If you were handed the keys to the finances of your hometown at 26 years old, what would you have done?
For Eric Mason, CFO of the City of Quincy, Massachusetts, this became a reality during the onset of the pandemic. During a time when his hometown needed financial leadership at a moment of unprecedented unpredictability, Mason stepped up. Now, over four years later, he continues to serve as finance chief as he and his team balance a $425 million budget and a $1.3 billion debt portfolio.
Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
First CFO Position: 2020
Notable previous positions:
- Chief analyst and economist, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
- Director of market research, Databloc
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
ADAM ZAKI: You’ve obtained a significant position very early in your career. How did you get here and how did you learn and grow while also fulfilling the needs of the job?
ERIC MASON: I think the learning process requires a lot of time. I always call myself the accidental CFO; I never planned on being involved in finance. I am an economist. I didn't take many finance courses in college. I took all economics courses. I’m a math guy.
What happened was, I got a call on March 15, 2020. The pandemic had just kind of started. Calling me was Mayor Koch, whose job it is to appoint the CFO of the city, and he told me he had just gotten off the phone with the then-governor of Massachusetts, who has such a cool job now. It was then the mayor told me the governor said the entire state was going to shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I always call myself the accidental CFO; I never planned on being involved in finance."
Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
At that point, I was chief analyst and economist. My job was to build budgets and work with numbers. I was coding, building budgets and setting tax rates. That was my world. So I said to the mayor on the phone, “Well, what do you want to do, boss?” He then told me the previous CFO had decided to retire — something we knew was going to happen — and at the same time we were going to shut down.
And he said, “Eric, I want you to take over as CFO until this whole thing blows over, and afterward you can go back to chief analyst and economist if you want, because I know that’s what you like doing.” So I said okay. I showed up for my first day of work as the CFO in jeans and a polo because everything was shut down. I had a skeleton crew and I was 26 years old.
At 26, you can be dumb, and I knew that. I got advice from someone I know who became very successful young, and I asked him how I should approach all of this. He said, “They are either going to like your age or they won’t. You can’t change your age, there’s nothing you can do about it. Just dive in.”
So, to learn, in an environment that because of COVID-19 was extremely unpredictable, I turned to what I always leaned on as an economist, reading and doing research. I dove into reading what I thought would help me learn what I had to.
I read the entire Cares Act, all 1100 pages, and all 1200 pages of the American Rescue Plan Act. When the Biden infrastructure plan rolled out, I read all 1600 pages of that too. I don’t want to say I didn’t know what I was doing. I was very familiar with economics, finance and Massachusetts law, but I just read and read and read and turned to the people around me for support.
Early on, were you ever worried about asking a stupid question?
MASON: I had this professor at West Virginia University (WVU) where I went to school, Dr. Joshua Hall. He told me something I will never forget — that I should always assume I am the dumbest person in the room. If you think you’re the smartest person, he said, you’ll never learn from anyone.
"At 26, you can be dumb ... ‘They are either going to like your age or they won’t. You can’t change your age, there’s nothing you can do about it. Just dive in.’"
Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
Especially early on, looking back on it, I asked a lot of dumb questions. But like I said, I was 26. I don’t think it was really that weird for a 26-year-old to be asking dumb questions. What I’ve noticed in this position is a lot of the successful people I deal with — auditors, attorneys, law enforcement, what have you — they like tenacity. People are okay with you not knowing everything. I think you learn a lot more from scars than pats on the back.
You grew up in this area, the birthplace of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, who had a lot to say about taxes and how they should be spent. How does all of that play into how you approach your job?
MASON: It’s huge. The history of this place is incredible. As you mentioned, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, two former U.S. Presidents, are from here and are buried with their first ladies next door to where we are now. My family also owned a gas station for 75 years here. I worked there as a kid. If you needed gas in Quincy or locked your keys in your car, odds are you met me or a member of my family.
Risk is a really serious thing to me when taking all of this into consideration. I am not allowed to increase risk. Even if I have an idea I think is good about what we should do with our money if it increases risk, I can’t do it. I don’t believe taxpayers should take on additional risks. If I were hired by a private company, the CEO or owner or board of that company would set the tone for risk tolerance and maybe in that situation I would be doing different things.
The mayor is like our CEO, and to him and us as a whole, there’s a tremendous amount of respect for the public’s dollars. There isn’t a cent that we get that doesn't come from someone’s hard work, and growing up here and seeing my family operate and grow a business here, keeping that in mind is important to me.
How has your experience as an economist played into your perspective on the expansion of the CFO’s role regarding the recent hype around technology, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence and automation?
MASON: I think all hype is inauthentic. As an economist, we ask questions. We don’t get too excited about anything. We don’t look into stuff superficially; we get into the nitty gritty. We embrace the boring stuff. One thing I’ve noticed is people who come from similar backgrounds as me are starting to get excited about AI. I had a premium account to ChatGPT early on when there was a wait list, and I have been playing around with it for a while, and I think it’s a great tool.
When something seems mystical, like some of the perceptions this technology has gotten, there’s always more to be looked at. There's this misconception that these large language models are strong AI. Every time I talk to someone who is a big proponent of AI, I always say, well, this is weak as AI is concerned, and they usually push back and try to tell me that these types of AI [like ChatGPT] are really strong.
They kind of agree with me, reluctantly most times, because there’s a lot of benefit to being a hype guy around this stuff. A lot of these large language models are one-dimensional, they are not cross-functional yet. I always say a strong AI to me is like a Terminator, it’s always making decisions, it’s always reprogramming. Weak AI is only good at one thing.
What does the term “modern CFO” mean to you?
MASON: A few weeks ago, I was speaking at this conference and I commented that there is no such thing as a non-analytical CFO anymore. If you don’t want to be an analyst, then you can’t be a CFO anymore, in my opinion. You don’t have to be the best coder in the world, you don’t have to know how to program SQL, but if you can’t understand the mathematical processes that produce the numbers you’re looking at, I don’t know how you can be a modern CFO.
I’m also an adjunct professor at WVU now, and I think a lot of the MBA programs around the country are pushing toward financial analysis and financial analytics, and these concentrations are becoming more popular. I don’t have a CPA background like many CFOs, but I think the CPA is still probably the most valuable certification you can get in finance. But I think the modern CFO has to be more than just the traditional lead accountant, we need to be focused on delineating our responsibilities.
"There is no such thing as a non-analytical CFO anymore. If you don’t want to be an analyst, then you can’t be a CFO anymore, in my opinion."
Eric Mason
CFO, City of Quincy, Massachusetts
For example, we have 37 different departments that act as pretty much conglomerates. The actions of the police department and the fire department don’t impact the parks department. With that in mind, I just referenced $100 million in expenditures. The police spend $41 million a year, the fire department spends $37 million. In our town of 100,000 people, if you’re a business with that number of expenses, you’re a decent-sized business.
So, there’s a lot of different data like police response times and details on park and building projects that I take into consideration when allocating dollars. We need to be able to synthesize all of that data. Data has become so ubiquitous and so common that I don’t know how someone who can’t rationally compress data into information that can help them make good financial decisions can be a CFO nowadays.
This is part one of a multi-part Q&A. Read part two here. View the homepage for the series here.