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Frontier Finance: Lessons from Microsoft’s AI-Powered Finance Transformation

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Finance is being rewritten by AI — one prompt at a time. Microsoft Netherlands CFO Sandra Valenta Ivankovic takes you inside Microsoft's Frontier Finance journey: the everyday Copilot habits, the agents now reviewing contracts and reconciling accounts, and the cultural shift turning finance professionals into change-makers. This keynote explores Microsoft’s Frontier Finance journey: the strategy, the culture shift, and the practical lessons every CFO, founder, and finance leader can apply now.

ABOUT SANDRA VALENTA IVANKOVIC

Sandra Valenta Ivankovic is Microsoft Netherlands CFO, joining from Microsoft Consumer business, where she has been EMEA CFO since 2023.

She brings a wealth of finance experience and is a proven people leader supporting the teams through multiple business transformations. Her Microsoft journey started in early 2021 as Western Europe Consumer Finance lead, joining from Nike Inc where she spent more than 10 years in multiple territory & EMEA HQ roles, including commercial stints and leading X-functional teams.

Before Nike, she worked in KPMG and in finance industry in her hometown Zagreb, Croatia. Early in her career, she also experienced working in diverse cultural environments in Malaysia and New Zealand, an explorative journey that she loved and that brought her to the Netherlands in 2016.

She lives in Hilversum with her husband, two pre-teen kids and the true boss in the household- main coon cat called Lila. They fully embraced the Dutch lifestyle (8 bikes in the household) and Sandra’s goal is to make a lasting impact in the country they have been privileged to call home for the last 10 years.