The Business Value of Developing Talent Across Functions
Article Summary
How can companies develop leaders while preserving autonomy at the business level? At Lumine, functional leaders across Finance, HR, Legal, and IT remain responsible for their own decisions while gaining access to a network of peers, expertise, and industry-specific best practices. This article explores how SparkX, Lumine’s cross-functional leadership development event, helps leaders connect, share lessons learned, and strengthen their capabilities across communications and media software businesses. Through peer learning, relationship-building, and knowledge sharing, leaders gain practical insights they can apply within their own organizations, creating long-term value for their teams, businesses, and customers.
When a business joins Lumine, it continues to operate independently. Its leaders remain responsible for the decisions that shape their business, from hiring and financial planning to technology, operations and customer strategy. But independence doesn’t mean operating alone.
Across Lumine, leaders can draw on the experience of people working through similar challenges in other communications and media software businesses. That might mean a finance leader comparing approaches with someone who has navigated a similar planning exercise, an HR leader learning from another team’s post-acquisition experience.
SparkX is one way those connections are built. The event brings together functional leaders from Finance, HR, Legal, and IT leaders from across the Lumine ecosystem to exchange ideas, discuss common challenges, and connect with peers facing similar opportunities and decisions.
At the most recent SparkX, functional leaders from across Lumine’s portfolio gathered in Portugal. Below is a bit more from the event.
Learning From People Who Have Been There Before
The network that the ecosystem awards can be particularly valuable for leaders whose businesses have recently joined Lumine.
Synchronoss Technologies was acquired in early 2026. For CFO Craig Cutter, SparkX provided an early opportunity to meet leaders from across the group and understand how their experience intersected with his own.
“One of the things that surprised me was how helpful the network of resources was. You start to realize that it isn’t just you, your team, or your company experiencing certain challenges. Many of them are shared.”
Craig Cutter, CFO, Synchronoss Technologies
Being able to learn from people who have worked through the same thing and come out the other side is really valuable. Those conversations also make the ecosystem easier to access after everyone goes home. “For me, a big takeaway is having a larger network I can reach out to,” Craig added. “I’m big on trust and relationships, that’s how you get things done quickly. After spending time together, you can pick up the phone or send someone a message without having to work through those initial steps of figuring out who the right person is.” That relationship-building is an important part of SparkX because the value becomes not just knowing that expertise exists somewhere within a global ecosystem, it’s knowing who to call.
Mary Anne Lavallee, CFO, sees this happen across finance. “In Lumine companies, finance teams are accountable for more than just reporting and controls. They’re strategic partners,” said Mary Anne Lavallee. “Every leader knows their numbers inside and out, and finance plays a critical role in making that possible, from accounting and scenario planning to the day-to-day decisions that shape a business.”
For legal leaders, those connections can be just as important. Caroline Khachehtoori, SVP, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, describes Lumine’s legal network as a blend of dedicated support and shared expertise, where leaders can access perspectives from colleagues across multiple businesses while remaining focused on the needs of their own organization. The result is a broader network of people who can help navigate common challenges, share lessons learned, and provide guidance when new situations arise.
What emerges from SparkX are real relationships. Conversations over a couple of days create familiarity and trust across businesses, functions, and geographies which make it easier to reach out later, exchange ideas, and ask for perspective when a challenge arises. Those connections strengthen the network leaders can draw from well beyond the end of any event.
Investing in Leaders for the Long Term
One value from events like SparkX is Lumine’s exclusive focus in communications and media software. The leaders in the room are not generalists exchanging advice across unrelated industries, they’re able to have specific conversations based on similar experiences.
Amy Benoit, SVP, Global Head of Human Resources and executive sponsor of SparkX, sees this play out directly. “When leaders have opportunities to learn from one another, share experiences, and challenge one another’s thinking, they grow in their roles,” she said. “That growth strengthens the teams they lead and ultimately the businesses they support.”
Jenny Wilkinson, HR Director, began her Lumine career working within an operating company, supporting its teams and helping put new practices and processes in place following an acquisition. She later moved into a group role supporting multiple businesses.
“I started within one of Lumine’s businesses, working directly with teams following an acquisition, and later moved into a group role supporting multiple businesses.”
Jenny Wilkinson, HR Director
“Throughout that journey, Lumine has provided access to events, training, different ways of working, and a much broader network of people to learn from. That support has helped me continue to grow into new opportunities,” said Jenny. That kind of development is one reason Lumine continues to invest in opportunities for leaders to learn across company boundaries.
Alex Bordatchev, CFO, Provisioning & Billing Group at Lumine Group, has seen that firsthand as his own responsibilities have grown within Lumine.
“Being able to get involved in operational discussions, participate in learning events, and learn from leaders and finance professionals who have worked through similar situations has expanded my own knowledge base,” said Alex. “It has helped me become a better leader, develop other leaders, and ultimately better support the challenges our businesses and customers are trying to solve.” That’s an important part of what functional expertise means within Lumine.
Knowledge is not concentrated within a central corporate team. It exists across the ecosystem and not just benefits the business, but the customers who they serve. SparkX creates an opportunity to bring more of that experience into the same room.
Making Knowledge Accessible Across the Portfolio
SparkX conversations aren’t meant to stay in a room. A fix, framework, or lesson learned can become part of Lumine’s Playbook, a set of function-specific best practices built for communications and media software businesses. Every company in the portfolio can draw from it when the guidance is useful.
“Working across different countries and businesses gives you exposure to different ways of solving problems and managing companies,” said Marie Dhayer, Finance Manager. “That makes it possible to share best practices across cultures and give more people access to what others have already learned. The Playbook is a great resource, but the real value comes from connecting with people across countries, cultures and businesses who can help make that knowledge relevant to your own work.”
Joe Kelly, SVP of ITDS, sees that balance between support and autonomy every day. “Business leaders continue to own their systems, priorities, and technology strategy,” he said. “We provide a framework, best practices, and access to a wealth of technical expertise, but the decisions remain theirs.” In practice, that means leaders can draw on experience from across the ecosystem without giving up ownership of their own decisions.
Those distinctions are important, because being a part of Lumine doesn’t mean applying one operating model across every company. It’s about expanding what leaders can draw from when making their own decisions. Leaders can take what’s useful, adapt to their circumstances and leave what isn’t.
Value That Lives Beyond an Event
The real measure of SparkX isn’t the week itself, but what happens afterward: a legal lead who now has several peers to call instead of none, an HR leader applying an idea she wouldn’t have had on her own, a finance team testing a planning approach borrowed from someone three time zones away.
Amy’s closing thought captures what the week is meant to do. “Great businesses are built by great people, and great people are built by investing in them,” she said. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
Programs like SparkX reflect Lumine’s permanent ownership model in it’s “buy-and-hold” forever value. It creates the opportunity to invest not only in businesses, but in the people who build them. Those investments compound over time, strengthening leaders, teams, and ultimately the customers they serve.
