CFO of Tesla speaks to students

Deepak Ahuja, the Chief Financial Officer of Tesla Motors, spoke about his role at the company and the lessons he has learned from working there to kick off the Trojan Scholars Society’s Distinguished Lecture Series in Tutor Campus Center on Monday night.

“Tonight we hope to begin to develop what will be a full year long distinguished lecture series,” said Austin Reagan, a junior majoring in political science and environmental studies and co-chair of Trojan Scholars Society.

Tesla Motors is a company co-founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of creating fully electric cars. Ahuja was recently was named a 2014 CFO of the Year by the San Francisco Business Times.

After receiving a master’s degree in materials engineering at Northwestern University and a master’s in business administration at Carnegie Mellon University, Ahuja worked at Ford Motor Company until 2008, when he was asked to be the CFO at Tesla.

“At that time it was a very small company with about 200 employees,” Ahuja said. “They had yet to sell a single car.”

Ahuja spoke about his first interaction with Musk.

“Interestingly, he already had a reputation not as a great innovator, but more of a ruthless leader,” Ahuja said. “When I spoke with him, it just blew my mind. He was an incredible person, an amazing innovator, and had the vision and the guts to change the automotive industry in a way no one could imagine.”

The switch from Ford to Tesla was a life changing decision for Ahuja. He and his family left Michigan to begin work and school in Palo Alto, California at Tesla headquarters. One of Ahuja’s daughters is a current junior at USC. Ahuja explained the impact this decision had on him.

“I was doing very well at Ford, living a very comfortable lifestyle and could see myself retiring from Ford and life would have been just fine,” Ahuja said. “On the other hand, I could go down an uncharted path, take a huge risk, and it was a tough call but I decided to take a leap of faith in Elon.”

For Ahuja, working for Tesla has led him to focus on developing relationships.

“To be a good CFO, one has to build very strong relationships with the executives to see how to effectively give them direction on things to do better and differently and to guide them to stay aligned with the organization,” Ahuja said.

Ahuja credited his engineering background for the foundation of his success as CFO of Tesla.

“Engineering gives me sufficient basis and also the mindset of how I think, but as I look back, it is the combination of all these things that ultimately prepared me to be the CFO of Tesla,” Ahuja said.

Students who attended the event said they were inspired by Ahuja.

“I think his experience makes him a lot more qualified than most,” said Andrew Morris, a sophomore majoring in mathematics and natural sciences. “I was inspired by the fact that he was really comfortable with his job and he decided that he was inspired to do something different, because a lot of people, I think, ignore that inspiration, or don’t think it is worth pursuing.”

Ahuja pointed out the quality of students at USC.

“You all will go on and make amazing careers with your lives,” Ahuja said. “It is indeed a pleasure to be here with you. You all should be very proud of being here.”