Karen Walker is the CFO of Sysdig, a cloud security company that stops cloud attacks in real-time. Karen shared her perspective on taking risks versus playing it safe, knowing when culture is the right fit, what drew her to Sysdig, what people can achieve by making mistakes, and more.
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Karen Walker grew up surrounded by practicality. Both her mother and father were born to working-class parents, and although they attended some college, neither of them received a four-year degree. Given their socioeconomic status growing up, certain possibilities weren’t available, so when it was time to go to college and choose a major, Walker chose finance–a path that represented stability.
Karen Walker, CFO of Sysdig, believes in taking risks, building culture, and leading with purpose.
“I’m one of three, and it was important to [my parents that their kids] go to college,” she said. “They were very focused on that. They were also thinking ahead to what will provide stability as a good path where you’ll always have a job. When I started taking some of the accounting coursework and then was thinking about flipping it over to broader finance, they were very concerned. They always reminded me: ‘You’ll always have a job in accounting.’”
After earning a bachelor’s in accounting from Southern Methodist University, she opted for a move that wasn’t so expected: venturing out west to the Bay Area. Her father’s role as a non-commissioned officer in the Army inspired a sense of adventure, and she had already lived in places like Panama, Italy, Texas, and Arizona, so it was a move she was comfortable making.
“Not everybody always picks up from where they last lived or where they grew up,” Walker said. “I grew up in so many different places and had a big interest in being able to see new and different things.”
Moving to the Bay Area and then Silicon Valley allowed her to tap into the “dream big” chapter of her career. There, she was exposed to a wide variety of companies. She started in public accounting for real estate clients but eventually decided to take advantage of living in a tech hub.
She found the cultural fit for which she had been looking–it was at tech companies, after all, where people had an ownership stake in the business. It was more entrepreneurial, with an emphasis on innovation, where employees were encouraged to take risks.
“That was something that sparked my interest,” Walker explained. “I made my way very quickly out of public accounting as soon as I could to join one of these companies. It completely changed my trajectory and the way I thought about having passion and inspiration for this as a career and not just a job.”
Understanding what she was looking for resulted in working for some of the best-known, iconic companies in the tech space. From CBS Interactive and Virgin America to Uber, Pandora Media, and PagerDuty, Walker has led financial operations at some giants in the industry.
She gleaned giant lessons from each as well; she understood how portable financial and accounting skills are, which opens the door to being able to seamlessly integrate into a wide variety of industries. Second, she learned how critical it is for financial professionals to advise companies at different stages of their growth.
Walker appreciates the process of growing and scaling; from working at companies that were already public to a challenge like Uber, which grew from 500 employees and $100 million of revenue to 10,000 employees and over $2 billion in revenue, she has experienced both.
“The breadth of not only different industries but different stages of companies can make you a strong leader and lend Itself to a good career trajectory,” she emphasized.
The third lesson is how critical it is to pinpoint what someone is passionate about and seek out the opportunities versus waiting for them to come their way. She believes in making one’s own luck.
In her own career, Walker has done that by effectively networking. Too many people, she says, make the mistake of using a network to determine how it can benefit themselves. Instead, a network should always be the source of how someone can help others.
“Even if it’s telling people, ‘Here’s my progress update. Here’s where I’m at,’” she said. “This became a critical piece for me when I joined PagerDuty because I had networked with somebody who joined their board. She was a sitting CFO. I talked with her about coming to her company. It didn’t quite work out. It wasn’t the right time for me. Instead, I went to Pandora Media, then we sold the business to Sirius XM. My role was eliminated, and a lot of G&A roles are eliminated when that consolidation happens.”
She connected again with the CFO at PagerDuty, who informed her of the SVP of finance vacancy. There, Walker oversaw financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and accounting and was the first person to lead and build the investor relations function.
Walker’s path from investor relations to CFO is likely not a common one, but she has seen a complete shift in the industry over the past decade regarding what it takes to become a CFO.
“There were more bankers becoming CFOs even though they didn’t necessarily have operational experience, or sometimes people even from a strategy background,” she said. “In today’s environment, with a focus on profitability, the CFOs who have more operational experience and can sharpen the pencil around that path to profitability and that focus are going to be in the band for some time. I don’t think that cycle is ending. But, getting a broad set of experience is so valuable. I think about it, and I didn’t necessarily have a straight and narrow path. I was in FP&A early on in my career and I ventured more into the controller and accounting side as Chief Accounting Officer.”
Recruiters told her that she couldn’t become a CFO because she was typecast, but she didn’t listen. By leveraging her network and taking on other skills, it helped her to become more well-rounded.
After all, Walker not only likes breaking the mold and going outside of the proverbial comfort zone, but she appreciates when companies are that way, too. It was one of the qualities that drew her to Sysdig, a cloud security company that secures software applications that are built in the cloud and for the cloud.
“I like to be part of companies that are disruptive,” she said. “Sysdig is disruptive in that regard. When you think about this transition into the cloud, the adoption of microservices to build applications more quickly, and the scalability of the infrastructure behind the cloud, we’re in the very early phases of this.”
As she was considering the opportunity to be CFO, Walker had the chance to meet people on the board and other executives. She had the chance to speak with Suresh Vasudevan, Sysdig’s CEO at the time, and discussed company culture, his leadership style, and the company’s collaborative environment.
She was sold and has now been with the company for about three-and-a-half years. One element of her success at the company was present before she even joined, however. Walker explains the importance of knowing what the CEO is looking for in a CFO to create a healthy collaboration between the two roles.
“The foundation is making sure it is a fit and that you can test the boundaries of that, understanding also, “What do you want in a CFO? What are you looking for? Where are the areas that you are looking for more support and partnership?” she emphasized. “That’s super important. Anybody who’s on the executive team or anyone who’s reporting to the CEO should also be able to bring in some expertise beyond just their functional domain.”
It’s a comment apropos to the current environment, with CFOs being asked to do and speak more than ever. Today, it’s more than forecasting and P&L; it is a role centered around partnership, storytelling, and co-creating the company’s strategic vision.
Partnership and collaboration are key to Walker’s leadership style. She sets the tone with her team by having them embrace serving the business and, ultimately, serving customers. She encourages exploring and examining partnerships with sales, operations, and field teams. She emphasizes creating efficiency for the business, providing good service, and making things seamless.
As an example of this, Sysdig recently invested in technology for its support team to help them resolve cases more quickly. By reducing the time to resolve, they are able to handle more caseloads, improving productivity. Before the company made that investment, Walker worked with the leaders to build out a model for the ROI and to communicate the investment they were making.
On a personal level, Walker believes in investing her time intelligently. She dislikes hearing other CFOs and leaders talk about hobbies and what they will do when they retire, and instead, she believes in making the time right now.
She works with the ALS network because she has a personal connection to the organization.
“I lost my mom to ALS,” she said. “I have been dedicated to that organization for the last 11 years in a variety of ways. I served on the board for six years. Most notably, the one event that I’ve committed to over the last 11 years is this bike ride that’s done here in Napa Valley. It’s quite a celebration. It’s an amazing event. It’s inspiring.”
Not only has she gotten to know other people who have been impacted by the disease, but devoting her time to the cause gives her the opportunity to do something meaningful to feel less stressed.
Whether it is her volunteer work or professional life, there is an abundance of heart, dedication and interest in everything she does, something she advises the next generation of CFOs to pursue as well.
“Do things that you’re passionate about, go hard, be fearless, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes,” she said. “You learn so much from those. You need to take some risks. That’s the way you can have a more enriching career over the long haul.”