Financial Modeler Spotlight: Lance Rubin - CEO and Founder of Model Citizn

Today's impressive story shows the ultimate power of financial modeling. This icon is an entrepreneur and trainer who uses financial modeling to create clarity and drive innovation.

We're celebrating a professional who demonstrates that the discipline of building models can be directly linked to changing lives. Get ready for an inspiring read! 

Lance Rubin

“You need to build and treat a financial model like your house,” says Lance Rubin. For him, a well-designed model is more than numbers on a spreadsheet, it is a structure built with care, purpose, and flow. Each section (inputs, calculations, outputs) should be as clearly defined as the rooms of a house: tidy, logical, and easy to navigate.

Lance wears many hats: Founder & CEO of Model Citizn, Co-Founder & Chief Excel Officer at EXL Cloud, Chief Data Modeller at Potenza, Certified Trainer at the Financial Modeling Institute (FMI), and Lead Trainer for ACCA Australia. His career has been dedicated to helping businesses simplify complexity and make relevant, informed, and purposeful decisions with insight.

Born in South Africa during the apartheid era, Lance came of age during the country’s transition to democracy, casting his first vote in the historic 1994 elections. He earned an Honours degree in Accounting Science from the University of South Africa and qualified as a Chartered Accountant while working at PwC Johannesburg. His career later took him to KPMG, Investec Bank, and National Australia Bank (NAB), spanning both retail and wholesale banking divisions.

After more than two decades in corporate finance, Lance noticed a critical gap: universities were not producing financial modelers fast enough, and corporate teams were often under-resourced. This observation inspired him to found Model Citizn, where he serves as CEO, helping businesses structure decisions, cut through AI hype, and apply modeling clarity to drive results.

Lance attributes his comfort with technology to his father who introduced him at an early age to green screens, DOS games, and first-generation computing tools. This has enabled him to integrate Excel, Power BI, and AI into financial frameworks. Today, he is among the few financial modelers capable of building powerful Power BI dashboards for board-level reporting, a skill demonstrated through his work as Chief Data Modeller with Potenza in Sri Lanka.

As an educator, Lance bridges the gap between traditional spreadsheet work and professional financial modeling. He emphasizes “back to basics” in Excel, focusing on Tables, Power Query, and Structured References before advancing to Dynamic Arrays, LAMBDAs, VBA, and AI-driven augmentations. He has taught thousands globally as a certified trainer for FMI and lead trainer for ACCA Australia, co-authored the Financial Modelling Study Guide for CA(ANZ), judged the Financial Modelling Innovation Awards, and spoken at multiple Power BI Global Summits.

As a visionary who foresaw the convergence of AI and finance, he launched the Future of Financial Modelling YouTube channel to provide early guidance on emerging technologies. He also developed the HACK Framework: Hygiene, Automation, Capability, Knowledge, to connect Excel, Power BI, and AI in practical, transformative ways.

Beyond corporate finance, Lance spent over a decade in martial arts, representing South Africa and Australia at world championships and serving as an instructor. The discipline, resilience, and focus cultivated on the mat became hallmarks of his approach to business.

He has also applied financial modeling to social impact, supporting bids for social benefit bonds and affordable housing projects, and collaborating on initiatives addressing homelessness, mental health, employment, and justice issues.

Lance’s entrepreneurial journey has required significant personal sacrifices. Launching Model Citizn meant closing his martial arts school, a passion he pursued for over a decade, and juggling multiple roles simultaneously: virtual CFO for a fintech company, contracting with a Big 4 financial modeling team, and building his own consultancy.

“In the end, what drives me most is designing solutions that knock the ball out of the park,” he says. “I like creating something new and dealing with data in a creative way.” His story is a reminder that financial modeling is about foresight, ingenuity, and human insight: skills that can transform businesses, empower startups, and create meaningful societal impact.

Explore Lance Rubin’s work:

• Knowledge Hub: com/knowledge-hub
• YouTube: Future of Financial Modelling
• LinkedIn: Lance R.
• Twitter/X: @model.citizn
• Instagram: @lance.rubin