Kristy Rutherford followed Peyton Manning to Indianapolis. Well, sort of.

Kristy went to undergrad at the University of Tennessee (at the same time as Peyton), where she received a degree in communication. She graduated and worked in PR in Knoxville. She also got married in Knoxville, to her husband Craig who she met while he was in graduate school at Tennessee.

Craig was (and still is) a mechanical engineer. He works in energy load management and owns a company in Indianapolis. His company brought them to Indy, where Kristy attended IUPUI for her Masters of Public Accounting. During her time at Tennessee, one of her professors had encouraged her to attend business school, plus, “PR isn’t really a business that transfers, on top of the down market at the time.”

In the MPA program at IUPUI, Kristy “made some of the best connections and friends” of her life. She left IUPUI with a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where one of her clients was Vera Bradley. After just over two years at PwC, Vera Bradley recruited her away as the company was trying to go public.

During their time in Indy, Kristy and Craig had their son Blake. They soon moved back to Knoxville to be closer to family.

They were only home in Tennessee briefly before Craig’s business grew large enough that he had to move back to Indy to manage it. Kristy intended to take a sabbatical for a while in Indy, but soon after they moved back to Indianapolis, Kristy was approached by a recruiter who asked her, “What would you think about working for a startup?”.

Enter CloudOne, a tech company on Indianapolis’s north side. CloudOne brings enterprise applications to the cloud, enabling global collaborative development, production and analysis of software and products in real time. Kristy hadn’t worked in tech before, but Craig’s experience as an engineer had exposed her to that world. CloudOne “wanted someone young and hungry” to fill the open finance role.

Since starting at CloudOne as Director of Finance and as employee number four, the company has transitioned from a startup to a growth company, doubling revenue and doing two equity closings in her first 15 months at the company. “It’s amazing how much pride you take in the people you work with at a company like CloudOne. It’s incredible what these people have done.” By the end of 2015, there will be almost 50 employees at CloudOne.

Although the Rutherfords don’t have family in Indy, they’ve established a strong network of friends in town and cheer for their (new) home team, both figuratively and not. “I am still a Colts fan at heart. I live in Indianapolis, and that’s my home team.” She’ll even choose the Colts over Peyton if it comes down to it.

Her advice for making a home in Indy away from home? “Find good people. The opportunities create themselves here. You’ll find more good people than you could ever need.”