20 Women to Watch Nominees 2018 Feed

Robyn Davis, When I Need Help.

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Robyn Davis is the Owner and Lead Trade Show Strategy Specialist at When I Need Help.

Years in business: 8+

Recognition/Awards:
- “40 Under 40” (Connect Association)
- “Top 100 Champions” (Small Business Influencer Awards)
- “SMB 150” (SMB Nation)
- “20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management“ (SLMA)

Community Involvement:
- Judge for the Stevie Awards
- Gwinnett Tech HRTM Advisory Committee
- AMA Atlanta Volunteer Committee
- University of Tennessee Alumni Board (Atlanta Chapter)

Robyn Davis specializes in trade show strategy; through her company (WINH), she teaches business-to-business exhibitors across North America in industries like healthcare, oil and gas/construction, and technology how to make their trade show participation even more worthwhile. Specifically, Robyn provides speaking, training, and consulting services to individual exhibitors and groups of exhibitors (often working with event organizers to provide “exhibitor education” workshops and webinars at events like RSNA, World of Asphalt, and AAO-HNSF’s OTO Expo/Experience).

Year after year, Robyn has presented educational sessions at prestigious industry events (like IMEX America, EXHIBITORLIVE, HCEA Connect, EventTech, and others) and her writing has been published by reputable print and online publications (like Exhibitor magazine, Event Solutions magazine, TSNN, AEM Advisor, SGIA Journal, and many others). Also, Robyn routinely creates and shares helpful advice/insights with her own audience directly (from quick video tips to longer articles to full webinar series, like her instantly popular “Trade Show Summer School” webinars, which she offered for the first time in 2017).

Robyn Davis has quickly become a well-known and respected voice among event professionals. Although trade shows tend to be driven by tradition (“we’ve always done it that way”), Robyn uses her unique background (small business family, Aerospace Engineering degree) to inspire exhibitors to freshen up their approach to trade shows and, in doing so, shift their focus to the strategic actions that drive real business results (like generating more top quality leads, strengthening relationships with current clients, and raising awareness for their companies, offerings, and causes).


Nina Church Adams, Act-On

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Nina Church-Adams, Senior Vice President, Marketing at Act-On was nominated by Kim Blomgren.

Years in Business: 14+

It’s no surprise that in 2017, Nina was named a Rising Star by HousingWire.com. She has held progressively more senior leadership roles, from American Express and Nike to multiple head of marketing roles at Finastra, the third largest FinTech company in the world. And now she is Senior VP of Marketing at Act-On. Kate Johnson, CEO at Act-On, said: “We are delighted to have someone of Nina’s calibre join the Act-On team, bringing her deep branding, product marketing and strategic go-to-market expertise to meaningfully accelerate our market impact.” Nina has significant experience leading global, cross-functional, marketing organizations in fast-growing companies, and her achievements just keep piling up.

Prior to her corporate endeavors, Nina spent two years in Anhui, China at International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), a non-profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, whose mission is “to protect the basic legal rights of ordinary citizens in developing countries”. Specifically, Nina spearheaded the opening of IBJ's first international office and supported the opening of a second one in Beijing to aid the development of China's fledgling indigent criminal defense system.

Upon returning to the United States, Nina spent four years at American Express OPEN where she launched a new extended payment Charge Card product and managed multi-channel marketing strategies to increase spend and loyalty of OPEN’s highest value customers. While at American Express, Nina was certified as a Six Sigma green belt and continues to apply a process improvement mindset as a marketing leader - something that is especially relevant as her team looks to continuously improve and optimize their Demand Gen engine.

After American Express, circling back to her desire to help the underserved, Nina’s team at Nike Foundation designed and piloted the Girl Effect University program, a global learning platform preparing experts in international development to design and execute large-scale programs dedicated to unleashing the potential of 250 million adolescent girls living in poverty. The program was successfully transitioned to and is operating under the auspices of Mercy Corps.

As part of the senior leadership team at D&H, Nina helped lead the company to an acquisition by Finastra, and to the number three position in the market. This was in part due to her successful efforts in evolving the marketing organization from a product-focused, bottom of Flannel marketing effort to a solution-focused, strategic marketing approach that spanned the entire B2B marketing Flannel from awareness, to demand generation, to sales enablement, to customer success.

Throughout her career, Nina has been passionate about advancing opportunities for girls and women. As co-chair of the D&H Women’s Network, Nina launched its expansion into the US. And even as a student, Nina’s master’s dissertation was a longitudinal study, revisiting the research of her undergraduate thesis, exploring the importance of formal women’s networks in advancing women’s leadership. Nina is thrilled to now be working for a female tech CEO, Kate Johnson, at Act-On during an exciting time for the Act-On team in its journey to help marketers anticipate, automate, and accelerate their engagement efforts!

Connect with Nina on Twitter


Cathleen Schreiner Gates, Ellie Mae, Inc.

