Describe your industry experience:
Mara is a sales and marketing executive with 10 years experience in Software as a Service, Human Capital Management technology, financial consulting, and student loan origination. She has worked for companies that are considered disruptive in their industries, including Graduate Leverage, CoAdvantage, and PlanSource. Mara is often a guest speaker at industry conferences and events, serves on an industry association board, and has volunteered on a Women’s Leadership Committee with United Way Tampa Bay.
Describe your functional experience:
Mara has a broad skillset that allows her to collaborate and strategize with multiple departments and organizational leaders to ensure that inefficient processes are identified and resolved and corporate initiatives are executed successfully. In her current role, she has led top line growth in a high growth sales organization through developing strong channel partners, building out regional sales and sales support team members, developed and launched marketing initiatives, brought new products and features to market, and increased revenue an average of 50% year over year.
In previous roles, Mara was responsible for managing a team of 30 within one of the locations, ensure messages and communications between various departments and offices were consistent and accurate, and develop internal client support and sales team in order to improve existing relationships, create new relationships and enhance cross-selling opportunities, and ensure best practices to promote continued success between 3 offices.
Describe your key business transactional experience:
Mara has a track record of opening new markets and strategic channels, and gaining brand recognition in the market for companies she has worked in. In addition to growing revenue, she also successfully launched upsell campaigns to increase the SaaS fees by more than 20% on new and existing clients. Mara has undergone change management several times through both divestitures of business units and through new private equity investments that created dynamic opportunities.
What is the most important skill you bring to a corporate board?
Mara is truly a collaborator – not only is she an accomplished sales executive, but she looks at the big picture and enjoys helping companies pull all of the details together. The other leaders she works with know they can rely on her to help identify gaps in processes and recommend improvements, even within disciplines outside of her own. For example, Mara helps legal revise boilerplate legal templates based on what is being sold, she help product development think through “How / What / Will they Buy” scenarios, and works with accounting to help identify areas for improvement on billing processes. She is a well-rounded team player that likes to strategize just as much as she likes to execute, and is committed to the roles and responsibilities of being a board member.
