The Sales Lead Management Association Announces the Winners of Its ‘20 Women to Watch’ Annual Recognition Program

 This is the eighth year for this judged event that recognizes extraordinary contributions to their companies and communities.

April 6, 2018 - - Lynden, WA - -   SLMA CEO James W. Obermayer announced the winners of the 2018 ‘20 Women in Business’ leadership recognition program, sponsored by the Sales Lead Management Association.  Obermayer said,” This is the eighth year for this leadership recognition program.  The twenty women selected by the judges have many things in common, such as strong business accomplishments, serving on business and non-profit boards, advanced degrees, and giving back to their communities and industries.  Many are speakers, writers, and authors.  They have founded companies, and fulfilled roles in sales, marketing and customer service departments. They work in manufacturing, agencies, software and services.”

Why It’s Important:

"The ‘20 Women to Watch in Business’ named by the Sales Lead Management Association are found to have the knowledge, skills, and leadership to generate wealth for their companies, customers and fellow employees.”

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In alphabetical order, the 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management are in alphabetical order by first name:

The Process

SLMA members nominated women leaders in business; from those nominated, 20 were selected.  Nominees were judged on their contributions to a combination of C-level management skills, published works, and marketing and sales activities.  Additional qualifications, such as board positions, authorships, non-profit experience and relevant activities and presentations, were taken into account. 

 About the Sales Lead Management Association

 At the Sales Lead Management Association, we believe that managing sales leads manages revenue. Membership and subscriptions to various publications and broadcasts, as it should be, are free.  For information call Sue Campanale at 360-933-9521.  The Sales Lead Management Association is a division of the Flannel Media Group, LLC which publishes the Flannel Radio Channel and B2B Podcast Directory.               

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, 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, 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.

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, 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.

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.

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, 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, 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, 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."

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 2^nd 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.

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, 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.

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, 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.

 Author of the book, Change Agents, The Radical Role of Tomorrow's CMO  - 2017

Rhoan Morgan is an early advocate of marketing and sales technologies and among the first wave of marketing leaders to realize the potential of marketing automation. A strong advocate of marketing’s collection and use of data and technology, Rhoan recognized a need among her peers and launched DemandLab in 2009 as a one-person operation specializing in the emerging field of marketing automation.

Rhoan has transformed DemandLab into a full-service technology focused marketing and sales consultancy, which helps B2B and B2C companies achieve ambitious business growth goals by building revenue ecosystem solutions that leverage technology systems, data analytics, and end-to-end customer journeys.

While under her 8 years of leadership, DemandLab has grown significantly maintaining an average 50% YOY revenue increase.

The consultancy’s client portfolio has grown to over 70 recognized global brands and Fortune 500s including Penske, Indeed, Ipreo and CloudPassage. Since 2015, Rhoan has expanded her team by 30%.

Throughout her 18-year long career, Rhoan remains a prominent thought leader in marketing and sales. She has been named a Champion and Certified Expert by Marketo, a global leader in marketing automation. She is the recipient of a Stevie Bronze Award for Female Entrepreneur of the Year, has twice been named to the list of 20 Women 2 Watch in Sales Lead Management, and was selected as one of the 40 Most Inspiring Leaders in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA).

In addition to the continuing success of her agency, Rhoan is committed to mentoring women, many of whom have gone on to lead successful careers in marketing and sales.

She has been a host of SLMA Radio (Does your Martech Stack up?) and also a guest (How Leading Companies Increase Revenue in today’s Hyper Competitive Environment!).

Connect with Rhoan on Twitter

Jeanne Hopkins, EVP and CMO for Ipswitch is nominated by Jill Ammon and Bene Ferrari.

Number of years in business: 27

Jill says, "Jeanne is a first class marketing wizard who can take anything and build a marketing engine. She is key in lead gen and has taken companies to the next level when it comes to online presence and recognition. She has been instrumental is setting processes and structure and components into place that work like a well oiled machine. I watched her transform the last company she worked for, Continuum into a marketing powerhouse. I highly recommend her for this nomination!"