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Cathleen Schreiner Gates, EVP, Sales and Marketing, Ellie Mae, Inc. is nominated by Erica Harvill

Years in business: 30

Since joining Ellie Mae in 2012, Cathleen has helped Ellie Mae grow across all customer segments, including strong growth in the enterprise and mega enterprise lender segments. Ellie Mae’s FY2017 earnings reported revenue of $417.0 million, up 16 percent from $360.3 million in 2016; net income of $52.9 million, up from $37.8 million in 2016; and adjusted EBITDA of $122.6 million, up from $113.1 million in 2016. Cathleen’s sales and services organization was responsible for booking 40,800 Encompass seats in the year, taking the total users to 242,000. Today, Ellie Mae processes more than 33 percent of all residential mortgages in the United States and under Cathleen’s leadership, has taken the lead in offering a truly digital mortgage to the market.

In addition to contributing to Ellie Mae’s revenue growth, Cathleen also has inspired people with her customer-first, caring and fun leadership style. She is laser-focused on understanding the customer needs and has made her career as a dedicated partner to Ellie Mae’s customers, regardless of size or scope. She’s metrics-driven and challenges those around her to reach their greatest potential, but maintains a fair and perceptive mentality. She also is a firm believer in bringing fun to everything she touches at Ellie Mae. For example, she reimagined the annual sales kickoff meeting by gathering 300 teammates for a meeting titled “The Aligning” – as a spoof of The Shining – when she surprised them with parody videos to further excite and motivate the team for the year to come.

When she’s not leading her coworkers to success, Cathleen is very involved in the Bay Area community as a proud resident of Pleasanton. Cathleen is passionate about empowering other women to be leaders. She is the executive sponsor of Ellie Mae’s EMerge Women’s Leadership group that brings together women from across the organization to promote training, networking and conversations about the challenges and opportunities they encounter. Cathleen also participates in the annual Ellie Mae Classic golf tournament at TPC Stonebrae in Hayward, California, that benefits the Warriors Community Foundation and helps close gaps of opportunity and access for underserved students in the Bay Area. Cathleen’s professional accomplishments have earned recognition including: Mortgage Professional America Elite Women, HousingWire Vanguard, and HousingWire Women of Influence.


Genie Parker, VanillaSoft

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Genie Parker, Operations, VanillaSoft

Years in Business 30

With over 30 years in business, Genie Parker is an accomplished sales and marketing leader and influencer. The range of her career experiences, with an emphasis on doing business by phone, reaches into hundreds of industry verticals including technology, non-profits, business services, financial services, and manufacturing.
Parker co-founded Parker, Murray and Associates, a call center that supplied sales and sales leads to small businesses, as well as Fortune 500 companies, in various industries. At Parker Murray, Genie drove the adoption of new lead management technologies before launching VanillaSoft.
Genie's company consistently delivered sales, qualified leads, appointments, marketing and fund-raising services to businesses from The Fortune 500 to small businesses across the United States for 15 years.

PMA gained a reputation in the industry with companies looking to carry out highly-productive calling campaigns while ensuring a quality customer experience. Her knowledge of technology and the entire phone sales process gives her the ability to bring the two together to give VanillaSoft customers the tools they want and need.
VanillaSoft has evolved in one of the most powerful CRM software tools on the market.  VanillaSoft’s core philosophy and development process is centered around a single concept: The Power of Simplicity. By focusing on simplicity, it allows its customers to achieve increased productivity, higher contact rates, and better sales accountability.  Simplicity has also undoubtedly driven the acceptance of the system by salespeople.  It was from her real-life experiences with Parker Murray that they created an Intuitive and easy-to-use, customer relationship management system.

Genie is a visionary who identifies the need for specific tools in the emerging inside sales market. She also advocates for the need to adapt queue-based technology to high-end sales.
SALES LEAD MANAGEMENT ACHIEVEMENTS
Genie Parker has played a major role in management of VanillaSoft's operations:\

  • Built internal accounting system and processes for HR, AR and AP.
  • Built internal sales process
  • Built support knowledge base
  • Oversaw new website development
  • Found and built business development relationships
  • Played an integral role in developing and building VanillaSoft's Cloud-based, Lead Management Platform

In her current role, Genie oversees marketing strategy, directs marketing communication efforts, and partners with sales to continue increasing VanillaSoft’s brand awareness and market penetration.


Kathy Bryan, Digital Media Solutions

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Kathy Bryan, Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications with Digital Media Solutions is nominated by Kimberlee Archibald

Years in business: 19

Kathy Bryan is the Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Digital Media Solutions (DMS), an industry leader in the world of customer acquisition and retention that helps clients maximize their digital marketing to beat the competition and accelerate growth. In this role, Kathy is responsible for all aspects of marketing and communications for DMS and its subsidiary brands. Since its inception, DMS has evolved into a full-service performance marketing company that services firms within highly complex and competitive industries including mortgage, education, insurance, consumer brands, automotive, jobs and careers. DMS has achieved incredible year-over-year growth, which has earned recognition on the Inc. 5000 list in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.

