The CFO who runs on smiles

More than numbers

“My currency is in smiles.”

It’s not the answer most people would expect from a chief financial officer, but Dr. Tim Naddy (BSAc ’00, MAcc ’00) has spent much of his career challenging expectations.

Over the course of a career spanning public accounting, academia, sports entertainment and entrepreneurship, Naddy has worked to make finance less intimidating and more accessible to the people around him, a philosophy he calls “phun with phinance.”

Yet Naddy’s path to finance wasn’t straightforward.

When Naddy arrived at the University of Florida, he envisioned a future in computer graphics and entertainment. But after taking his first coding course, he quickly realized he was more interested in the business side of the industry.

For Naddy, redirecting his focus to business meant going after what he viewed as the “pinnacle” of business education: accounting.

Finding his path

Naddy has spent more than two decades translating complex financial concepts into something people can understand.

But before that, he was a newly minted Fisher School of Accounting graduate, starting his career as a CPA at Big Four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in Tampa.

“The foundation that was built at the University of Florida was stellar,” he said. “I knew all the technical language. I knew the buzzwords. I knew what things were.”

But it would take hands-on experience to bridge the gap between the classroom and the workplace.

Over the next eight years, Naddy built his career in public accounting, working at PwC and Deloitte before pivoting to the private sector in 2008.

“I jumped from the safety of the auditing and public accounting job into the private sector, and the private sector was starting to dry up,” he explained.

He ended that year working as the vice president of finance and accounting for an advertising and marketing company that catered toward real estate professionals.

“Imagine that,” he said. “[Then I was] in the real estate industry as the bottom [was] just falling out of it.”

Naddy stayed at that company for a few years while he worked on his doctorate, eventually earning his DBA in Business Administration, Management and Operations from Apollo University.

That same year he became an assistant accounting professor at Shorter University in Georgia, teaching classes in a variety of topics including financial accounting, micro fraud examination, managerial accounting and business finance.

While teaching, Naddy realized how important it was for him to keep one foot in academia.

“I love the idea of being able to speak something into a student and, all of a sudden, you see the light in their eyes turn on.”

In 2022, as his two sons grew older, Naddy decided to leave Georgia and resettle in Tampa.

Then, in Naddy’s words, “there was a kooky baseball team down in Savannah that needed a finance guy.”

That team was the Savannah Bananas.

Phun with phinance

For Naddy, no two days are the same at Savannah Bananas. He typically oversees the finance operations, budgeting and financial logistics for the collegiate summer league baseball team.

During the season, he travels with the team while balancing budgeting, financial logistics and the behind-the-scenes operations that keep the organization running.

“Hard work and long hours don’t bother me,” Naddy said. “There are certain times when you really do have to just roll up your sleeves and get into it.”

Despite the typical seriousness of the finance world, Naddy actively puts an effort to put the “phun” in “phinance.”

“I’ve tried very hard over the last 25-26 years to curate a very fun finance atmosphere,” he said. “I understand it is a serious thing, there’s a lot of technical stuff that are happening, and the finance and accounting functions are literally the life blood of the organization.”

But through it all, Naddy’s “sole goal across my entire career, is to make finance more approachable.”  

Questions like, “how do I make it to where people feel comfortable enough that they can ask me the simple and hard questions?” are at the heart of what Naddy does.

That goal is what pushed Naddy to start his own nonprofit organization.  

Leaving a Legaci

In February, Naddy launched Legaci Forge, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting athletes by offering structured financial education, entrepreneurship development and disciplined mentorship that they can bring back to their communities.

“Legaci Forge is where my heart is,” Naddy said. “I’m able to help an entire community understand financial relationships, and also help them gain access to the CPAs, the lawyers, the insurance, the insurance companies, and everybody that’s around who have this knowledge.”

For Naddy, that’s exactly the kind of legacy he hopes to leave behind.

Naddy’s commitment to mentorship extends far beyond Legaci Forge.

At the Savannah College of Art and Design, he’s continued to serve as an adjunct lecturer while balancing his role at Savannah Bananas and as a nonprofit founder.

Through guest lectures and mentorship, he continues to engage with students while staying connected to the broader Gator network.

“The Gator Nation has so many people out there who are willing to help,” he said. “When I have a Gator mentor, I love keeping it in the family.”

Today, whether he’s mentoring athletes, lecturing students, leading finance operations for the Savannah Bananas, building Legaci Forge, or speaking on his podcast Dr. Naddy’s Business, Biceps, and BS, Naddy remains focused on the same goal he’s pursued throughout his career: helping people understand their own value, while helping them understand finance.

As a CFO with smiles for currency, Naddy knows some returns can’t be measured in dollars.