Kobie
Guidebeck

I grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where community comes first. Everyone knows everyone, and you learn early to look out for the people around you. I'm one of six kids with five sisters, and from age 3 to 18 you could find me at the rink most weekends.

Nothing was handed to me. While other kids were playing the Xbox they got for Christmas, I was collecting bottles and cans at men's league games to save up for my first console. That's probably where my interest in how money works started.

In high school I was an average student who loved people and never stuck to one friend group. I moved to Sault Ste. Marie to play junior hockey, and halfway through the season I decided to step away from junior hockey and enroll at Northern Michigan University. I started in finance, switched to accounting my junior year, then moved to Arizona for a master's in taxation and data analytics at Arizona State.

While other grad students were getting recruited by the Big Four in their first few months, I was cold calling firms and applying through career sites. That's how I landed at EY in Austin.

My first accounting job was a tax internship at Dennis, Gartland & Niergarth while I was still in undergrad, and I was promoted to tax accountant there. At EY I worked with U.S. federal, state, and international tax clients and was picked for a three-month rotation with the mergers and acquisitions team.

Today I'm at Dabble Sports as the first and only finance and accounting professional in the U.S., working directly with leadership in Australia. In my first year I built out the U.S. tax function and picked up a whole new skill set in internal operations. I own month-end and year-end close, cash and treasury, payroll, the year-end audit, and the compliance work behind new market launches, from state filings to Puerto Rico and Canada. Our close runs on a seven-day turnaround and I consistently finish a day early. Even a day behind our Australian parent, the U.S. is regularly the first jurisdiction with board reports done.

I take initiative and I like to say "let me give it a shot." When I think something could be done better, I'd rather show what it could look like than keep doing it the way it's always been done.

I've been around sports my whole life. Before I was on skates, I was sliding around the kitchen on ice packs with a broom for a stick. I played hockey through high school and college club, and coached Michigan high school hockey for two seasons. I still play men's league every week, ran an ultramarathon in February, and play fantasy in just about everything: football, hockey, Premier League, even Australian rules football.

When I'm not on the ice or the trail, I'm usually camping, outside somewhere, or playing music.

I've lived in the middle of nowhere in Michigan and in the middle of Austin. I've worked corporate and I've worked mom-and-pop. I adapt.