How Sysdig’s CFO Found Strength in Vulnerability 

When someone on her team is dealing with a crisis at home, Karen Walker, CFO of cloud security company Sysdig, has a message for them. The office can fend for itself.

“At the end of the day, there is nothing more important than family, and that is always the first thing I say to people on my team facing hardship,” Walker told CFO Upside. “At work, we will always find a way.”

In a recent interview, Walker talked about why she went public with her family’s experience with ALS. It took her years to feel comfortable talking about her mother’s illness, but she said once she did, people she knew through work began sharing their own experiences with ALS, and some reached out for help. Walker said that being open about what her family went through is one way she can show empathy when a colleague faces a similar hardship.

Pedaling for Josephine

Walker keeps one weekend each September on her calendar free for an ALS fundraiser in Napa Valley, California. But, she said the amount of time she can give the event the rest of the year varies. She used to co-chair the ride committee and has served as a board treasurer, where she put her finance experience to work walking the board through the numbers. These days, she captains a team.

Even the weekend itself can be hard to protect, she said. At one year’s ride, Walker was working on an M&A deal at a previous employer and stopped several times along the route to check her email. “Nonetheless, I was there and finished the ride, although my time wasn’t anything to brag about,” she said.

This previous September marked her 14th consecutive year leading Team Josephine at the Napa Valley Ride, Walk & Roll to Cure ALS. The team is named for her mother, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2002 and died in 2005. When her mother was sick, Walker recalled, her family had few people to talk to who understood what they were going through.

Walker initially hesitated to get involved because she feared reliving the pain of losing her mother. An afternoon volunteering at her local ALS office put her in a room with people who understood that loss. She said she signed up for the ride the following year.

“Living alongside someone you love with ALS is all about gradual loss,” Walker said. “Volunteering, advocating and leading the fight against this disease is about regaining control and taking that first step and being in a physical space with others affected by ALS made me realize I wanted to do more than write checks.”

Opening the Books

It took Walker a decade of riding to write publicly about her mother. She felt vulnerable putting something so personal on a platform like LinkedIn, where many of the people reading knew her only through work. Some of the people who responded had met Walker only once or twice through work, she said, and others in her network offered to sponsor the ride. 

At a finance leadership event in September, someone who had read her first post approached her, giving Walker a chance to explain in person how to get involved. 

“Opening up about a deeply personal part of my life made me feel incredibly vulnerable, but I want to bring more awareness to this cause,” Walker said. “Sharing such a personal story so broadly has definitely changed professional relationships in some cases.”

She still looks for something new to share each year, even with people who have heard her story before. “You should never decide for other people or assume that repeat supporters don’t want to support your cause again,” Walker said. “Let them decide.”

Grit Genes: Tenacity has served Walker well as a CFO, and she said she inherited it from her mother. She had to draw on that inheritance in September 2025, when she took on an interim co-CEO role alongside Sysdig founder Loris Degioanni. “Like my mom, I am tenacious and I refuse to back down from difficult challenges,” she said.

The added responsibility of leading businesses over her career has brought to mind something her mother had told her about how some of life’s biggest challenges come with the biggest rewards. “On tough days, I remembered that she always gave me the confidence to do big things,” Walker said. “That has stuck with me.”