Bene continues, "Jeanne leads Ipswitch’s worldwide marketing organization, building a metrics-based powerhouse to fuel demand for the company’s IT management tools, including WhatsUp® Gold network monitoring and MOVEit® secure file transfer. She is a proponent of making high quality educational content available in order to be a supportive, useful and thought-leading vendor, ultimately generating high quality leads for sales. She does so through multiple channels – blogs, podcasts, video testimonials, e-books, white papers, speaking and more. Most recently, Ipswitch earned a Killer Content Award from Demand Gen Report for its use of blogs, podcasts and video to increase web traffic and drive a strong top of the Flannel for the company’s inbound marketing efforts. Rich with educational content to help IT pros get in front of their challenges, the Ipswitch blog, which launched in December 2016, grew monthly visitors from 1,800 in February 2017 to over 43,000 in January 2018. Blog organic traffic grew from less than 2,000 in January 2016 to above 12,000 in January 2018. As well, overall organic traffic grew as a significant percentage over the year. Jeanne also co-hosts Ipswitch’s PICNIC Podcast live show every Thursday featuring industry guests who deliver tips and tricks to help lessen IT professionals’ headaches.

Jeanne was recently named a finalist in the prestigious 2018 Women in IT Awards, the world's largest tech diversity event, among more than 700 nominations, for outstanding leadership, innovation and business success. Last year, Jeanne was named to the inaugural class of B2B Marketing Innovators in the category of Marketing Mentors by Demand Gen Report for thinking outside the box to develop and foster innovative strategies that move the B2B industry forward. She was also No. 3 on Social Media Marketing (SMM) Magazine’s list of Top CMOs on Twitter with now over 83,000 @jeannehopkins followers.

Jeanne is an accomplished writer, advisor and speaker. She co-authored “Go Mobile,” a top-selling mobile marketing book on Amazon.com. She has been serving on the advisory board of SLMA since 2015. She also serves on the advisory boards of BrightInfo and Bedrock Data, and as a strategic advisor to Protinuum, Cyber Security Intelligence. Jeanne is a four-time honoree by SLMA as one of the 50 Most Influential Sales Lead Management professionals, five-time honoree as a SLMA 20 Women to Watch as well as a previous SLMA 40 Most Inspiring Leader.

Jeanne previously held executive marketing roles at HubSpot, Symmetricom (now Microsemi), SmartBear, MarketingSherpa and Continuum. At HubSpot, Jeanne’s leadership helped the company land on the number two spot on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies by generating 50,000 net new leads per month."

Connect with Jeanne on Twitter.

Laura Patterson, President, VisionEdge Marketing

Nominated by Amanda Nevins, Elizabeth Marks and Greg Fitzgerald

Years in business: 20+

Amanda says, "Laura Patterson’s passion is helping companies gain insights from data, developing metrics, and design processes to drive growth, create customer value, and improve business and Marketing performance.  After a successful corporate career spanning 20 years in marketing communication, insights and intelligence, strategic account marketing, marketing operations, customer marketing, and product marketing she co-founded VisionEdge Marketing in 1999.  Laura is among the pioneers in the Marketing Performance Management (MPM) space and has been surveying and publishing trends in this discipline since 2001. She is a well-regarded thought leader in marketing accountability, marketing analytics, and marketing operations.

Laura was recently recognized as one of the Top 50 Women in Martech (Marketing Technology) and has been among the Top 50 over 50 Marketers.  She has authored hundreds of articles and two of her books, Measure What Matters and Metrics In Action serve as primers and guides to people embarking on their journey to improving and proving the value of Marketing.  Laura and her team of specialists have enabled over 200 companies, such as Cisco, Elsevier, SW Airlines Cargo, BAX Global, and Zebra, around the globe to accelerate their efforts.

Laura regularly speaks at industry events such as MarTech, B2B Marketing Forum, and eMetrics; guest lecturers for Universities such as Dartmouth, Stanford, Truman State, and Oklahoma State; and serves on the University of Texas McCombs School of Business Masters of Marketing Science Advisory Board. A champion of other entrepreneurs and professional women, she sits on the board of Austin’s Executive Women’s Forum. With over 6,000 LinkedIn connections, she is dedicated to helping others realize their career aspirations."

Elizabeth shares, "Aside from being honest, practical, and logical, Laura Patterson is very knowledgeable about Marketing Performance Management (MPM), accountability, and teamwork.  Her passion for using data to drive business insights and steer a company in the right direction is right on. She’s an industry thought leader and generous in sharing tips to improve your own MPM practices. She is also a prolific author on topics such as marketing, analytics, business insight, and marketing operations.  She’s a real, down to earth, authenticate human being with good intentions to help businesses thrive."