A senior-level strategic marketer with strong B2C and B2B expertise via integrated marketing, brand management, demand generation, content marketing and client services, Kathy has made significant contributions to developing and maintaining the DMS brand across multiple platforms. Bryan has worked at both global and boutique advertising agencies with Fortune 100 clients in the hospitality, travel, mortgage, education and retail sectors.


Rachel Schulties, Digital Media Solutions

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Rachel Schulties, Executive Vice President,  Digital Agency at Digital Media Solutions is nominated by Kimberlee Archibald

Years in Business: 12

Rachel Schulties is the Executive Vice President of the Digital Agency at Digital Media Solutions (DMS), an industry leader in the world of customer acquisition and retention that helps clients maximize their digital marketing to beat the competition and accelerate growth. As the leader of the cross-functional agency team, Rachel oversees affiliate marketing, client and vendor relationships, agency services, performance marketing, the award-winning Sparkroom performance technology and its technical support function that helps brands boost results and redefine the win. DMS has achieved incredible year-over-year growth, which has earned recognition on the Inc. 5000 list in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Rachel has spent her career managing client relationships, building strong teams and delivering highly successful multi-channel marketing campaigns that have connected thousands of consumers with hundreds of brands. This expertise allows her to provide best practices in lead gen and digital marketing guidance to some for the most complex and competitive companies.


Megan Lueders, Zenoss

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Megan Lueders, Chief Marketing Officer at Zenoss is nominated by Alison Guzzio

Years in Business: 20

Megan Lueders is redefining what it means to be a Chief Marketing Officer. She brings a global mindset to her role as a marketing leader and executive decision maker at Zenoss, applying strategic thinking and a keen business acumen to the interplay between technology, branding, sales, partner relationships, and company culture.

Megan is a firm believer in solving modern marketing challenges through continuous improvements in people, processes, and technology. She has implemented account-based marketing (ABM) initiatives, digital marketing strategies, and lead-generation campaigns to grow sales year-over-year and assisted in the company’s transition from a direct-sales-only business to a successful channel and direct sales model.

Joining Zenoss at its 12-year mark, Megan re-established the brand, helping the company shed its image as an outdated organization. She performed a significant brand refresh, overhauling the look & feel, tone, style, and instated new corporate messaging to define the company’s vision as the leader in Software Defined IT Operations (SDITO). As a result, every person within Zenoss is able to consistently express what the company does and the value the software delivers.
She focused on changing the external brand perception by re-architecting the Zenoss website, community platform and CMS platform, instituted SEO best practices to better position Zenoss on search engines and secured a Top 20 ranking as a Best Places to Work in Austin. Simultaneously, Megan modernized the demand-generation engine by optimizing their digital presence, scaling their campaigns and creating new sources of inbound leads via these updated platforms.

Under Megan’s direction, attendance at the annual GalaxZ user conference—a three-day conference where Zenoss customers share and communicate with one another—has grown by 30%. She raised the bar on keynotes, featuring speakers from Enterprise 500 companies, and has achieved 100% growth in GalaxZ sponsors year-over-year and a 200% increase in sponsorship revenue. The conference now generates an average of $5 million in yearly revenue.

Armed with a vision for how Marketing could extend further into the customer journey, Megan partnered closely with the executive team to strategically shift to an Account Based Marketing-Selling approach. She cultivated a strong alliance between the Sales and Customer Success teams and demonstrated her strategic prowess in presenting and then executing on the new strategy. Megan worked closely with the Channel Sales team to grow the partner base, generate new pipeline and further the Zenoss brand presence.

Most important to Megan is how she continuously serves as an engaged mentor in the community and provides career development opportunities for her team. She’s passionate about growing her team’s knowledge and creating an environment where they succeed. She established a marketing internship program to foster millennial career development and encourages her team to participate in giving back to the community each quarter.

Megan has earned the recognition of CRN Women of the Channel, CMO Club, Profiles in Power, and Martech Women to Watch. She is a regular speaker at The University of Texas at Austin, SXSWi and this year at SXSWedu.


T. Melissa Madian, TMM Enablement Services

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Melissa Madian, Founder of TMM Enablement Services is nominated by David Bloom

Years in business: 15

Melissa Madian is a forward thinking and innovative sales enablement leader & practitioner.  Her passion and knowledge of the space has been recognized by her peers and the organizations at which she has helped achieve massive business results.

Melissa was an early employee at Eloqua, a pioneer in marketing automation SaaS industry.  She was instrumental in the startups journey from solutions consulting to leading the Worldwide Enablement organization including building multiple sales programs from scratch.  Eloqua eventually went public with hundreds of employees and over $400 million market cap.  Shortly thereafter, Eloqua was acquired by Oracle for $870 million.  Melissa went on to run the Sales Academy at Oracle where she clearly demonstrated that her skill set was scalable beyond a hyper growth company and completely relevant to Fortune 500 technology and software leaders.

