1190: Fixing What Growth Tries to Hide | Jaylene Kunze, LegitScript
From CFO THOUGHT LEADER by The Future of Finance is Listening
June 7, 2026 · 50 min
About this episode
Jaylene Kunze discusses her career as a fixer in finance, focusing on operational challenges and the importance of company culture.
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…
People in this episode
Guest: Jaylene Kunze
Topics covered
- operational repair
- process improvement
- organizational change
- leadership
- company culture
Keywords
- CFO
- finance
- business transformation
- acquisitions
- Sarbanes-Oxley
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: LegitScript, Tendril, Uplight
Places: United Kingdom
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