152: Investing in Your Career & Ringing The Bell! An Interview With Adriana Carpenter

Adriana Carpenter, the Chief Accounting Officer for Ping Identity, a company in Colorado that just recently went public, joined us for this episode of Life In Accounting, the Where Accountants Go podcast.

From finance major to CPA

Adriana knew from an early age that the business world appealed to her, and consequently she started out early in an internship with IBM in the Accounts Payable department. However, due to her dislike of that particular internship, she decided to go the finance route in college instead and initially got her Bachelor’s degree in Finance. After a short time in her first financial analyst role though, she realized that she wanted to be closer to the financial reporting process, so with the support of her employer she went back to school to finish a Masters in Accounting, and subsequently became a CPA as well.

Narrowing in on her interests

After becoming a CPA and continuing her career in industry for a few years, she decided to move on into the Big 4. For almost 12 years, she worked her way up at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) before eventually deciding to move her career back into a leadership role in industry. However, it was during this time at PwC when she found that the technology sector in particular appealed to her. It was also this experience that helped her hone her team management skills.

Ringing the bell!

For over 10 years now Adriana has been back in industry, this time in the technology sector. For the first five years of that period she worked with an international technology company helping them rebuild their global accounting team. Afterwards though, Adriana had joined a start-up in the identity and access management field (Ping Identity) that recently went public on the NYSE. Adriana had the opportunity to be part of the team that “rang the bell” to open the markets on the trading floor just a month or two ago. She goes into great detail to help us visualize the experience. It really is cool part of her story.

I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as we did recording it. Adriana shares many insights that will help you further your career, whether you are just starting out or have many years of experience. There truly are some gems in this interview.

If you enjoy this episode with Adriana Carpenter, please check out these episodes as well: Sylvester Sly Johnson and Sarah Elliott

For information on the publication mentioned in the interview, please click here.

To listen in on this conversation with Adriana Carpenter, please click on the player below.