From Oracle, Melissa went on to join a midsize, venture backed software company, Vision Critical, where she was able to prove once again that her domain expertise was applicable across industries.  She had the opportunity to build a full stack enablement department with a focus on not only Sales Enablement, but Customer Experience Enablement as well.  Her programs helped drive top line revenue growth by increasing close rates and deal sizes.

Melissa is now the Founder of TMM Enablement Services, an end to end sales enablement consultancy leveraging her vast experiences in building onboarding programs, running sales kicks offs, deploying predictable and scalable sales playbooks, and complete sales process development

Her rare combination and understanding of the scientific engineering of sales process and the artistry of storytelling puts her in a different league to help organizations drive productivity like never before. This skill set coupled with her unmatched energy and zest for life, makes her an ideal candidate for the 20 Women Leader to Watch in Business in 2018 Award.

Connect with Melissa on Twitter.


Maneeza Aminy, Marvel Marketers

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Maneeza Aminy, CEO of Marvel Marketers is nominated by Jaime Ciabattoni

Years in business: 20

Maneeza Aminy is CEO of Marvel Marketers, an expert marketing automation, strategy and ABM consultancy, that has grown at a rate >400% YOY. With an epic team of experts, Marvel Marketers has worked with 2500+ clients and is 100% referral based, including brands such as Google, RingCentral and Extreme Networks. Marvel Marketers launched a comprehensive social media campaign for 2017 which has since generated a 654% increase in traffic​.  Marvel Marketers has been honored and invited to speak at multiple events including the Boston Marketo User Group, Kalamazoo Social Media Week 2017, and the Big Sky Big Ideas Tech Summit. Maneeza previously worked at Marketo and Salesforce, and is often seen speaking as an expert on marketing industry trends. She i​was ​​also an Adjunct Professor of Economics and has worked with SAAS and CRM for most of her career.

Connect with Maneeza on Twitter.


Trish Bertuzzi, Bridge Group

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Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist at Bridge Group

Years in business: 20

Author of: The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales

Board Affiliations
•       AA-ISP - Advisory Board
•       VisibleGains - Advisory Board
•       Yesware - Board of Advisors

Recognition & Awards
•       Top 25 Sales Influencer by OpenView Labs (3X)
•       Top 25 Most Influential in Inside Sales by AA-ISP (3X)
•       Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers by Top Sales World (2X)
•       Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management  by SLMA (3X)
•       Special Recognition Lifetime Contribution to Inside Sales from AA-ISP

Bertuzzi founded The Bridge Group to help B2B technology companies build world-class Inside Sales teams. Since 1998, her team has helped over 320+ companies build, expand and optimize Inside Sales - building pipeline, generating revenue and redefining the image of the profession. In 2016 the Bridge Group expanded its service offerings to include Account Based Revenue (ABR) services. With this service we help companies launch strategies that drive bigger deals in bigger companies.

Bertuzzi helps Sales & Marketing Leaders make the big decisions: on implementation strategy, productivity & performance, process, technology and tools.

Over the last two decades, Trish has promoted inside sales as a community, profession, and engine for revenue growth. In the process, The Bridge Group has worked with over 200 B2B technology clients to build, expand, and optimize their inside sales efforts.

Through a combination of hard work and timing, Trish and her team's research and ideas have been featured on Inc.com, in Forbes, by associations like SLMA and AA-ISP, and across more than 68 sites in the sales and marketing world.


Katie Bullard, DiscoverOrg

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Katie Bullard, Chief Growth Officer at DiscoverOrg was nominated by Krista Van Lewen.

Years in business: 4

Katie Bullard, Chief Growth Officer of DiscoverOrg, has quickly made an indelible mark in the sales intelligence space, and has been instrumental in the meteoric rise of DiscoverOrg, now the industry-leading sales and marketing intelligence provider. Since Katie joined DiscoverOrg two years ago, she has helped guide the company to its unprecedented growth:  In 2017—DiscoverOrg’s 10th year— the company surpassed all growth goals, including revenue, database size, profitability and number of employees. The marketing team, under Katie’s leadership, last year sourced 54% of the company’s revenue and was named Marketing Team of the Year by SIIA.

What principles guide Katie as she continually looks to build upon her team’s success? “I always take a holistic view of how to create an engine of growth by bringing together market strategy, product strategy, partner strategy, and acquisition strategy,” she says.

Katie’s 15-year background includes broad enterprise expertise encompassing finance, corporate strategy, recruiting, training, sales development, and operations—all of which complement her current responsibilities of leading the global marketing, product management, and partnership functions at DiscoverOrg.

“I think I'm proudest of my ability to bring diverse functions together to first define a clear “North Star” growth strategy—and then to execute it in concert with our other teams to achieve it,” she adds.

Katie holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Virginia.

Connect with Katie on Twitter


Cyndi Greenglass, Diamond Communication Solutions

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Cyndi Greenglass, Senior Vice President of Strategic Solutions at Diamond Communication Solutions.

Cyndi W. Greenglass is a founding partner and Senior Vice President Strategic Solutions at Diamond Communication Solutions, a data driven communications firm specializing in Healthcare, Financial Services and direct response solutions.

