Fast 15: Jeannine S. Wheeler

The sink-or-swim approach has always appealed to Jeannine Wheeler.

She began her swimming career as a toddler, leading to a record-setting prep career in St. Louis and ultimately a scholarship to Eastern Michigan University.

Wheeler finished college at the University of Missouri — sans the swimming — graduating magna cum laude in 2005 with bachelor’s degrees in accounting and statistics and a master’s of accountancy just one year later.

For the next three years, Wheeler was a senior associate at KPMG until her husband accepted an auditing job in Springdale in October 2009. Two months later, Wheeler landed a job with Rockfish Interactive, the privately held digital advertising/marketing firm based in Rogers with offices in Little Rock, Cincinnati and Dallas.

Sink-or-swim time didn’t take long to present itself.

“My second day I had a presentation to give to management,” Wheeler recalled. “There’s never a dull moment.”

These days the affable Wheeler, not surprisingly, is still swimming. And similar to her high school days, it’s in the fast lane. It took just six months for her to receive two promotions to her current position, and her tenure has been marked by rapid growth in several areas, most notably revenue growth of more than 200 percent.

“The revenue growth is insane,” she said.

Wheeler, whose finance team has grown from one specialized employee to five during the past year, was also the driving force in implementing new accounting and payroll systems.

Her team also helped facilitate the change from one consolidated profit-and-loss report to 14 separate ones.

“They empower you to make some pretty big decisions here; that is the most appealing thing to me,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler hopes her progression at Rockfish mirrors that of the company, which, she said, should open “two or three” additional offices this year. One of them could establish an international presence.

“We really don’t have anyone in that CFO role,” she said. “There’s just so much change going on. In five years, who knows? We could be public.”