Interim CFO & Financial Strategy
Sharon L. Ephraim brings three decades of CFO and treasury experience, from startup through IPO, to private equity, venture, real estate, SaaS, and nonprofit organizations navigating growth, transition, or scale.
Selected Metrics
Sharon Ephraim's career spans the full capital markets spectrum, grounded in formal credit training as a Continental Bank lender. She moved from corporate treasury and securitization at Wheels Inc., managing roughly $2 billion in annual funding across 30+ banking relationships, to real estate finance at Wrightwood Capital and Ares Management, arranging over $2 billion in commercial real estate financings and managing a revolving $650 million CDO, to venture capital as CFO of Alumni Ventures Group, where she scaled finance operations for its rapid growth. That range across commercial banking, real estate, private equity, and venture capital, in startup, private, and public structures, is what lets her diagnose quickly and act with credibility across a boardroom or a cap table.
Sharon leads by listening first. Before she proposes a system, a process, or a transaction, she takes the time to understand how a client's finance and operations actually work: what the goal is, where the friction is, what the numbers are really saying, and what the team needs in order to move forward. That diagnostic instinct, paired with a player-coach approach, is what lets her translate complex finance into clear options for decisions, scalable operations, and durable growth.
Once she understands the drivers, Sharon builds the infrastructure to match: implementing the systems, compliance programs, and reporting that let organizations scale with confidence. The result for her clients is consistent: streamlined workflows, stronger controls, cleaner reporting, and departments that finally understand each other. Through Ephraim Advisory, she works as interim CFO, independent advisor, or full-time executive, depending on what a company needs most.
Stepping into finance leadership during a transition, fundraise, or growth inflection point, with the bandwidth to also lead day-to-day operations.
Implementation of Juniper Square, Carta, NetSuite, and ShareWorks to modernize reporting, centralize cap tables, and remove spreadsheet risk.
Strategic evaluation and analysis of existing practices aimed at improving financial performance and efficiency.
Advising founders and management teams on the metrics, workflows, and financial discipline that matter most for what they are trying to accomplish.
Serving as interim CFO to a real estate investment manager, Sharon enhanced the firm's Juniper Square implementation and rebuilt its distribution process, using the system's waterfall calculations and investor reporting tools. The result was a faster, more transparent reporting cycle for limited partners, cutting distribution processing time from weeks to hours.
During an executive leadership transition, Sharon conducted a comprehensive internal controls and finance function assessment for the organization's board. Her findings gave the board a clear roadmap of the finance function and helped the department strengthen communication with other operating groups.
As interim CFO for an emerging private equity fund manager, Sharon led the firm toward completing its Carta implementation and cleaned up the management company's financial processes, providing the data needed to support fund financials handled in Carta. The engagement also included a focused revamp of the firm's expense management.
Sharon assessed the financial processes, KPIs, and workflows of a robotics-related SaaS platform, identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and clarify department roles to strengthen operational connectivity. The engagement gave the executive team the facts they needed to act on their growth plans.
Sharon advises SaaS founders on financial performance and KPIs, helping early- and growth-stage teams translate both opportunities and raw financial data into decisions about fundraising and strategy.
Available for interim CFO engagements and strategic advisory work with your firm to address your needs. Based between Evanston, IL and Plymouth, MA, with the flexibility to travel or work on-site as an engagement requires. Contact us to arrange a preliminary discussion.