Greenglass has twice been named into the Top 100 Influential BTB Marketers by Crain’s BtoB Magazine, and was the 2012 CADM Chicago Direct Marketer of the Year. Cyndi is a member of the Executive Management team at Diamond Marketing Solutions where she is responsible for the strategic planning process, participates in strategic acquisitions, and manages the agency services division.

Prior to becoming a “Direct Marketer”, Cyndi spent 10 years in the international business consulting arena with the U.S. Embassy, the Canadian Consulate General, and the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service.

In 2016 Cyndi was named one of 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management and one of the 10 Most Fascinating People in Business to Business Marketing. Cyndi is passionate about educating future marketers on the importance of data analytics for strategic decision making. She lectures on data and digital marketing nationally, is highly sought after to speak at major industry conferences.

Cyndi received her B.A. from University of Toronto and holds a M.S. in IMC from WVU. She is delighted to join the faculty of her alma mater as an online adjunct instructor.

Greenglass is a host on WVU Marketing Communications Today a live internet radio program with podcast replays.


Lydia Sugarman, Venntive

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Lydia Sugarman, CEO of Venntive has been nominated by: Lisa Padilla, Greg Chambers, Nancy Zare, David Raab and Michael Taylor.

"Lydia has spent years leading businesses through their toughest marketing challenges. She understands email marketing ins and outs. A seasoned marketer, Lydia can bring customers in with her end-to-end tools."

"Lydia not only grows her own business, but she is responsible for the growth of other businesses through her software company, Venntive. She demonstrates guidance and direction to her company and others. She is a leader to watch in 2018."

"A creative, inventive mind with a heart for helping others -- this is the core of what makes Lydia Sugarman outstanding. She's driven to succeed, and enhance the field of technology a geek that cares and speaks English. It's a rare combination. She's smart, strategic, and personable. She truly desires to be of service, yet she leads the way by innovating the world of marketing. Not only has my company benefited by her counsel, I have gained by her friendship. I highly recommend Lydia as a Woman Leader in Business."

"Lydia has built a thriving, innovative company in the cut-throat world of marketing automation.  Her product helps many small businesses and non-profit organizations operate effectively, helping to support a healthy business and social ecosystem beyond the grasp of giant corporations.  And she's done it with no outside funding."

"Top saleswoman that manages to succeed with minimal resources."

 


Tracie Orisko, Managed Sales Pros

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Tracie Orisko, President, Managed Sales Pros is nominated by Carrie Lynn Simpson

Years in business: 4

Under Tracie's leadership, Managed Sales Pros has experienced 621% growth over three years, making Managed Sales Pros the 25th fastest growing startup in Canada (Profit Magazine, Fast 50, 2017).

Tracie has developed and implemented training and mentoring programs that include workforce readiness support for women recovering from substance abuse and women experiencing temporary homelessness.

Tracie sits on the board of her local Habitat for Humanity chapter, participates in the Comptia Channel Chief Giving Circle, and is known for spreading Random Acts of Kindness.


Jen Spencer, SmartBug Media

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Jen Spencer, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, SmartBug Media

I was first introduced to Jen Spencer through Matt Heinz' Sales Pipeline Radio podcast. The topic was How to enable your entire go-to-market team: Best practices and advice to increase onversion rates and sales success.

That's a lot! But I've come to realize Jen Spencer is a LOT of everything sales and marketing. I'm not sure when she sleeps.

People say of Jen, " Those that choose to work with her get to share in that enthusiasm, and as a result, will become successful in their own right."

"Jen is also a leader, mentor and friend to her co-workers. She brings a high level of enthusiasm to everything she does and it’s contagious. "

"Jen gets things done. She isn't afraid to test, fail, and test again until she sees results. She is highly adaptable, committed and one of the hardest workers I've ever met. "

I've been listening to her shows, reading her articles and have come to appreciate the type of professional she is. She's approachable, engaging and action, not ego, centered. She educates anyone who would benefit from her insights, puts people together, makes connections that are valuable, she leads and inspires.


Anna Fisher, ZoomInfo

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Anna Fisher, Senior Director of Marketing, ZoomInfo is nominated by Caitlen Coen

Years in business: 10

As Senior Director of Marketing and Head of Lead Generation at ZoomInfo, Anna Fisher is directly responsible for brand awareness, lead generation and lead nurturing strategies. With years of experience in business and marketing, Anna’s leadership has quickly contributed to ZoomInfo’s bottom line, helping the marketing team generate revenue through various new channels, including targeted webinars, nurture campaigns, website and conference strategies. In fact, in 2017 ZoomInfo saw 80% of all opportunities and 75% of new business come from marketing generated leads.

As a thought-leader in the industry, Anna regularly contributes to well-known publications, including CMO.com, Chief Marketer, and MKTGinsight. In 2018 Anna was named one of SLMA’s 40 Most Inspiring Leaders, taking the number one spot in her category of People in Lead Generation Companies.

