ROSE FaaS 2026 Conference

June 9, 2026 | 12:30 PM - 7:00 PM | North Bethesda, MD

Join us for an executive conference on financial readiness, audit and compliance confidence, AI-enabled finance, and what it takes to position a company for sale. Built for CFOs, CEOs, GovCon leaders, and growth-stage operators who need more than a better close.

ROSE FaaS Conference 2026 | Built to Last. Built to Scale.

Most companies reach a point where growth exposes what the finance function was never built to handle. The close takes too long. The numbers arrive too late. Compliance becomes a scramble instead of a posture. And when the real moments come — a DCAA audit, a capital raise, a sale — the infrastructure either holds or it doesn't.

This conference is for the leaders who want to know where they stand before that moment arrives. On June 9, Rose Financial Solutions brings together executives, CFOs, GovCon operators, M&A practitioners, and financial infrastructure experts for a half-day of substantive, practical sessions designed to answer one question: Is your finance function built for what comes next?

Speaker: Ted Rose, President, CEO, Founder, Rose Financial Solutions

The last 18 months have been a stress test no one scheduled. Federal spending priorities shifted mid-contract. Liberation Day tariff announcements rippled through supply chains within hours. Government shutdowns threatened contractor cash flows. And AI became the loudest conversation in every boardroom while most finance functions were nowhere near ready to use it.

For GovCon companies, nonprofits, and growth-stage businesses, this is not background noise. It is the operating environment. And it is exposing something that was already true: most finance functions were built for a world that no longer exists. This session opens the day by naming the forces reshaping the financial landscape and framing the question every leader in this room should be asking; "How can we raise our Finance Ceiling and achieve Financial Readiness?"

Most business development panels tell you to "build relationships" and "know your customer." You already know that. This panel goes somewhere different — into the decisions that actually separate small GovCon firms that grow from the ones that grind. Moderated by Shelley McGuire of OrangeSlices AI, with Mike Mullen and Kathleen Cowles of Deep Water Point & Associates bringing the front-line perspective. What does a real pipeline look like when you're a five-person shop? How do you beat a large prime when they can put 50 people on a proposal and you have four? When do you walk away from an opportunity — and how do you know before it costs you six weeks, that's valuable time! And for product companies trying to crack the federal market: why does the government keep loving your demo and never buying it? The conversation covers the pipeline math most leaders avoid, the inflection points that signal it's time to build a team around BD, and how procurement dynamics, AI, and non-traditional partnerships are reshaping the go-to-market playbook. 

Speaker: Kimberly A. Kuchman, VP, Transformations and Product, Rose Financial Solutions

Kimberly grounds the room in what a well-built financial infrastructure looks like in practice. She covers what real-time visibility, system enforced workflows, and agentic AI actually produce when the foundation underneath them is solid and what a system of agility makes possible for the organizations using it today. This session answers the question Ted's keynote raises: once you know you have a Finance Ceiling, what does it look like to break through it? That conversation opens into a panel focused on the questions that sit at the intersection of financial operations, data security, and decision-making: what does it mean to have financial data your leadership team actually trusts, and what does it take to protect that data in an environment where compliance requirements are tightening and the cost of a security gap is no longer just operational, it is contractual.

Five themes anchor the panel conversation:

• Financial Visibility: What it means to have real-time access to financial data across the organization, and why most companies are still making decisions on information that is weeks old by the time it arrives.
• Decision Readiness: Whether the data coming out of the finance function is clean, current, and trusted enough to act on — and what the gap between "we have reports" and "we trust the numbers" actually costs in slow decisions and missed signals.
• Data Security in a Finance Context: How financial data should be protected, governed, and controlled — and why the same lapses that create audit exposure also create security exposure.
• CMMC and Compliance Readiness: What the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification requirements mean for GovCon companies managing financial data, and how infrastructure design choices made today affect CMMC readiness tomorrow.
• AI Readiness and Data Integrity:  Why agentic AI is only as reliable as the data it operates on, and what has to be true about data quality, structure, and governance before AI adds value rather than risk.

Panel  | The Five Themes of Financial Readiness — What the Data Actually Shows

Moderator and Panelists:

The Finance Ceiling | How Companies Raise Their Finance Ceiling and Achieve Financial Readiness

Speaker: Ted Rose, President, CEO, Founder, Rose Financial Solutions

The Finance Ceiling. Every growing company hits it. Most don't recognize it until something forces it into the open — a DCAA notice, a bank review, a leadership transition, or a question in a leadership meeting that nobody can answer quickly. This session explains how companies can raise their finance ceiling and achieve financial readiness, ensuring you have financial infrastructure built to handle what comes next.

Who Should Attend

✔ CEOs & Founders of government contractors, growth-stage organizations and nonprofits who want clarity on their numbers, stronger control over cash flow, and a financial foundation built for growth, M&A, or whatever comes next. 

✔ CFOs, Controllers & Finance Leaders navigating DCAA, FAR, evolving policy, audit readiness, and increasing pressure to deliver real-time financial intelligence — not just historical reports.

✔ COOs & Operations Leaders who depend on accurate cost structures, labor data, and project-level visibility to protect margins and execute with confidence.

✔ Fractional CFOs and Trusted Advisors who support GovCons, growth-stage businesses and nonprofits that want to stay ahead of what is changing in finance, accounting, and AI-enabled infrastructure.

✔ Business Owners Considering a Sale or Capital Event  who want to understand what their finance function looks like to the people evaluating it — and what to fix before that conversation starts.

What You Will Walk Away With

This is a half day for executives who want an honest picture of where their finance function stands and what it takes to make it hold up when the pressure is real. The sessions are built around these questions that most finance leaders carry but rarely get a clear answer to:

• Am I audit-ready?
• Is my compliance posture defensible under a DCAA review or a federal contract scrutiny?
• Is my tax and SALT in compliance?
  
• Do my people trust the numbers enough to act on them?
• Is my infrastructure actually ready for AI?
• What does M&A diligence expose?
• What does my brand communicate to a procurement evaluator or an acquirer when they have minutes, not hours, to form an opinion?

You will leave with a clear framework for assessing your financial infrastructure and an honest picture of where the gaps are. You will have direct perspective on what private equity investors, M&A advisors, and lenders are actually looking for and how financial readiness affects deal terms before the conversation even starts. You will understand what modern financial infrastructure looks like in 2026, including how agentic AI is changing the close, reporting, and financial analysis, including what has to be true about your foundation before any of that is worth attempting.

The speakers have been inside these situations. The conversations are grounded in what they have actually seen; not in what the frameworks say should happen. You will leave with a specific picture of what to do next. And connections with senior finance professionals, GovCon executives, and growth-stage leaders who are navigating the same environment you are.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this conference for?

It is designed for executives, CFOs, and finance leaders at growth-stage companies, government contractors, and founder-led organizations between $2M and $100M in revenue along with the fractional CFOs, advisors, and partners who support them.

Is this a ROSE product event? No. The program is content-driven. ROSE's work and tools appear where they are relevant to the session content, but this is an executive education event, not a product demonstration.

What is the FSRA? The Financial System Readiness Assessment is a 20-question diagnostic that takes 15 to 20 minutes and produces a ROSE Financial System Index score across five dimensions of financial infrastructure maturity. It is available free at rosefinancial.com and is a useful baseline before attending the conference.

Where is the event? The conference will take place at the Canopy by Hilton in North Bethesda, MD. If you plan to book a hotel room, we recommend reserving early to ensure availability. Additional accommodations are available at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel on Marinelli Road.