Colin C. Leader
Summary
Innovative and results-driven finance leader and CFA charterholder with over a decade of experience driving strategic transformation across FP&A, investment analysis, and corporate finance. Proven expertise in designing and deploying AI-driven financial workflows, including intelligent agents, LLMs, and RAG pipelines, to enhance decision-making and unlock new operational efficiencies. Adept at managing cross-functional teams, leading end-to-end AI project lifecycles, and aligning advanced machine learning solutions with business goals. Demonstrated ability to deliver measurable value in high-growth SaaS environments through strategic automation, rigorous valuation analysis, and data-centric leadership. Deep understanding of core finance functions (Accounting, FP&A, Tax) and a track record of influencing executive strategy and product innovation through advanced analytics and applied AI.
Overview
12
12
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Founder and Director
LEADER'S ADVANTAGE
05.2024 - Current
- Designed and deployed intelligent agents and automated financial workflows to support strategic planning, FP&A, and investment analysis.
- Built Python-based solutions integrating large language models (LLMs) for knowledge retrieval, document summarization, and internal Q&A use cases.
- Prototyped small-scale generative AI tools using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and vector databases for financial document search and analysis.
- Applied prompt engineering techniques to improve the reliability and relevance of AI-driven outputs across financial modeling tasks.
- Delivered solutions using N8N, SQL, and cloud-based automation frameworks to streamline manual processes in data extraction and reporting.
Senior Corporate Strategy Analyst
T-MOBILE'S MINT AND ULTRA MOBILE
12.2020 - 05.2024
- Helped grow the company value by 5x to an eventual $1.35B sale to T-Mobile, with revenue increasing by over 275% over the course of employment, aided by detailed analyses and projects.
- Developed business cases and financial models to support new vertical launches, including market sizing, unit economics, and investment prioritization.
- Built and maintained capital allocation models to assess ROI on growth opportunities, guiding leadership through tradeoffs between profitability and scale.
- Collaborated across the organization, including EIM (Enterprise Information Management), Marketing, Product Management, and Finance. Led projects, including establishing key performance indicators, implementing a dashboard to analyze competitor pricing, and setting new recovery fees.
- Boosted revenue through promotions driven by analysis. Automated reports and built out survivorship analysis using advanced SQL and Python (pandas and developer level), saving hours per month.
- Avoided losses of $2 to $50M by conducting rigorous valuation analyses and due diligence on potential strategic acquisitions.
- Increased customer lifetime value (CLV) and avoided overages by building accurate forecasts of subscriber data usage on plans. In one case, increased CLV by ~$8 per sub across 800,000 subscribers. Detected seasonal patterns by identifying serial correlation issues using linear regression.
- Analyzed the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) telecom market and created a pipeline of potential acquisition targets.
- Led executive briefings and supported senior leadership with data-driven insights to inform strategic decisions, investor communications, and board-level reporting.
- Delivered data modeling solutions contributing to more accurate forecasting and tighter alignment between strategic plans and operational execution.
- Reduced customer care spending by ~$5 million related to labor and technology costs while maintaining quality standards.
- Recruited for the firm and mentored teammates, including SQL, statistics, and Python instruction.
Founder
AUTONOMOUS FINANCE, LLC
07.2019 - 11.2020
- Pre-COVID
- Helped small businesses optimize key metrics and anticipate customer demand. Performed strategic financial planning and analysis (FP&A).
- Created Excel VBA spreadsheets and developed customized dashboard applications using Access/SQL coding.
- During COVID
- Actively managed a portfolio of large-cap stocks that outperformed the S&P 500 by 20% from March 2020 to July 2020. Alpha was largely generated from rotation into airline and cruise line stocks in mid-March 2020.
- Tutored undergraduate and MBA students in Excel and accounting.
Senior Business Financial Analyst
MARTINLOGAN LTD.
11.2016 - 06.2019
- Supported forecasting and budgeting, identifying trends and explaining variances.
- Conducted due diligence on potential strategic acquisitions. Prepared for the sale of the company through thorough financial analysis.
- Helped propel the company's sales growth to 6% in the last few fiscal years despite negative industry growth by evaluating dealer and product line sales and identifying key performance indicators and insights using SQL queries and Excel/VBA.
- Contributed to a 2% increase in gross margin by conducting analyses of dealer and wholesale gross margins across product lines to establish sales opportunity matrices and evaluate proposed sales promotion impact.