This past September, Anna and her team executed ZoomInfo’s 2nd annual Growth Acceleration Summit which brought together hundreds of B2B marketing and sales professionals, and more than 25 of the industry’s foremost thought leaders for two full days of multi-tracked sessions, presentations, workshops and networking.


Jennifer Mahoney, SmartBear Software

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Jennifer Mahoney, Vice President, Customer Success at SmartBear Software was nominated by Caroline Ambros

As Vice President of Customer Success, Jennifer Mahoney is responsible for building and growing the global customer success management strategy at SmartBear Software. Over the past several months, Jennifer has put the foundations of customer success to work in both North America and EMEA markets to positively affect the retention rate of customers using SmartBear tools. Within the first half of 2017, the retention rate improved 1.5 points, growth and expansion opportunities increased as she has built successful teams, programs and structure that will scale over the course of the coming years. In addition to these efforts, Jennifer provided successful oversight to SmartBear’s first ever User Conference in Boston in September 2017 where 300 SmartBear customers received certification on product and shared industry insights which is launching SmartBear into its next phase of growth and success.

Historically, Jennifer spent the bulk of her customer facing career at Optum where she strategically managed large complex hospitals and enterprise health systems. Working in tandem with the sales organization and leadership teams, Jennifer was also a significant contributor to revenue growth and company sales goal attainment. Her expertise also includes fostering and growing business through technology while managing customer continuity from the growth of Picis, a Boston-based start-up company to Optum, a large health, technology, and services company. Through acquisition with Harris Healthcare, she most recently built a Customer Success Program for Harris Healthcare that has been considered best practice across all healthcare pillars of the company throughout North America and Europe. She is a graduate of Assumption College.

Connect with Jennifer on Twitter.


Gail Shlansky, SmartBear Software

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Gail Shlansky, Director of Products, ReadyAPI at SmartBear Software was nominated by Caroline Ambros.

Years in Business: 20+

Gail graduated with a master’s degree in computer science in an age when very few women were in the field, and has shown a commitment to the world of software ever since. After graduating, Gail quickly found her way to product management.

Gail has made a career out of introducing new products to the market and works closely with transactional and enterprise sales teams to define sales strategies to best impact the market. Among Gail’s favorite experiences in this vein was her time with Lotus, acquired by IBM during her tenure. During this time, Gail and her team developed products and helped shape the new Groupware, or collaboration, market. Later in her career, she was responsible for one of the most successful products in the SharePoint market for Microsoft.

In her current role at SmartBear, Director of Products for ReadyAPI, Gail leads the highest earning product suite for the company. She finds her work in the API space compelling because the marketplace is new and developing. She believes that the modern API economy is only the tip of the iceberg and is helping the marketplace grow.

During her tenure at SmartBear, the company has grown exponentially, due in part to Gail’s role in growing a mature product, SoapUI, downloaded by millions of users. Gail has worked to increase the number of SoapUI Open Source users who purchase SoapUI Pro by gaining better insights into that lead channel, and creating messages and programs around why open source users should move to the paid tool. She has also played a role in shaping new products, like ServiceV Pro, into a mature offering. Gail’s team has created a new market for ServiceV Pro by generating new interest, and driving those leads from interest to purchase.


Ellie Mirman, Crayon

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Ellie Mirman, CMO of Crayon was nominated by David Donlan

Years in business: 14

Ellie Mirman loves working at the intersection between marketing, sales and product, and building marketing from startup to scale-up. As CMO at Crayon, the market and competitive intelligence company that provides insights and inspiration for marketers, Ellie has launched various successful marketing programs over the last year to drive high quality leads and customer development. She has grown Crayon’s user base to over 65,000, published the largest study yet on market intelligence and created a half dozen eBooks with thousands of downloads each. She is a frequent speaker at webinars and conferences, presenting on how businesses can leverage inbound marketing tools and techniques for lead generation and nurturing. In 2018, she is speaking at High Five Conference (Feb 28), MassTLC Employee XP (Mar 9), Midwest Digital Marketing Conference (Mar 28), Digital Growth Unleashed (May 17), Digital Summit Boston (Aug 15) and Content Marketing World (Sept 6). Prior to Crayon, she was VP of Marketing at Toast, where she built and led the marketing function across demand gen, content marketing, product marketing, branding and customer advocacy. At Toast, she increased monthly bookings more than 200 percent year-over-year and increased monthly inbound leads 10 times in her first 12 months. She held multiple marketing leadership positions at HubSpot during its growth from 100 customers to IPO. Ellie has won numerous industry awards, including BostInno 50 on Fire, and she is a previous SLMA 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management honoree. Ellie shares her presentations and marketing tips at http://www.elliemirman.com as well as on Twitter.


Patrice Greene, Inverta

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Patrice Greene, President at Inverta has been nominated by Trish Bertuzzi

Years in business: 3

Patrice is President and co-founder of Inverta, a B2B marketing consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations transition from theory to practice in the areas of demand generation, account based programs, and marketing technology.

