● Vol. 01 Spokane · 2026
An Operator's Page
Work Wanted Write

KATRINA EBELL

Issue Nº 01 Operations · Compliance · Chief of Staff No badges. No logos. No hype.
Katrina Ebell

The quiet operator.

Inside ↓ How a project manager grew revenue by listening, not selling.
Plus ↓ The production payroll bug nobody asked her to fix — and the Pinnacle Award that followed.
Open to Series A / B 19 years · Origination · Underwriting · Servicing · Claims · Compliance Read time · 4 min
The Lede

I find the broken thing and fix it before anyone notices.

I make my boss's job easier the same week. Nineteen years inside the regulated finance lifecycle — origination, underwriting, servicing, claims, compliance — taught me where systems break and what they cost when they do.

Currently embedded with the Tolowa Pacific portfolio. Open to the right Series A or B founder-led role in fintech, insurtech, payroll-tech, or HR-tech.

The Receipt · 2022–2023
$200K $1M

Monthly revenue. FLOFORM Countertops. Ninety days. Project Manager and accidental Head of Sales. Specifics matter — that's the point.

The work.

Three case studies
Read in five minutes
01
Feature
FLOFORM
Role · PM
Year · 22–23
Result · 5×
Cover Story

$200K to $1M a month — by listening, not selling.

The job was project management. Three months in, monthly revenue had grown five-fold — from $200,000 to $1,000,000 — and most of it came back to one habit: I stopped trying to sell people anything.

Customers walking in for a kitchen remodel didn't want a thirty-minute slab tour. They wanted someone to ask what they were trying to do, narrow the choices, and treat the decision like it mattered. To them, it did. One customer — a woman in Montana doing a full house revamp — described what she was looking for as "finding that perfect life address."

Word of mouth carried the rest. The customers who got it told their friends. Their friends called.

That same year, my boss Derek and I built a rhythm where every operational fire — material order issues, escalations, delivery problems — got handled before it reached him. Customer service scores went up. Derek's calendar got quieter. We shipped more without anyone working harder.

02
Feature
Zenith / NFA
Role · Sr. Accts
Year · 17–22
Award · Pinnacle
Investigation

Found a production payroll bug nobody asked me to find.

I administered union pension and benefits programs — large client portfolios, heavy regulatory load, every contribution accounted for to the dollar. The kind of work where one missed step shows up as a lawsuit two years later.

The Employer Edge online payroll system started disrupting employee payments. It wasn't my system, my desk, or my problem. But the downstream effect was breaking benefits eligibility for the unions I served — so I made it my problem.

I went into the backend, found where the breakdown was happening, and worked with IT to fix it. Then I reported out to the union and the employers so they'd catch it earlier next time.

That's the work I'm proudest of. The issues nobody else was looking at, because everyone assumed someone else owned them.
03
Feature
Banking Lifecycle
Chase · 06–11
GCU · 11–14
Liberty · 14–17
The Long Game

The lending lifecycle, learned by doing every part of it.

By the time I was thirty, I'd rotated through funding, underwriting, and collections at Chase. At Global Credit Union I owned senior underwriting and ran collections strategy on delinquent portfolios. At Liberty Mutual I led high-volume claims operations and negotiated complex settlements.

Most operators in fintech have seen one slice of the lending lifecycle. I learned origination, underwriting, servicing, and claims by doing them — across two banks and an insurance carrier. Every fintech I'd want to work for is rebuilding one of those pieces.

Wanted

The right
founder-led
team.

A founder-led company in fintech, insurtech, payroll-tech, or HR-tech. Somewhere between 10 and 50 people. Remote or remote-friendly.

  • RoleHead of Operations, Chief of Staff, or Operations + Compliance lead. The operator who's seen the whole regulated finance lifecycle and isn't afraid of the messy middle.
  • SectorsFintech · Insurtech · Payroll-tech · HR-tech
  • Soft spotCompanies whose work matters to families.
  • SetupRemote · 10 to 50 people · Series A or B

Specifically not: claims adjusting, single-lane sales, large corporate org charts.

What people I've worked with say

Said about her,
not by her.

"
Katrina handled the things I didn't even know were broken yet. Material order escalations, customer issues, the stuff that would normally land on my desk on a Friday afternoon — she'd already have it sorted by the time I heard about it.
Derek, Manager · FLOFORM Countertops
"
Past managers have consistently told me I have "the capacity to take on more than most people can handle and make it look easy."
— Self-assessment, on the record
A bit about me

Spokane,
Washington.

BBA · Columbia College
+ Child psychology coursework
Now · Tolowa Pacific portfolio
Konative · SpokaneWire · ntegral

I live in Spokane, Washington.

I'm finishing a BBA at Columbia College and taking child psychology coursework alongside it. Partly because I'm pivoting toward work where I help families. Partly because I've learned over nineteen years in regulated industries what kinds of stakes I will and won't take. Self-knowledge is rare in operations candidates. I made the harder call once, on my own terms.

Currently embedded with the Tolowa Pacific portfolio — operations and customer-facing work for Konative, SpokaneWire, and ntegral. That's where I confirmed I want to do this kind of work next, with the right founder-led team.

Get in touch

If you're a founder hiring for an operator — or you know one who is — write me.