Every prosperous business has a leader who sees beyond the numbers. Samantha Johnson asserts that long-term prosperity may be created, developed, and realized through the use of finance. Samantha has built a reputation throughout her career for embracing complexity, leading change, and helping companies navigate pivotal development moments. She has experience in a wide range of industries, including wine, direct-to-consumer retail, hotels, SaaS, consulting, and destination management.

Despite the diversity of industries, one theme has remained constant: a passion for supporting high-growth organizations and building finance functions that empower rather than restrict. In her role as Chief Financial Officer at RMC, Samantha combines financial stewardship with a deep appreciation for the people, relationships, and experiences that define the company’s success. Under her financial leadership, RMC achieved one of the strongest growth years in its 36-year history, creating the financial visibility, forecasting discipline, and strategic insight necessary to support both exceptional client experiences and sustainable long-term growth.

A Career Built on Growth

Samantha’s journey to the CFO role at RMC has been anything but conventional, and that is exactly how she prefers it. Her career has taken her across North America, Europe, and Australia, and through a range of industries that many finance leaders never explore. Despite the varied experiences, one theme has remained constant: growth.

“I have been fortunate to work with businesses at pivotal moments in their journey,” she says. One of those defining experiences came at Gymshark, the British sportswear brand that achieved unicorn status at remarkable speed. Those years reinforced the importance of adaptability, practical decision-making, and continuous learning.

“The best financial leaders bring curiosity from every chapter of their careers,” she says. “They continually ask: What can we learn? What can we improve? How can we make things easier for the people delivering value every day?” This mindset reflects a leadership style focused on supporting and enabling others, one that aligns closely with her background as a National League basketball player in England, where teamwork, discipline, and performance were essential.

Samantha further strengthened her expertise through an Executive MBA from London Business School. Combined with more than 15 years of finance leadership experience, it added analytical depth to an already diverse professional journey.

Finance as a Partner

The finance function at RMC is designed to do far more than manage reporting and close the books. Under Samantha’s leadership, the team views the business as its customer and measures success by the value it creates through better decision-making.

“Finance isn’t simply measuring outcomes after the fact; we’re helping shape them,” Samantha says. She has worked to transform the finance team from a traditional reporting function into a strategic business partner. A key part of that transformation has been the introduction of a disciplined forecasting process that provides leaders with timely insights and helps them make informed decisions before challenges arise.

At RMC, finance operates much like the company itself: as a service partner. Just as RMC’s destination teams are focused on creating seamless experiences for clients, Samantha believes finance should create clarity and remove obstacles for internal teams. Success is measured not only by financial performance, but by how effectively the department helps others make informed decisions, solve challenges, and deliver exceptional results.

“We focus on understanding trends, identifying opportunities and risks quickly, and ensuring resources are aligned with strategic priorities,” she explains. This approach has created a culture of shared accountability across the organization. Financial performance is not seen as the responsibility of the finance team alone. Instead, it is owned by leaders across the business who work together to achieve common goals.

At the heart of this strategy is a commitment to profitable and sustainable growth. Samantha believes that growth must create long-term value rather than simply increase revenue. “Growth for growth’s sake isn’t enough,” she says. “We want profitable growth that enables us to continue investing in our people, technology, client experiences, and future opportunities.”

Transformation Built on Three Pillars

When Samantha joined RMC, she inherited a business with a strong legacy and a significant opportunity to modernize its finance function. Over the past two years, she has engineered a transformation that rests on three equally important pillars: people, processes, and systems.

Her team built out FP&A capabilities from scratch, implemented a new HRIS, modernized accounts payable systems, and enhanced the reporting infrastructure. However, Samantha is clear that technology was the final piece of the transformation, not the starting point. “Great systems don’t fix poor communication or unclear workflows,” she says. “That’s why we focused first on establishing consistency, accountability, and shared understanding before layering in technology.”

The sequencing mattered. Samantha’s team launched a monthly rolling forecast process beginning in simple spreadsheets before transitioning to a dedicated FP&A platform. Employees were first helped to understand the purpose and value of the tools before being trained in how to use them. This initiative played a significant role in delivering the strongest year-over-year revenue growth in RMC’s 36-year history, alongside significant EBITDA expansion. Better visibility led to better decisions.

She also launched two AI agents to support operations teams, reducing vendor bill review processes from hours to minutes. For Samantha, however, technology is never the goal; it is the enabler. By automating repetitive tasks and increasing efficiency, teams gain something far more valuable: time. More time to collaborate, innovate, build relationships, and focus on delivering exceptional experiences for clients and partners.

