Interview with:
Anthony Escamilla
Chief Financial Officer, Protos Security
Anthony Escamilla has more than 35 years of experience leading finance and operational functions across multiple industries and working with private equity-backed companies through growth, acquisition and transformation.
Protos Security's Tony Escamilla Featured in Recent CFO Article
For some finance leaders, there’s a renewed focus on critical thinking among entry-level hires.
There’s no sugar-coating it: The job market for recent college graduates and new workforce entrants is, by some accounts, brutal. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for college grads between the ages of 22 and 27 jumped to 5.6% as of December 2025. That’s the highest it’s been for the same month over the prior four years.
As companies continue to experiment with new forms of technology to automate tasks once delegated to entry-level staffers, younger workers might be finding it harder and harder to get their foot in the door.
But the problem, of course, goes both ways: Without a robust pipeline of eager young workers, finance teams may one day find themselves with no one to take over their jobs. With all that in mind, CFO.com recently posed this question to several finance chiefs: At a time when entry-level jobs are being increasingly automated, how are you thinking about succession planning? Their answers reveal a range of strategies for a complex problem.
Protos Security CFO, Tony Escamilla, provides insight.
“We’ve instituted a rotation plan within the finance group. An employee might spend 18 months in sales and commercial finance, then in FP&A, then in another aspect, so that our teams are always learning and growing. The advice that I give to people is that if you stop learning, then it’s probably time to move on. So, from a succession planning perspective, I’m trying to train staff to be the best possible employees and have the most rewarding work experience so that they don’t want to leave. And I’m also cross-training them, so that I don’t have this gaping hole in my infrastructure.