Greg says, "Laura has not only developed a business that's driving companies to focus on customers, but also on process and ensuring the exec team on through the organization are aligned.

She's also a driver outside her business for bringing together for more than a decade the AMEN (Austin Marketing Executive Network) which is a voted on, voluntary collection of Austin, Texas best CMO/VP of Marketing leaders who work together to develop the Austin market and strengthen each other's skills.

Laura's is very active in showing leadership for Women and the underprivileged. She deserves attention as a driving force and I admire her for being the leading authority on marketing, marketing metrics and defining success both personally and operationally."

Connect with Laura on Twitter.

Debbie Qaqish, Principal Partner & Chief Strategy Officer, The Pedowitz Group is nominated by Elizabeth Fairleigh.

Years in business: 20+

Debbie Qaqish helps companies accelerate the journey to Revenue Marketing,™ a term she coined in 2011. The original Revenue Marketer, Debbie is passionate about marketing’s new role as a revenue creator and inspires others to embrace revenue accountability. As Principal Partner and Chief Strategy Officer of The Pedowitz Group, Debbie manages global client relationships and leads the firm’s thought leadership initiatives. Debbie is a transformational leader and visionary change agent. Her greatest skillset is helping organizations assess the need for change, create a vision for change, inspire others to believe in the change and execute the change. Embracing these elements of change, companies like Schwab, Cisco and Microsoft have become Revenue Marketing Centers of Excellence.

Debbie is author of the award winning book – “Rise of the Revenue Marketer,” Chancellor of Revenue Marketing University, and host of Revenue Marketing Radio, which showcases marketing executives from companies like GE and Microsoft sharing advice on marketing transformation. A PhD candidate, Debbie will become Dr. Debbie in the Spring of 2018. She also teaches an MBA course at College of William & Mary on Revenue Marketing.

For the last six years, Debbie has been named One of the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management. She has also won SLMA’s Top 20 Women to Watch distinction for four years. Kapost named Debbie one of the Top 40 Most Inspiring Women in Marketing and FierceCMO Magazine named her one of the Top 10 Women CMOs to Watch.

Fueled by her passion for Revenue Marketing, Debbie penned over 40 articles in 2017. She is a regular columnist for AMA, B2B Marketer, Strictly Marketing, MarTech Today and MarTech Advisor and has also been published in DemandGen Report, CMO.com and Chief Marketer. Debbie observes, consults on and writes about B2B CMO mandates including marketing operations, accountability, digital transformation and customer intimacy. Debbie speaks at industry events and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Sales Lead Management Association.

Debbie has been a mentor to professional women over the years. She interviewed many in her book and nominated them for past Top 20 Women to Watch awards. With over 6000 LinkedIn connections, she is a master networker and dedicated to helping other women achieve their career aspirations.

Connect with Debbie on Twitter

Pamela Muldoon, Revenue Marketing Coach - The Pedowitz Group has been nominated by Elizabeth Fairleigh.

Years in business:  20+

Named one of SLMA’s 2017 Top 40 Most Inspiring People in Lead Generation, Pamela Muldoon, is a Revenue Marketing Rockstar. She was also named One of the Top 50 Content Marketing Women in 2017 at Content Marketing World. A Campaign & Content Strategist, Pamela has mastered the art and science of strategic content marketing that delivers tangible ROI. Her success formula incorporates a winning combination of martech, data and storytelling through content development. Her proven campaign & content marketing strategies ensure the content output both from The Pedowitz Group and from clients is intrinsically connected to the sales process and produces tangible revenue results.

One of Pamela’s areas of content expertise is podcasting and she been professionally podcasting since 2009, helping hundreds of podcasters along the way. She is the former Podcast Network Director for Content Marketing Institute and has been a regular speaker at industry events on podcasting as a content strategy Her past podcasts include Content Marketing 360 and Content Marketing NEXT, where she interviewed over 300 business and marketing professionals.

Over the past 25+ years Pamela has transitioned from traditional marketing where she started as a copywriter in radio broadcasting, to working with sales and marketing teams for some of the largest financial brands in the world, such as Prudential Insurance and ING. For the past ten years she has embraced how digital marketing has changed the customer experience and continues to be a leader in the content marketing industry.

When not creating successful content marketing campaigns, Pamela is also a professional voiceover actor having worked on projects for Mercedes Benz, Jeld-Wen, Audi and Farmers Insurance.

 Connect with Pamela on Twitter.