sunny California, and I try to get outside once a day I can manage to do a meeting while I walk around the block with the dog or something. Those are the best days. Doesn't always happen, but fresh air really helps for me.
Chelsea Lowman 46:31
Yeah, I wish I could. Well, we can walk outside today in Minnesota, but it's supposed to snow in two days, so no, yeah, we still, we'll still have some snow for a little bit before it's sunny
Aaron Boynton 46:44
every day. Oh my gosh. We've already had 90s in California, which is, like, really absurd,
Chelsea Lowman 46:53
though, wow. Okay, well, I love that, getting outside, I'm assuming, like encouraging PTO, encouraging time off, taking breaks when needed. Awesome. All right, before we get to rapid fire, Mary, anything? Any last questions for Aaron, I
Mary Newville 47:13
don't think so. I feel like I had on my list. I needed to know if you had traveled for work as well, and that was so fun to learn about. And, yeah, really enjoyed the conversation.
Chelsea Lowman 47:26
That felt fun. Actually, I just remembered I have one. Where did you go to college?
Aaron Boynton 47:37
I went to Sonoma State University. That's what I thought.
Chelsea Lowman 47:41
California. Yes, our teammate, Haley Costa, went to Sonoma State. And I, yeah, I told her that we were having on the podcast today, and she was like, I think he went to Sonoma State, yeah. And then she was like, if you there's some way you can work that in of course, there was nowhere to naturally work is me asking and confirming, have two Sonoma State alum here,
Aaron Boynton 48:11
at least two, I'd say yeah, at least two, yeah, because it's a small school and it's obviously 1000s of miles away from headquarters,
Chelsea Lowman 48:21
so, right? Well, Haley is from California, that's
Aaron Boynton 48:25
right, she's much younger than I am i She probably, I don't know when she graduated, but it wasn't that long, though,
Chelsea Lowman 48:32
yeah, yeah, she's, yeah, okay, well, we got confirmation, I'll let her know it's official. Okay, so now we just have our last rapid fire questions. Just first thing that comes to your head, okay, best concert of your life.
Aaron Boynton 48:54
That's actually a really hard question for me, because I'm not a concert goer. Yeah, we don't go to a ton of concerts. The best concert I wanted to go to, but I couldn't, because I got sick with Paul McCartney. Love to see a Beatle, but unfortunately, that didn't happen,
Chelsea Lowman 49:14
like you had tickets and everything,
Aaron Boynton 49:17
or my my parents were going, and I was meant to go, but I was really sick. This is kind of it must have been the 90s, but been many years. I don't even know if he still does concerts, but maybe I have to look
Chelsea Lowman 49:29
into that he did. He was touring like a year, so it got so Right, yeah, so it's not too late. You might see Paul see a beetle, yeah? Um, okay, your favorite word cash? Is that really it, or are you just leaning into the brand?
Aaron Boynton 49:52
I mean, I don't know if I have a favorite word, but I'm going with cash. My team says that I say excellent a lot. So we can, we can say that too.
Chelsea Lowman 50:01
It's a fun one. I mean, so is cash, but, yeah, okay, cash and excellent. A place on your bucket list, Japan, same. I feel like you're you're halfway there. You're closer than I am
Mary Newville 50:21
out of a flight for you guys?
Aaron Boynton 50:23
Yeah, I don't think so. Our neighbors just went and they had the most amazing time, and I've just never been so I have to figure that out.
Chelsea Lowman 50:34
Okay, what's something that people often get wrong about you?
Aaron Boynton 50:39
They'll often think that me thinking is me being slow or me not understanding, but I am definitely a thinker, and I'm analytical about things, and sometimes it's not as quick as a reaction can be.
Chelsea Lowman 50:53
Okay, so you're not afraid of some silence while you ponder a little No, no, I'm not. Okay. Nice last one. Give us a snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that brings you joy,
Aaron Boynton 51:10
an ordinary moment in my life. So this is really ordinary, but I'll pick up my my two sons from school, the 16 and 14 year old, and so they're they're sometimes they're best friends, but oftentimes I see them at home, they hate each other. And if I pick them up from school, they're always walking together, and they're always smiling and laughing about their day. And that that makes me really happy, brings me a lot of joy.
Chelsea Lowman 51:41
I can see the visual of them, like walking towards the car,
Aaron Boynton 51:45
smiling, yeah, it's like they're friends, like, and whatever differences they're gonna have in 10 minutes, they're gone.
Chelsea Lowman 51:55
Cute. All right. Well, you survived your first podcast. You did it. Did Well, hopefully you enjoyed being on the podcast, like Mary said, we loved having you on. I feel like at some point we need to have a little like round table, like you. Susan Dustin, we need all the people and we can talk all things finance. Yeah. I'm excited about that, but I feel like it could be really fun, because you all are doing something a little bit different, but you're working together. You all know each other. You've known each other for like, years,
Aaron Boynton 52:39
yeah, yeah, that is, that is actually kind of funny. I've known both of them for, gosh, I guess I've known Dustin for like, 13 years or 12 years, and I've known Susan like 18 years or something crazy like that. Yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 52:54
Like, stories you all have, it would be, I'll workshop it, I'll present recommendation. But yes, thanks again. So much for being on and have a great rest of your day. You do as well. Bye. All right. That was a great conversation with Aaron. So fun getting to know him a little bit better. Well. Thank you all for listening, for our PAC members, happy last month of the fiscal year finished strong and excited to jump into our new fiscal year in May.
Mary Newville 53:32
Yes, we have an exciting guest. We have an exciting guest to kick off the next fiscal year with. So we look forward to connecting you all in May, and if you're interested in joining the pack and join us, joining us on our mission to end cyber risk, you can find all our open positions at Arctic wolf COMM backslash careers, bye, bye.
Chelsea Lowman 53:52
See you next time you
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