Michael Day has spent 30 years where finance gets most interesting, and most consequential: at the point where the numbers have to become live business decisions.
From multibillion-dollar deals and capital strategy to growth, transformation, and the occasional financial knot that needs untangling, Michael brings a CFO’s discipline and an operator’s perspective to the calls that can change the trajectory of a business.
That perspective was honed across a career spanning finance, operations, technology, and complex dealmaking, from hands-on CFO and controller roles to structuring multibillion-dollar commercial engagements. Along the way, Michael has helped companies sharpen forecasts, improve cash flow and profitability, raise capital, negotiate major contracts, strengthen financial operations, and prepare for transactions and exits.
He knows how to liberate numbers from the spreadsheet and translate financial machinery into something CEOs, boards, investors, and operating teams can actually use.
The scale has sometimes been considerable. Across leadership roles at Dell Technologies, Atos, Ensono, and other companies, Michael has helped structure, price, negotiate, and close more than $10 billion in total contract value, including complex global engagements ranging from $200 million to $2 billion. But he doesn’t just know how to get a deal signed; he understands the other side of the equation, too. At Ensono, he identified approximately $5 million in annual travel savings and helped develop alternative financing solutions that reduced client interest costs by roughly $1 million a year.
As a fractional CFO at TechCXO, Michael works alongside founders, CEOs, boards, and investors when businesses get more complicated than their financial foundations. His work is concentrated in technology and software, manufacturing and industrials, and private equity-backed businesses. He has built finance functions from the ground up, straightened out financial statements and balance sheets, established forecasting and cash-flow disciplines, improved margins, raised capital, implemented ERP systems, strengthened controls, and prepared companies for financing, transactions, and what comes next. He is as comfortable in the boardroom as he is down in the weeds, since sometimes the real strategic questions come down to what’s sitting in the general ledger.
Michael’s drive extends well beyond business. He competed in Olympic trials in both water polo and swimming in the early 1990s, and later raced in an ITU corporate triathlon relay in Cancún. He brings that same energy to STEM board service, philanthropy, travel, and time with his family and animals.
Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Texas at San Antonio and is pursuing an MBA in Management Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has also completed executive education at Columbia Business School and holds certifications focused on generative AI strategy and business leadership.