Leading Across Borders

Long before leading cross-border teams became a common corporate challenge, Samantha was managing finance functions across three continents. She carried from those years a lesson she applies without exception: one-size-fits-all leadership fails almost everyone.

“Everyone wants to be seen and valued as an individual,” she says. “People are motivated differently, communicate differently, and thrive under different circumstances.” That experience also taught her the importance of trust, clarity, and creating alignment around a shared purpose, regardless of geography.

At RMC, where teams span multiple destinations and success depends on seamless collaboration between departments and geographies, that perspective proves invaluable. “We celebrate individuality while uniting around a common goal,” she says: delivering remarkable experiences for clients and supporting each other in doing so.

Building High-Performing Teams

When Samantha speaks about talent development, her focus goes beyond technical skills and formal frameworks. She believes that attitude is one of the most important qualities in any team member. “You can train skills, but you can’t train attitude,” she says.

One initiative she is particularly proud of involved asking her finance team to define its own mission and choose the words they want internal clients to use when describing them. That ownership creates accountability and pride.

The team is guided by a simple principle: strive to be 1% better every day. “Continuous improvement isn’t about perfection,” she explains. “It’s about small, consistent actions that compound over time.”

Looking Beyond Quarterly Performance

Balancing short-term financial obligations against long-term strategic ambitions is, Samantha believes, one of the most important and often overlooked responsibilities of any CFO. “The short-term matters because it creates credibility and provides the resources needed to invest in the future,” she says. “But if you’re only focused on quarterly results, it’s easy to miss opportunities that build enduring value.”

At RMC, the questions she asks go well beyond this quarter’s margin. She continually evaluates whether today’s decisions are aligned with the organization’s long-term goals, whether the business is investing in the right people, developing scalable infrastructure, and preserving the culture that employees and clients value most. “It’s about stewardship,” she says, “protecting what makes RMC special while creating the conditions for continued growth and innovation.”

AI as a Finance Enabler

Samantha views artificial intelligence as an opportunity to enhance the finance profession rather than disrupt it. She believes AI can help finance professionals spend less time on routine tasks and more time on work that creates meaningful value for the business.

“For years, talented finance professionals have spent significant time on activities that, while necessary, don’t fully leverage their potential,” she says. AI enables finance teams to focus more on strategic thinking, business partnering, and problem-solving. At RMC, her approach has been to review each process that touches finance and identify opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness, rather than adopting technology for its own sake.

She also sees AI as an opportunity to attract diverse, ambitious talent to the profession. As finance roles become more strategic, they can appeal to individuals who want to influence decisions and drive meaningful outcomes rather than simply report on them.

Why RMC

When asked what excites her most about the future of RMC, Samantha’s answer isn’t technology, forecasting, or financial metrics; it’s people.

“At the end of the day, we’re in the business of creating experiences and relationships. Finance helps make that possible, but it’s our people who bring it to life.”

She believes RMC’s greatest strength lies in its ability to combine creativity, operational excellence, and genuine human connection. As the company continues to grow, she remains focused on ensuring that growth enhances, not replaces, the culture and service that have defined RMC for more than three decades.

Defense Wins Championships

Samantha’s experience as a National League basketball player did more than develop her athletic skills. It helped shape a leadership philosophy that continues to influence her approach to business today. “Defense wins championships, and a strong finance team provides exactly that foundation,” she says.

She believes that effective finance teams create the stability and discipline organizations need to succeed. Through disciplined cost management and thoughtful planning, they provide the confidence required to pursue growth while maintaining a strong foundation.

Sport also taught her how to respond to setbacks. “You don’t define yourself by setbacks,” she says. “You learn, adapt, and come back stronger. Even in victory, there’s always an opportunity to improve.” And success, she is clear, is never individual. “You win together and lose together.”

Advice for the Next Generation

As one of the most visionary women CFOs driving financial excellence in 2026, Samantha’s advice to aspiring women finance leaders is deceptively simple: find an industry you genuinely love.

“One of the greatest advantages of a career in finance is that the skills are transferable,” she says. She has applied that principle throughout her career, choosing sectors aligned with her passions, including wine, sport, hospitality, and the business of creating remarkable experiences. “When you care deeply about what you’re building, you bring more energy, creativity, and authenticity to your work. You show up differently.”

She also encourages aspiring leaders to remain curious, seek out diverse experiences, and resist the instinct to wait until they feel fully prepared. “Some of the best opportunities in my career came from stepping outside my comfort zone and saying yes before I felt completely ready.”

Her final message reflects the leadership philosophy that has guided her career: “If you can combine competence with compassion, ambition with humility, and performance with purpose, you’ll make an impact far beyond the numbers.”