When Gina Geter joined Hasbro three years ago as CFO and COO, business wasn't in great shape. With thin profit margins and a vast portfolio, the company best known for Monopoly, Nerf, and Transformers needed to figure out what it actually wanted to be when it grew up.
Getter has been working with CEO Chris Cox to lead what the company calls its Playing to Win strategy. The idea is to pivot Hasbro away from being a toy company and into, in her words, a “modern play company” built around IP that can survive across physical products, digital games and entertainment. She shared her learnings at the CFO Leadership Council's Spring 2026 Leadership Conference in Boston.
Start with an honest portfolio assessment. One of the first things Getter and Cox did was build a simple framework for every business in their portfolio, whether it was growing, optimizing or reinventing. So we had to quickly have some difficult conversations about where the money was going, where it wasn't going, and what actually needed to be done to protect the brand long-term. “That allowed us to be pretty decisive about who gets the money, who gets the resources, and so on. It also allowed us to realize the honest truth of what we need to do to ensure we reinvent these businesses for the next 100 years.”
The strategy is subtraction. In a creative company, ideas are never a problem. What is the priority? Getter challenges his team to move beyond brainstorming and do the hard work of figuring out what actually makes a difference. Because no company has unlimited capital, personnel, or time. “The easy part of strategy is coming up with ideas, having brainstorming sessions, and throwing everything at the wall. The hard part of strategy is boiling it down to what's actually going to matter, what's going to create the biggest impact, and what's going to create the most value for stakeholders.”
The combination of CFO and COO is one job, not two jobs. Getter does not consider her two titles to be additive. All management decisions are reflected in financial statements. Any financial constraints form operational constraints. The real advantage is speed. That means fewer approvals, fewer handoffs, and faster decision-making. “I don't have a finance team that's separate from the operations team or the technology team. We're one team. We're not people sitting on the sidelines keeping score and producing fancy reports. I want my team to be just as interested in what's happening in the supply chain as I am in what it means and how it's reflected in the P&L.”
The CEO-CFO relationship is built on candor. Getter and Cox openly argue before the organization, something that took some getting used to for the Hasbro team. She is clear about where the lines are: fighting privately and presenting a united front publicly. But if you find yourself always agreeing with the CEO, you're doing it wrong, she says. “He expects me to tell him the honest truth and be a part of that discussion. And I also have to find moments where I have to support him. He's the CEO and I support him 100 percent. It's about finding that balance of where the line is that you want to make sure you never cross.”
Get comfortable in gray. Getter's career has been built on saying yes to unpleasant assignments. These include an early boss at General Mills who simply told him to “do the finances” without any further explanation. She built a team of 4 to 100 people and spent three years rebuilding the entire function. Her advice for CFOs who want to grow beyond finance chief is to get as close to operations as possible, as quickly as possible. “From a personal perspective, every situation I've put myself in has been gray or ambiguous or very unpleasant. That's where I've grown the most.”
About AI: Don't drop millions of dollars on SaaS you don't need. Hasbro has made AI tools available company-wide and is seeing early productivity gains. On the creative side, we just launched Six Walls, an AI studio that allows Hasbro characters to power B2B experiences. Imagine an Optimus Prime receptionist greeting visitors, commenting on what they're wearing, and giving directions around the building. But on the enterprise software front, Getter is intentionally pumping the brakes. “I'm not going to spend another million dollars on a software-as-a-service solution until I understand what AI capabilities are coming. I don't think there's going to be a return.”
