Stacy Tumarkin unexpectedly found herself stepping into the CFO seat—twice—earning the moniker “The Accidental CFO.” Early in her career, she worked at a hedge fund, diving headfirst into uncharted responsibilities when a mentor urged her to stretch beyond strict accounting roles. “I was only 26 when I first became CFO,” Tumarkin tells us, recalling how imposter syndrome quickly followed. Despite her misgivings, she soon realized the best way to grow was to embrace discomfort and learn on the fly.

A second twist came when she joined Kubecost as Chief of Staff, overseeing everything from support to finance. When the CEO asked her to serve as CFO yet again, she hesitated—still viewing herself as more of a people-first leader. But Tumarkin tells us that ownership of the finance function gave her a strategic seat at the table, allowing her to shape the company’s trajectory while drawing on her passion for operations and culture.

Tumarkin’s strategic mindset revolves around aligning finance with organizational goals rather than letting numbers dictate the agenda. “Lead as a human first, and a finance person second,” she advises, emphasizing empathy and cross-functional teamwork. Instead of issuing rigid edicts, she prefers open dialogue, ensuring different teams see budgets as tools for smarter decisions rather than constraints.

Through each “accidental” appointment, Tumarkin discovered imposter syndrome never disappears—it’s simply a companion on the journey. Ultimately, her strategic guidance helped shape Kubecost’s broader corporate path, culminating in the company’s acquisition by IBM—a milestone that further underscores her unique blend of entrepreneurial leadership and financial oversight.

“I think a lot of people make the mistake of leading from the finance perspective, and what I’ve learned and seen is that being a human leader first and a finance person second is what really changes the game.” —Stacy Tumarkin, CFO, Kubecost

Stacy Tumarkin’s CFO Playbook

Leads with empathy and relationship-building to align cross-functional teams.
Embraces imperfection and rapid iteration over rigid, “perfect” processes.
Combines financial rigor with the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen challenges.
Prioritizes business goals and human factors before imposing finance solutions.

CFOTL: Tell us about Kubecost—what is it, what does it do, and what are its offerings?

Tumarkin: So our company, Kubecost, provides real-time Kubernetes cost visibility and optimization. If folks in your audience haven’t heard of Kubernetes, it is (an) infrastructure platform for automating and scaling modern software applications (that) use something called containers, which are (a) small, abstracted form of infrastructure. You can spin them up, run a process (inside), and then have them be ephemeral, so you can run a bunch of these all at the same time. That’s what Kubernetes allows—(it’s) what’s called horizontal scaling (of) a lot of these environments.

The cost of using Kubernetes can often be a black box to those that are using it, and that results in huge monthly charges quickly if it’s not managed properly. Everyone’s moving to cloud-based infrastructure, and it’s really easy to just press that button and spin up an environment without (considering) what the cost is going to be. So what Kubecost does is empower the teams that are using Kubernetes to better understand and reduce their cloud costs, and then operate more efficiently as a result.

What’s different about us, compared to other companies and products in the space, is that we’ve really started (out) and remained laser focused on solving Kubernetes pains and challenges since inception, and our primary hands-on user has always been kind of the software developer, not necessarily the finance person. But I can speak to that interplay in a minute.

Kubecost www.kubecost.com San Francisco, CA

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