Senior Investment Analyst
VININGS MANAGEMENT CORPORATION
05.2016 - 09.2016
- Evaluated fund manager performance and performed calculations on client assets of over $500M in life insurance. Tracked portfolio weights and correlation and benchmarked against liabilities.
- Performed capital budgeting such as NPV, IRR, or equivalent annual expenditure analysis for capital expenses and investments in corporate clients.
- Involved in presentations to corporate clients, including Medtronic, Ecolab, and Arris; banks, including Northern Trust and Wells Fargo; and all major life insurance companies.
- Reduced clients' taxes when funding executive compensation plans through deep knowledge of 409A nonqualified and ERISA plans, analyzing proxy statements and annual reports.
- Saved clients ~$10M by creating financial models with 30-year projections for consolidated financial statements, trusts, and intercorporate investments to determine the appropriate use of cash and inform investment strategy.
- Recommended a successful tactical asset allocation strategy for a corporate client before the market downturn in August 2015.
- Signed off on Big Four auditors' client life insurance accounting related to ASC 325-30 (FAS 85-4).
Analyst
VININGS MANAGEMENT CORPORATION
09.2014 - 04.2016
- Evaluated fund manager performance and performed calculations on client assets of over $500M in life insurance. Tracked portfolio weights and correlation and benchmarked against liabilities.
- Performed capital budgeting such as NPV, IRR, or equivalent annual expenditure analysis for capital expenses and investments in corporate clients.
- Involved in presentations to corporate clients, including Medtronic, Ecolab, and Arris; banks, including Northern Trust and Wells Fargo; and all major life insurance companies.
- Reduced clients' taxes when funding executive compensation plans through deep knowledge of 409A nonqualified and ERISA plans, analyzing proxy statements and annual reports.
- Saved clients ~$10M by creating financial models with 30-year projections for consolidated financial statements, trusts, and intercorporate investments to determine the appropriate use of cash and inform investment strategy.
- Recommended a successful tactical asset allocation strategy for a corporate client before the market downturn in August 2015.
- Signed off on Big Four auditors' client life insurance accounting related to ASC 325-30 (FAS 85-4).
Consulting Analyst
HI-BEAM CONSULTING, LLC
06.2013 - 08.2014
- Analyzed the financial reports and performed due diligence on potential investments for private equity in the manufacturing sector.
- Assisted clients in making business operation decisions by forecasting product line earnings.
Education
Bachelor of Science - Finance and Operations Management
KELLEY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Bloomington, IN05-2013
SQL for Data Science
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
Davis, CAValuation and LBO modeling
WALL STREET PREP
Newton, MAMicrosoft Generative AI for Data Analysis (6 courses), AI & ML Engineering – Foundations of AI and Machine Learning
MICROSOFT
Redmond, WASkills
- Finance AI
- Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A)
- Accounting
- Tax
- Treasury
- Machine learning
- Data science
- Data engineering
- Statistical analysis
- Time series forecasting
Certification
- Certification: CFA Charterholder 2022
- Programming: Python, SQL, VBA, Lisp
- AI/ML: LLMs, RAG pipelines, vector databases, prompt engineering, generative AI
- Tools: N8N, Tableau, Alteryx, Access, Microsoft BI, Snowflake
- Focus Areas: Applied AI in finance, automation, strategic decision support
Timeline
Founder and Director
LEADER'S ADVANTAGE
05.2024 - Current
Senior Corporate Strategy Analyst
T-MOBILE'S MINT AND ULTRA MOBILE
12.2020 - 05.2024
Founder
AUTONOMOUS FINANCE, LLC
07.2019 - 11.2020
Senior Business Financial Analyst
MARTINLOGAN LTD.
11.2016 - 06.2019
Senior Investment Analyst
VININGS MANAGEMENT CORPORATION
05.2016 - 09.2016
Analyst
VININGS MANAGEMENT CORPORATION
09.2014 - 04.2016
Consulting Analyst
HI-BEAM CONSULTING, LLC
06.2013 - 08.2014
SQL for Data Science
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
Valuation and LBO modeling
WALL STREET PREP
Microsoft Generative AI for Data Analysis (6 courses), AI & ML Engineering – Foundations of AI and Machine Learning
MICROSOFT
Bachelor of Science - Finance and Operations Management
KELLEY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
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