Patrice is one of the early pioneers in the marketing automation space.  As a marketing leader and practitioner she was an early adopter of Eloqua (now Oracle Marketing Cloud) and quickly became one of their first partners.  She saw the potential of how technology can impact marketing’s role within an organization, and moved over to consult and support the B2B marketing ecosystem in 2008.

Patrice spent 7 years with DemandGen International as their managing director, primarily responsible for leading the firms sales and growth initiatives.  Under her leadership, DemandGen grew 10x, was named to the Inc 500 list, and was the market leader in the marketing automation consulting space.  As Oracle and Marketo’s top partner, Patrice and her team worked with numerous enterprise and SaaS companies helping them to implement and leverage marketing automation.  Year over year, her clients won major industry accolades such as an Oracle Markie and Sirius Decisions ROI awards.

Throughout her years working with marketers supporting them in marketing automation, Patrice recognized a that todays modern marketing leader had challenges and needs that weren’t being met by the existing consulting landscape.  She left DemandGen in 2015 and formed Inverta, who’s main purpose is to plug that gap that exists between high level, theoretical consulting outputs and point level service providers.  As President of Inverta, the firm has grown exponentially, doubling each year since formation.  Quickly becoming known for their expertise in helping organizations with account-based revenue strategies and their depth of experience across the entire martech landscape, Inverta has worked with leading organizations such as Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones, CA Technologies, and Teradata.  Inverta’s style of consulting breaks the mold of expected best practices, forging a trail with fresh approaches to building demand and engaging target accounts.

When she’s not busy leading Inverta, Patrice enjoys working with colleagues and fellow marketers as an amateur career counselor and job placement advisor.  She absolutely passionate helping friends and colleagues navigate their careers.  She also has a keen ability to play marketing match-maker connecting marketing leaders with individuals, businesses, or technologies that match each other’s respective needs.

You will find Patrice at industry conferences and events, often times speaking on stage or participating in panels on subjects such as account-based revenue, demand generation, or marketing technology.

Connect with Patrice on Twitter.


Kate Adams, SmartBear Software

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Kate Adams, Director of Demand Generation at SmartBear Software has been nominated by Caroline Ambros.

With more than 13 years of tech experience building strong businesses within different stages and industries, Kate is Director of Demand Generation at SmartBear Software. Kate is passionate about aligning marketing with sales and product teams, in order to create fully integrated marketing campaigns across all platforms in order to all maximize both revenue and growth. With all teams working together, her demand generation team is iterating quickly and driving increased results. Kate strives to bring businesses and brands to life in the hearts and minds of prospects and customers by creating and delivering valuable, compelling content for each stage within the customer life cycle. She brings the voice of the customer to every aspect of business – marketing, product, customer success, customer service, finance – you name the department, they all must be aligned to the customer. Kate believes that even though her team is executing business to business marketing, it’s people who should be at the heart of each decision. She drives the business forward by leveraging a data driven approach to decision making.

Connect with Kate on Twitter.


Joanne Black, No More Cold Calling

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Joanne Black, author, founder of No More Cold Calling is nominated by Susan Finch

Years in business: 21+

Her excitement as she helps clients transform their businesses is infectious! You want to stand with her, rooting for client AHA moments and growth. Her No More Cold Calling method has grown to be the #1 company in the U.S. for transforming sales teams into referral selling machines. She remains more than relative because she continues to evolve with the changing sales stage. She's not emotionally attached to "the way she learned it" - she only cares about finding better, more effective ways to guide her clients to doing better. She empowers entire sales teams through her guidance and leadership, as well as her sincere encouragement. SImply reading through her referrals on LinkedIn paint the consistent picture of a valued leader and teacher.

Connect with Joanne on LinkedIn and Twitter


Cindy Goldsberry, Higher State Technology

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Cindy Goldsberry, Revenue and Relationships Officer at Higher State Technology has been nominated by Meredith Clark

Years in business: 30+

Cindy Goldsberry is the Revenue and Relationships Officer with Higher State Technology (HST), Managed IT Partner to SMBs. She is also a co-founder and partner of the ZFactor Group.

Cindy and investment partner, Alan Goldsberry invested in HST in 2014 (HST was founded in 2004) and HST grew from $150K annually to $2.7MM run rate from 2014 to present. The management team of HST has leveraged the ZFactor Methodology, a strategic planning, creating a sales framework, and managing change to creating predictability of revenue and customer experience. In 2017, HST launched their Business Technology Office (BTO) and Project Management Office, expanding services to include Strategic IT Planning and business services for clients and their internal IT departments.

Cindy has thirty+ years of business experience, specifically in developing and implementing revenue and profit generating strategies translated to tactical roadmaps – from start-up to ceiling busting to exit.

She is the author of ZFactor Sales Accelerator: From Vendor to Value Creator, which has been listed on Amazon’s Best Sellers for sales teams. http://amzn.to/Q1HRLQ . She is also a partner in the ZFactor Group, a firm offering Executives-as-a-Service to SMBs for business acceleration.

