Aurélie Diliberto

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CORPORATE FINANCE ADVISOR

Aurélie has worked at our headquarters in Visé, Belgium, since 2018, as Corporate Finance Advisor. She received her 2020 Knauf Insulation Leadership Award for support in setting up the finance function in our new start-up company Knauf Energy Solutions (KES). From the beginning, she developed an agile financial vision for KES, set priorities and worked on the design and implementation of processes to keep senior leadership as well as KES team members updated daily on the company’s situation.

Aurélie Diliberto - CORPORATE FINANCE ADVISOR
When you have a boss who gives guidance but allows you to be independent, you can really flourish.
Aurélie Diliberto

What do you think contributes to leadership success?

For me you need to have expertise — and if you want people to follow you — you need to lead by example. Everyone needs to be involved and on board and you need to share success with your team. This means that any achievements are team achievements.

What is your greatest achievement at Knauf Insulation and why?

My experience with KES. It was a great start-up and learning experience. When I arrived, the company had just started and finance organisation had to be created from scratch. The company needed accounting systems, human resources structure, financial processes to be defined and put in place (purchase-to-pay, order-to-cash,…), close follow-up of its treasury situation.

It was an incredibly exciting challenge to work on the organisation of all these processes on my own as well as to carry out strategic analysis in setting up budgets with projections for the future, and monitoring of the cash management all in a very short period of time.

In addition, I managed daily accounting, financial closing process, I was involved in tendering especially in the review of project profitability forecast, I assisted the operational teams   to build up tools for that purpose. This teamwork was really rewarding as well.  

What do you admire about other Knauf Insulation leaders?

Our leaders are knowledgeable in so many areas and they also remain very accessible. That is reassuring, because if I find myself in a situation where I need assistance, I am supported and trained to get the means to achieve what is required.

When you have a boss who gives guidance but allows you to be independent, you feel comfortable, enjoy the freedom of execution and really flourish.

What advice would you share with a new colleague to help them thrive at Knauf Insulation?

Enjoy the variety of projects and tasks you are given, they will ensure you are always stimulated professionally and nothing becomes routine.

In Knauf Insulation, I had a variety of tasks before moving to KES and these included follow-up of internal audit recommendations, controlling of technical departments costs and of some working capital components, cash-flow analysis, group accounting rules compliance by publishing interpretation guideline,…. Then at KES I became more involved in operational tasks which are essential for a company to live.

Now I will start working on a new project related to Records-to Reports processes for Knauf Insulation. The variety and this continuous learning is what keeps work constantly interesting and motivating.

Which inspirational quote resonates with you and why?

The philosopher Lao-Tzu said: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists… when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: ‘We did it ourselves’.”