She was a customer before she was the CFO. Now she’s steering Workiva to $1 billion in revenue

Good morning. When Barbara Larson stepped into the role of EVP and CFO at Workiva in January, she wasn’t entering unfamiliar territory. She had used the company’s financial reporting platform at Workday and VMware and had advocated for it. So, when the opportunity came to join Workiva, she says the decision was uncomplicated.

“I love this stage of the company,” Larson told me. It’s the high-stakes push to scale. “We’ve guided to $1 billion in revenue this year.”

Workiva (NYSE: WK), which offers an AI-powered platform for governance, risk, compliance, and sustainability, reported $885 million in total revenue for fiscal 2025, a 20% year-over-year increase, with subscription and support revenue growing 22%. For the full year 2026, total revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.036 billion to $1.040 billion. Among the company’s more than 6,600 customers are Hershey, Slack, and KeyBank, according to its website.

Larson brings more than two decades of financial leadership experience. She most recently served as CFO at SentinelOne and previously spent nearly a decade at Workday, ultimately becoming CFO. She also held senior roles at VMware, TIBCO Software, and Symantec.

Many companies are still drowning in data across disparate systems, a pain point Workiva is designed to address, Larson said. “I’ve spent my entire career in finance,” Larson said. You’ve got your data working either for you or against you—there isn’t a middle ground, she said. If you’re running AI across fragmented systems or unreliable data, you aren’t accelerating insight; you’re just accelerating the wrong answers, she added.

Regulatory pressures are intensifying, Larson noted, with shifting........

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