Cindy is the creator and master facilitator of the ZFactor Methodology which leverages the Visioneering process to catalyze instant change for revenue acceleration. Starting with a 60 minute, facilitated think-tank session (or modified to fit strategic team sessions) this process elucidates Gaps and Opportunities between current reality and desired future state of the business and creates 90-day agile roadmaps for implementation.

Currently, Cindy has licensed the ZFactor Sales Accelerator methodology nationally to Xcellelrate.com, an Accelerator for IT MSPs. The Sales Xcellerator Training series is a 4-part series was developed from the ZFactor methodology and tailored specifically for MSPs based on Cindy’s own experience with HST.

Prior to HST, from 2006 – 2012 she was VP Strategic & Enterprise Sales for Boundless Network and with a team of exceptional people helped grow the company from $800K to $54MM in 2012. She customized and leveraged her ZFactor methodology to innovate strategy and develop the talents of a channel of 100+ sales professionals. There she ran the Enterprise Account Services (EAS) division and helped build the EAS sales operations infrastructure to support the roll-out of an eCommerce Platform to corporations.

Other experience includes Systems Engineer and computer sales with Motorola, Manager with Ernst & Young’s Information Technology Group, and MarCom Director for one of first Internet company IPOs in 1997.

Other activities include Steering Committee for W@A; Board of Directors for Goodwill Industries of Central Texas and leadership in her Faith Community with her husband, Alan, Bethany United Methodist Church.  She is a Sum Cum Laude graduate of Texas A&M University.


Ali Hall, AgentCubed

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Ali Hall, VP Sales, AgentCubed has been nominated by Chad Hogan.

Years in Business: 11

Ali Hall serves as the Vice President of Sales for AgentCubed and has over 11 years of experience in the healthcare industry. She began her career with a consulting firm focusing on business process improvement, continued as the sales AVP of program management for a Fortune 500 Medicare Advantage plan, and in 2014 moved into a fast growing, lead management and CRM software company, AgentCubed. Ali quickly moved from Client Relations to VP of Sales and through the company’s hard work and achievements AgentCubed was acquired in June 2017 by Quotit Corporation, a National General Company (NASDAQ: NGHC). Ali continues to lead the national sales efforts and is an integral part of AgentCubed’s growth and success.

Ali has a deep understanding of process and product and that makes her a unique force in our organization. Her ability to connect with clients through her industry knowledge, genuine desire to see them succeed and the fact she takes pride in knowing the right clients are using our platform is a large part of our excellent retention rate. She builds a genuine trust with people, asks the right questions and will happily tap into her consulting background to help clients succeed.

Ali is a regular speaker on lead management, CRM and distribution topics at the Medicare conferences and has built a trusted network creating long term professional and personal relationships. We are confident Ali will be a powerhouse in the insurance lead management space for many years and strongly believe she is a Leader to Watch in 2018.

Connect with Ali on LinkedIn


Bernadette McClelland - 3 Red Folders

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Bernadette McClelland, CEO 3 Red Folders has been nominated by:

Danielle McClelland, Wayne Maloney, Gail Mastrowicz and Carole Yeomans

Danielle says, "Bernadette is a thought leader in Sales Leadership and Top 50 blogger for Top Sales World. Bernadette is the author of 5 books on Sales and Sales Leadership with the most recent titled 'The Art of Commercial Conversations' and is the proud founder of 'The Hive' a collaborative group of women in B2B sales roles that want to do sales differently.
Bernadette has also been the only Australian asked to coach Harvard MBA's in selling Skills."

Wayne Maloney says, " Bernadette is a true though-leader in sales. She has single handedly lifted the recognition of women in B2b sales and generated a strong following and excellent business. Her sales skills are second to none and she shares her experiences and skills in a manner that is refreshing and embraced by all who she works with."

Gail says, "Bernadette is an amazing 'trail blazer' in Sales Leadership. She is passionate about amplifying human potential, and has the highest standard of professionalism, customer service, and integrity.

Bernadette is also an accomplished writer and has written 5 books on Sales and Sales Leadership - her latest being 'The Art of Commercial Conversations'.
One of the things I admire in Bernadette is her genuine commitment to advancing women in sales, and to this end, approx. 4 or 5 years ago she set up a collaborative group of women in sales called “The Hive” and this group meets regularly and is a valued support network, and as a result of Bernadette’s leadership and mentoring this membership base is ever-increasing.

Bernadette travels overseas and has networking groups which she presents to and keeps their education ‘up to the minute’ with innovative and empowering Presentations, which is why she is always being asked to attend various conferences and meetings both in Australia as well as other countries.
Bernadette is definitely a 'Leader' for women in business and I am proud to nominate her for this prestigious Award."

Carole Yeomans points out, "Bernadette is a thought leader in Sales Leadership
a Top 50 blogger for Top Sales World
Author of 5 books on Sales and Sales Leadership
The Founder of 'The Hive' a collaborative group of women in B2B sales "