Iskow is the CEO that public-company boards quietly want and rarely get. Engineer underneath, operator on the surface, founder-comfortable in temperament.
There is a kind of executive who treats running a company as a performance. There is another kind who treats it as a craft. Iskow is firmly in the second camp. She came up through code, then product, then platforms, then operations, then the corner office. She has done the work that her direct reports do, in a previous version of herself. That's why founders kept hiring her, and why a founder eventually handed her the keys.
The Workiva story she is now writing is a category story. Connected reporting is not glamorous. ESG disclosure is not glamorous. SOX programs are emphatically not glamorous. But every public company in the world is being asked to disclose more, faster, with better paper trails, in more jurisdictions, to more standards. The companies that build the rails for that disclosure will be a steady, compounding business for a generation. Iskow's job is to make sure Workiva is the rails.
What's worth noticing is the unglamorous register she chooses for the job. She talks about culture and ego and content. She admits the founder's shoes don't fit her, then puts on her own. She runs an Iowa company from California without making a production of it. She owns a piano she does not play. She tells the truth in interviews.
If you want to know what a 2026 enterprise SaaS CEO looks like, with the noise of the platform-shift years stripped out, look here.
- Check the ego at the door.
- If you can't fill the founder's shoes, wear your own.
- Business and technology aren't two jobs. They're one job.
- Compliance is ethics with paperwork.
- Buy the piano. Practice optional.