The people behind the numbers.
Every engagement is crewed by seasoned bookkeepers, accountants, and analysts — led from the bridge by these four.
Daniel Woods
Founding Partner
Founded the firm in 2006 and has spent two decades running accounting and finance departments for nearly 500 growing businesses — with experience spanning startups to multi-billion-dollar enterprises. He has guided owners through growth, financing, and the decisions that shape what a company becomes. At Keel he sets the standard for every engagement — and still advises owners directly.
Robert Polentz
Head of CFO Services
Five decades of financial leadership — Price Waterhouse, VP of Finance at Hyundai Motor America, CFO of private equity firms Westar Capital and Clearlight Partners, and board chair of Storm Industries. He has run finance from every seat at the table: public accounting, corporate, private equity, and the boardroom. At Keel he leads every CFO engagement — strategy owners can act on.
Patrick Thompson
Head of Controller Services
Three decades as a controller — thirteen years at Genica, seven at apparel brand Brixton, plus fractional CFO work for Southern California operators — consumer businesses with real inventory, real volume, and no tolerance for a late close. He joined the firm in 2021 and built the month-end discipline every client ledger runs on. At Keel he owns Controller services: the close, the process, and the quality.
David Nelson
Head of FP&A
More than twenty years in FP&A and financial systems — director roles at Monte Nido and FP&A leadership at Baptist Health South Florida and VITAS Healthcare, including leading the finance side of an enterprise-wide ERP implementation. He has built the budgets, models, and dashboards leadership teams run on. At Keel he heads FP&A: turning client data into forecasts, KPIs, and decisions owners actually use.
Your household runs on a keel too — the same team handles Personal CFO services →
The crew below the waterline.
The Full Keel is our proprietary crew of AI agents — each one built on twenty years of Keel process, named for the ship’s role it performs, and working under the review of the executive team. The slash before the name means it’s an agent. They do the daily work; our people own the judgment.
/Navigator
CFO Agent
Runs the CFO workflow stack — cash flow forecasts, financing preparation, and board-level reporting packages. Charts what’s next, so decisions get made before the water does. Every deliverable is reviewed by the CFO Services team before it reaches you.
/Bosun
Controller Agent
Runs controller workflows — close review, job and product costing, and the ledger quality checks that keep client books audit-ready. The bosun’s job has always been supervising the deck work; this one works under the review of the Controller Services team.
/Lookout
FP&A Agent
Runs FP&A workflows — budgets, rolling forecasts, KPI dashboards, and variance analysis. Watches the horizon and calls out what’s coming, with every report reviewed by the FP&A team before it posts.
/Purser
A/P Agent
Runs accounts payable workflows — vendor records, bill processing, payment runs, and 1099 tracking. The purser has minded the ship’s money since the age of sail; this one keeps vendors paid on time, with human review on every payment run.
/Tides
A/R Agent
Runs accounts receivable workflows — invoicing, payment application, aging, and collections follow-up. Keeps money arriving when the forecast says it should. Escalations go to a person, always.
/Ledger
Bookkeeping Agent
Runs full-cycle bookkeeping workflows — daily transaction processing, bank feeds, reconciliations, and month-end close preparation, reviewed by the bookkeeping team every close.
/Rigger
Integrations Agent
Runs integration workflows — connects and monitors the systems your business runs on: POS, e-commerce, payroll, project management, and bank feeds. Rigging is what holds a ship’s working parts together; when a connection frays, a person hears about it first.
/Steward
Admin Agent
Runs the engagement itself — onboarding checklists, document collection, portal administration, and scheduling. Keeps every workflow supplied with what it needs so nothing falls through the cracks.