When Jaylene Kunze was asked to help rebuild a struggling subsidiary in the United Kingdom, she packed up her family and moved overseas with her nine-month-old daughter. The assignment was one more example of the type of challenge that would come to define her career. Rather than following a traditional finance path, Kunze gravitated toward what she calls “the fixer” role, stepping into situations where businesses needed operational repair, process improvement, or organizational change.

That mindset began to take shape through compliance and Sarbanes-Oxley work. While many viewed the documentation requirements as burdensome, Kunze tells us the process forced her to understand “the intersection of people, process, and systems” behind the numbers. It gave her visibility into how businesses actually operated and prepared her for increasingly complex leadership roles.

Her appetite for transformation became especially valuable when Tendril transitioned from venture-capital ownership to private-equity ownership. Kunze tells us the company ultimately combined six businesses into what became Uplight. As CFO, she oversaw diligence and integration while helping absorb five acquisitions within seven months.

The experience delivered lasting lessons. Culture, she tells us, matters more than many leaders expect. Different organizations often make decisions in entirely different ways, creating friction that financial models cannot predict. She also learned the cost of pushing too hard. Her team successfully completed aggressive integrations, but Kunze tells us she underestimated the human toll and would invest more heavily in staffing and support if given the opportunity again.

Today, those lessons continue to shape how she approaches leadership, growth, and change.