Placed in foster care at 3 months old and adopted a few years later, Tiffany Ketterer-Buchanan made a realization very early on in life.
“I was the one person that I could ultimately rely on,” she said.
After working her way through college and an MBA program, Ketterer-Buchanan is now the senior vice president for finance at CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWD), the rapidly growing cybersecurity company that got its start in Irvine a decade ago and is now valued at over $60 billion.
Ketterer-Buchanan, who works out of the company’s local offices, was honored with a Business Journal Women in Business Award at a luncheon attended by 600 people at the Irvine Marriott late last month.
“Even from a young age, I can remember being pretty driven and competitive in terms of grades and test scores and things like that and trying to get into the best schools and networks to get ahead in life,” Ketterer-Buchanan told the Business Journal on Oct. 29.
“I’ve worked since I was 14 years old, and have just muscled my way through funding my own education all of these years.”
Winning Companies
Ketterer-Buchanan has a knack for picking winning companies to work for.
Before CrowdStrike, her background includes management experience at companies that were eventually bought: Enclarity, a startup focused on the development of big data software services for domestic insurance organizations, acquired by LexisNexis in 2013 for $83 million; Quest Software, a B2B software development company based in Aliso Viejo, acquired by Dell in 2012 for $2.36 billion; and Networks in Motion, a startup specializing in the development of wireless navigation software, acquired by TeleCommunication Systems in 2009 for $181 million.
Ketterer-Buchanan started with CrowdStrike almost a decade ago as the first finance hire, working beside the CFO and one of CrowdStike’s co-founders.
In nine years, she has worked her way up from accounting manager to controller to senior vice president of finance, where she now reports to Chief Financial Officer Burt Podbere.
CrowdStrike, whose cloud-based technology is used to detect and prevent breaches, has been likened to a “Salesforce of security.”
She helped lead CrowdStrike to one of the largest ever public offerings for a cybersecurity company in 2019, where it almost doubled its share price on its first day to $58. Her LinkedIn page shows her front and center on the opening day at Nasdaq.
CrowdStrike’s fiscal 2021 revenue of $874 million has well more than tripled since 2019. Analysts expect 61% sales growth this fiscal year, followed by 38% next year.
The company’s stock topped $270 apiece as of Nov. 5, for a market cap of $62 billion. Its valuation is currently higher than every public company based in OC other than Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (NYSE: EW).
CFO Goal
As CrowdStrike grew from fewer than 50 employees to now more than 4,500 worldwide, Ketterer-Buchanan grew along with it.
She currently works out of the Irvine office, which has 127 people. CrowdStrike about four years ago moved its headquarters from Irvine to Silicon Valley’s Sunnyvale, where the company has another 275.
Her goal is to become a CFO one day herself.
She plans to take part in a Deloitte CFO prep program to gain key insights into how corporate finance executives grow and transform their organizations.
Ketterer-Buchanan recently participated in a series of improv classes focused on business professionals where she learned some valuable lessons in vulnerability, putting oneself “out there,” and utilizing improv rules to foster team creativity.
Numbers Natural
Numbers have always come naturally to the SVP.
As a young girl, “I loved balancing my checkbook and putting together budgets and spread sheets on my personal finances.”
She also got a tip as an undergrad—it was best to pair accounting with her economics studies for career advancement. She received her BA from the University of California, San Diego, in 2007, followed by an MBA in finance from California State University, Long Beach, in 2011.
“I fell into finance early on in my career. I was going to school and working—putting myself through school,” she said. “And I started working for an accounting firm in Pasadena, and that really is what got me interested in working in accounting.”
Ketterer-Buchanan also became a certified public accountant, and like many CPAs who start to climb the corporate ladder, she has put that qualification into inactive status.
Jazz, Rock, ’90s
Growing up around Los Angeles County gave her a “different background” with an adoptive mother who is Chinese and a Caucasian father who was considerably older than his wife.
Household music reflected the family diversity, with her father listening to jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman and singer Billie Holiday, while her mother favored “classic rock stuff” from the 1960s and then “you had me growing up in the ’90s.”
“My mom and I are still very close” while her father passed away a few years ago at age 96.
‘Make it Work’
Ketterer-Buchanan is currently looking to “pay it forward” by working with foster children in Orange County.
She said her background made her appreciate “the way that life can ultimately pan out. Her goal is to never make “excuses for myself” or “reasons why I couldn’t succeed.”
The key is “work-life integration”—including her two young children—rather than the more common expression “work-life balance,” she said.
The same day she talked to the Business Journal she had just attended her son’s Halloween costume parade – and then returned to the office knowing she may have to work into the evening to catch up on her workload.
“It’s about figuring how you do all of the things that you need to get done between all of your different responsibilities,” she said. “You make it work with the time that you’re given in any given day.
“I love what I do. I love connecting with the people that I work with. And I love being part of growing my family and nurturing that as well.”
