By Bill Klump | @TheKlumper | February 8th, 2012
As part of our “Women Game-Changers” series, and inspired by an article written by our very own Lori Morgan titled, “Wait a Minute; Women Are Building Disruptive Companies, Too!” we continue on our journey to find women who are changing the way we live and work, through their innovation and leadership. Historically, leadership in the tech industry has been a male-dominated pursuit, but many of today’s most memorable and inspirational leaders are women. Like our “Disruptor of the Day”.
Introducing Wendy Lea & Get Satisfaction
From bootstrap entrepreneur to corporate executive to angel investor for venture backed start-ups, one theme has defined Wendy Lea’s 25+ year career: a constant push to stay current, relevant, and to go beyond the expected and the status quo. In her professional pursuits, Wendy has driven sales and marketing innovations that have left widely recognized impacts on the technology industry. In her personal life, she has contributed her energy and passion to non-profit organizations, esoteric enlightenment, and even had a fun commercial adventure in professional soccer (better known as English football).
Wendy is a recognized expert in multi-channel systems and has worked with technology brands, large and small, to connect them more effectively to their customers. In 1999, Wendy established Siebel Systems’ eBusiness Consulting business unit which she joined after the company’s acquisition of OnTarget, where she served as VP of Marketing and Alliances. Prior to that, Wendy co-founded The Sales Consultancy in the U.S., where she developed sales methodologies that were later adopted as global standards by IBM Software, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Microsoft, and Oracle.
In 2001, Wendy founded The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, board member and strategic advisor for a long list of startup companies including UStream, Eventvue, Metallect, and Aegis Analytics. Today, Wendy serves as CEO of Get Satisfaction, where she is focused on applying her expertise to drive the convergence of social media and customer service to bring brands closer than ever to their customers.
My entire career has been focused on helping companies build stronger relationships with their customers, whether through the high touch connection of professional sales or services, the build out of alliances and channels designed to bring added value to customers, or now in creating online communities where consumers can actively participate in the shaping of a product, service or brand they have passion about.
Get Satisfaction was born out of Valleyschwag, a lark of an idea for distributing grab bags of leftover promotional goodies. While initially designed to be a fun and frivolous side project, a surprising number of people signed up for the service, and the proprietors found themselves awash in thousands of customer-service requests. To their amazement, they weren’t able to find a suitable, inexpensive, online tool to host their community of customers. So they built one.
The friendly online environment they created encouraged people to answer each others’ questions, pitch in to help solve problems, and share all kinds of new ideas about how to improve their product and processes.
You might be surprised, but we typically find with the majority of successful and innovative individuals we profile, most of them actually do have a life and other interest outside of their careers. Wendy has always maintained an active interest in creative, physical and esoteric areas outside of business. She spends considerable time studying feng shui, astrology, and comparative religion. In addition she has studied and practiced pilates since 2002. Her philanthropic focus has been with The Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund, The San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, and Mercado Global. She has also been active in TechStars, and TED.
*If you would like to recommend a women innovator/leader who would make a good “Disruptor of the Day” candidate, send us an email at info@dailydisruption.com and let us know.
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