Outside the grind: Karen Walker

Outside the Grind is our occasional feature that spotlights the unique passion projects, side hustles, and hobbies of finance professionals outside of the office. Let us know if you know, or you are, a CFO or finance pro with an interesting, weird, or unusual side gig.

This fall, Karen Walker, CFO of cloud security platform Sysdig, will participate in her 11th ride with the ALS Network’s Ride, Walk & Roll to Cure ALS in California’s Napa Valley, during which she plans to ride 62 miles. She’s also helped put on the ride and was a board member of the organization previously.

Walker has a personal connection to the cause; her mother was diagnosed with ALS when she was only a few years older than her daughter is now. Short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS is an always-fatal disease of the nervous system and affects the muscles that control a person’s ability to move, speak, and even breathe, according to the Mayo Clinic.

CFO Brew recently spoke with Walker about the event, long-distance biking, and what it means to participate in a cause that’s personal to her.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Tell me how you got involved in the Ride to Cure ALS?

My mom was actually only 55 years old at the time [she was diagnosed]. It’s hitting me really hard more these days, because I’m now 52 and I still feel very young and I also obviously knew she was very young at the time when she was diagnosed.

After she passed away, it was just so heartbreaking. I think for a lot of people that go through this experience, it’s almost like you don’t want to actually be close to it. You feel very much, like I certainly did, [that] you’re very much reeling from that for many years. I still wrote checks and things like that for the ALS [Network], but it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that I just said, “I really want to do something more to honor my mom and everything that we went through.” And it was just still such a very important cause to me.

What is the experience like for participants?

One of the reasons why I love this event in particular so much is because it’s just really energizing and has a very celebratory feel to it. It’s set in Napa during harvest. It happens in September. It’s beautiful. If you’ve never gone through Napa Valley on a bike, you’ll see the valley in a completely different way…The ride itself I think usually [has] between 700–800 riders, raising over $1 million. It’s fantastic.

And how long of a bike ride is it?

It’s really something for everybody. It’s everything from a 9-mile family ride—and people take their young kids on that ride—to a 28-mile, a 48-mile. There are two metric centuries, so two 62-mile rides—one that’s fairly flat and one that has a little bit of climbing.

How do you prepare for the ride every year?

It’s about getting the time on the bike, because you get uncomfortable—your neck, your back, all these things that you have to kind of build up and support. Right now, I feel more spurred on by the team that I created last year. It was actually super fun because I was at my CrossFit gym, where I basically said, “Hey, I’m doing this ride. Does anyone want to sign up?” There were all these first-time cyclists, and now they’re just beasts. I can barely keep up with them. So, I think, just having community is the biggest thing, and getting those miles on the bike, and that repetition. Those are the biggest things to prepare.