Executive Profiles

2018 Executive Excellence Awards: Palvi Mehta, ExtraHop Networks

The chief financial officer of the Seattle-based firm and the treasurer for Code.org is one of this year's winners.

By Gianni Truzzi February 1, 2018

PaviMehta

This article originally appeared in the February 2018 issue of Seattle Magazine.

This article appears in print in the February 2018 issue. Click here for a free subscription.

Palvi Mehta believes an effective chief financial officer knows a business by the numbers and whats behind them, too. Its how she has helped ExtraHop to scale at a rapid pace, playing key roles in sales, recruitment and global expansion.

Wearing many hats, she notes, gives me a unique birds-eye perspective and an end-to-end view of the business. That observation mirrors ExtraHops product, which helps make large networks more efficient and secure by providing detailed information about their operation. Mehta delves fearlessly into operational challenges beyond the scope of most CFOs to drive more successful decisions.

For example, Mehta has worked extensively with the sales team to map out customer behavior and market dynamics to identify top industry verticals and sales targets and prospects to expand business. Working this way, she has helped drive significant sales success that is financially prudent, as offices and operations expanded to six new global territories. On the heels of ExtraHops $41 million financing round in 2014, Mehta and her team led an aggressive, single-year recruitment program that increased employee headcount by 75 percent.

This was a real achievement in a tight market for quality talent. When youre not Amazon or Microsoft, she notes, youre an underdog trying to grow your business here.

To further grow capacity, she also led migration to contract manufacturing for some appliance lines. Mehtas appetite for impact continues into her community efforts as treasurer for Code.org, which evangelizes programming to underrepresented minorities and women. Developing software remains beyond her own talents, but the logic and math are essential.

The future is bent to people who can have those basic, fundamental skills, she observes. Its really changing the world.

See the full list of winners from the 2018 Executive Excellence Awards here.

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