Celebrating the Women of Kranz
March is Women’s History Month – at Kranz, we’re celebrating the outstanding women leaders on our team.
Nancy Bush, a CFO Consultant at Kranz, joined our team as a proven accounting and finance leader with experience at companies such as Anomali, Adaptive Insights, Fortinet, and ArcSight. Through the majority of her career, Nancy has served companies in the Silicon Valley. In her role as CFO Consultant at Kranz, she has continued to provide leadership and guidance as a member of our Emerging Growth CFO team.
What woman inspires you and why?
Elizabeth I of England has always inspired me. She was educated, dedicated to her people, inspiring, and a great seeker of knowledge. And she had staying power.
What qualities make a great leader?
Empathy, integrity, the ability to inspire people, and to instill confidence in their abilities, are qualities of a great leader, that I strive to do every day.
How have you managed to be successful both professionally and personally?
I played a lot of sports and grew up with four siblings. My parents had a high bar for us but were in no way prescriptive of what paths we chose. I grew up on a farm and was exposed to hands-on engineering, genetics, biology, and cash flow at an early stage of my life. Farming and playing sports require a lot of perseverance, communal labor, focus, and repetition. And you fail constantly. So I have a great deal of empathy for startups and love working with them to find ways to succeed and make cash last. We had lots of joy when something succeeded and, in general, prized laughter and fun. I was at my high school recently, and we were reminiscing about surviving our basketball coach for four years. He was firmly convinced that being mentally and physically prepared led to success. I think about that so often every day – am I prepared, and are my teams prepared? But my three brothers and my father taught me about moonshots. We did so many crazy things. Many of them failed, but the ones that worked were spectacular. Silicon Valley feels like that all over for me. A focus on moonshots and disruptions. For a farm girl from a small farm in mid-Georgia, I feel my life to date has been more than I ever expected, and I actively work to share that vision of reaching big and preparing with other women in the valley.
What advice would you give the next generation of female leaders?
Seek new paths and solutions. We are in a time of rapid change that needs new moonshot solutions and leadership. Don’t be afraid to strike out in a different direction. Find a good partner to share the experience with and provide support to each other. And don’t try to do it all. My support network is phenomenal and starts at home with my partner.