Pink Slip Shoes

I was laid off from my job last week, and these are my pink slip shoes.?

Heading into this year, I was really excited about the momentum we’d built in the education vertical at RingCentral in my first year and a half with the company, which I joined after 20 years in higher ed IT leadership, most recently as a university CIO. In 2022, we built RingCentral brand awareness & sales pipeline at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference with a strategic booth presence and my main stage speaking session with a former Secretary of Education and two other leading university CIOs; we increased marketing effectiveness with voice-of-the-customer lead campaigns, webinars, and in-person events; we released a dedicated product, RingCentral for Education, with market-responsive features & pricing to meet the specific needs of schools and colleges; we earned strong placement in analyst scorecards like IDC’s inaugural Collaboration Tools in Education Marketscape report; and, in a challenging year in the economy & one where we saw more than 50% turnover in our education sales team, we matured our selling methodology with a customer-centric approach, highlighting how our platform enables colleges & universities to connect campus communities, make their operations more efficient & reliable, and meaningfully increase enrollment effectiveness, improve student retention, and expand external fundraising. As a result, we closed multiple large university deals and ended with our strongest quarter of the year. I was proud of my contributions & leadership in all those areas, and I was excited about our momentum for 2023. So excited, in fact, I commissioned a pair of custom-painted RingCentral shoes to wear at our upcoming annual sales kickoff event later this month, at Enterprise Connect in March, at EDUCAUSE in October, and at other special events.

I designed them with an artist in Chicago over the holidays, he painted them earlier this month, and I received them in the mail last week…on the same day I was let go from the company in their latest round of cuts. Somewhere, Alanis Morissette is singing her song.

I’m still thrilled about the great progress we made last year in sales, marketing, and product. And now I’m wearing different shoes as I plan what’s next for me. I specialize in the intersection of education, technology, and business, helping companies introduce & sell great solutions to the educational customers who need them (but might not know it yet), and helping schools & colleges make the right strategic decisions about technology and carry those decisions through implementation.

This is an exciting & challenging time in education, and the right technology, processes, and people are essential to help meet those challenges, from increasing enrollment to improving student success; teaching & learning in-person, online, and hybrid; enabling employee efficiency & mobility; reducing expenses and increasing revenues; meeting the needs of students and enabling faculty & staff to do their best work. I love working with companies to deepen their maturity in the education vertical, and I love working with schools & colleges to help them transform to meet the changing needs of all their stakeholders. I’m primarily seeking a full time role as Industry Advisor or Consultant, in sales & sales leadership, in marketing, or in product management, but I’m open to conversations about other types of engagements as well.

Let’s talk.