Tucker grew up milking cows in rural Illinois, the youngest of four girls. She became the first in her family to go to college, studying business and French. An early Apple programming class sparked her interest in computer programming and she later graduated with a computer science degree.
Tucker went through some tough times before she saw the success. Divorced, parenting two small children and burnt out after leaving her job, she started her own software company. Instead of reaching out to investors for seed money, she cashed out her retirement accounts and took a second mortgage. After the initial struggles, Tucker had an opportunity to work for a customer in automating accounting reconciliation process. During that project Tucker recognized a huge opportunity to create software that would digitize what was still a very paper-bound market. It took Blackline few years before Tuckers bets paid off and now as a market leader they are reaping the benefits of being the early innovators.