Team

Christine Ferguson-Rau is the founder and principal of Ferguson Financial Consulting, Inc., a firm that provides CFO/COO support for B2B businesses with revenues from start-up to $50MM who want to improve their cash flow, raise capital, and make their business more valuable.   She helps business owners prepare for a successful change in ownership, through succession or a transaction, by maximizing the companies value.  She identifies opportunities to make the business generate more cash by bringing to bear her deep experience founding and growing companies and turning around companies that are struggling. Ferguson-Rau Financial Consulting, Inc. engagements have included:

• Chief Financial Officer for a privately-held, fourth-generation manufacturing business.  Results: Increased the firm’s working capital by 300% to support the firm’s strong growth, restructured the firm’s benefits to increase benefits and lower costs.  Results:  Within 12 months firm added $2.6MM in revenue and increased headcount from 26 to 43 and doubled net profit;
• Chief Financial Officer for an early stage technology manufacturing company that produces edge computer vision systems.  Restructured the firm’s financial statements to provide accurate insights into the firm’s financial position and demonstrate traction.  This work has enabled the firm to increase access to both debt and equity capital.  
• Chief Operating Officer for an educational technology firm.  Results:  Took firm successfully through an early-stage funding round; raised the full amount of their funding request;
• Chief Financial Officer of one of the fastest-growing private firms in Pittsburgh.  Increased working capital to support the firm’s strong growth, and increased the firm’s valuation by rebuilding the firm’s  financial and operational infrastructure;
• Chief Financial Officer/Chief Operating Officer of a 501(c)6 technology firm in the MEMS and Sensors industry.  Increased revenues and lowered costs to expand margins.  Restructured financial and operational processes to expand profit margins.  Prepared firm for successful sale;
• Chief Financial Officer for a privately held firm in behavioral healthcare.  She supported the firm’s expansion by negotiating leases as well as doing purchase/lease analysis for several new locations of the firm.  She provided strategic support doing corporate valuation analysis to evaluate a buy-out offer for the firm.
• Advisor to a Carnegie-Mellon Technology start-up that successfully raised funds in the firm’s first 6 months winning two pitch competitions, one local and one national, and gained acceptance into a competitive  start-up accelerator.

Ms. Ferguson-Rau began her career on Wall Street with Bankers Trust Company.  She returned to Pittsburgh to work for Mellon Bank, N.A.  She worked in increasingly responsible roles at Mellon Bank, including operations management, cash management, commercial lending in the upper Middle Market, M&A, systems design and development, and product development for The Boston Company following its acquisition by Mellon Bank.  She served on the acquisition teams for the purchase of Dreyfus in New York, Girard Bank in Philadelphia, and The Boston Company.

In 1997, Ms. Ferguson-Rau began an entrepreneurial venture with her brother, noted Executive Chef Len Spampinato.  That venture, Aromas Fine Catering, Inc., was highly successful and in operation from 1997 through 2005.  In 2005 Christine Ferguson-Rau founded Spampinato Enterprises, Inc. d.b.a. Prima Eventi, Inc., an event planning and production firm for which she continues to serve as President.

In 2014, she founded Ferguson Financial Consulting, Inc. in response to a request from a colleague.  She was asked to turn around a $5MM small business.  That engagement lead to a successful exit. Following that engagement, she has accepted a long list of engagements as a fractional CFO/COO and interim CEO for small to medium sized businesses.

Christine Ferguson-Rau earned a B.S. with University Honors in Industrial Engineering with concentrations in Economics and Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, and an M.B.A Finance from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.  She is a Certified Commerical Lender and Cash Manager.  

Ms. Ferguson-Rau has been an instructor of corporate finance leading a section of the capstone course “Management Game” since 2000 at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon supporting tenured professor of finance, Dr. David Lamont.  She was a member of the Carnegie Mellon University Student Affairs Counsel (USAC) from 2002 through 2019.  

Ms. Ferguson-Rau launched and lead a new program through the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University in the fall of 2021 called Strength In Numbers that successfully built capacity in women and minority-owned businesses in the under-resourced communities of Wilkinsburg and Homewood. 

Ms. Ferguson-Rau serves the community in leadership roles.  She serves is a member of The Women’s Board of Pittsburgh and of the Finance Committee of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Glenshaw.  She speaks at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University as part of the “Connects” series of live and on-line talks on topics relevant to the Community.  She was a founding member of the Investment Committee of Next Act Fund, an angel investment fund serving women’ owned businesses in Pittsburgh.  She served on the board of NEXTPittsburgh and was an advisor on the sell-side of the ownership change transaction.  She served as chair of the finance committee of the board of the Rachel Carson Homestead Association, served as a member of the Civic Light Opera Guild and the Ladies Hospital Aid Society, and chaired The Bartko Foundation development committee.  She served for 10 years on the Finance Committee of the Pastoral Council of St. Scholastica Parish in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania.  She served as a member of the Carnegie Mellon University Executive Board for five years and is a past president of the Carnegie Mellon Alumni Association of Pittsburgh.  

She resides in Highland Park with her husband and has two sons.