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Alliance of Women in Tech Leadership – Spotlight Series – Introducing Loren Shumate
By Tricia Lucas | Leadership
By Tricia Lucas | Leadership
Meet Loren Shumate, an Alliance of Women in Tech Leadership member and a Marketing and Sales Leader with an envious employer portfolio. Loren worked for leading edge fast growth companies that include Netsertive, ZirMed, Allscripts, IBM Kenexa, Qlik, and most recently, Phononic Inc. Loren’s leadership expertise lies in positioning and rebranding hypergrowth technology companies to create brand awareness and demand generation leading to funding, acquisition and IPOs.
As Head of Marketing for Morrisville-based Netsertive, she contributed to raising their C-round of 29M through aggressive media and analyst relation efforts. She was one of the first 25 employees for a swedish-founded analytics company, QLIK, that IPOed in 2010. Her combination of direct sales and marketing experience makes her a huge asset as she is always looking at the bottom line and how to get the greatest return for the investment. Loren inspires people to think in new ways and come up with new ideas. It has been said that her motto is, “Let’s Go Big!”
Her prior achievements include 13 years in Leadership at FMI, a management consulting and investment banking firm dedicated to engineering and construction. She conducted significant corporate re-brand, increased lead generation year over year, and integrated their content marketing and social media strategy to impact the industry and build the corporate brand utilizing analytics, testing and agile marketing methods.
I have made a great transformation in my life when it comes to managing stress. For many, and especially working parents, the demands of work and home can be challenging. Often it is juggling childcare with travel schedules, getting kids to lessons, helping with homework; all while meeting the demands of leadership at work and always needing to keep your game face. Over 10 years ago I explored various holistic practitioners that opened my eyes to the benefits of a whole foods diets, good sleep, detoxing and supplementation. Miraculously I started to feel more energy and my physical stress symptoms subsided. More recently, over the past two years I have adopted a daily meditation practice and wake up early each morning to pay my gratitude to the day, organize myself and express creative thoughts on paper. I strive to influence others in a positive way to establish a morning routine. I am not a morning person but have learned the benefits that waking up early can bring.
In my career I am grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to remessage, rebrand, and even recategorize several disruptive technology companies. There is nothing more rewarding than strategically disrupting a market with a better, more deserving technology, while building a team of marketers and putting the right agencies in place toward that goal.
What makes me even more proud, however, is that I made a pivotal decision to become a marketing leader in the first place. Halfway through professional life, I was at the height of a great career in sales I switched to marketing when I was at a place of highest quota attainment. With a marketing degree and growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, I had revenue-generating “ideas” and a knack for messaging that I wanted the opportunity to benefit others not just my own sales territory. Having a deep sales background has allowed me to be more valuable and credible with sales leadership and partner as “one team” with one joint strategy. It has proved a great differentiator; more than I ever imagined. Changing careers was my best leap-of-faith because I am now equally strong in both areas.
I would be mentoring and coaching young woman in business to believe in themselves, use their voices and find the right balance to achieve their professional leadership goals while managing their needs at home. As mentioned, I have learned so many best practices from daily meditation, to the benefits of supplementation, that I would like to pass on and mentor others. I find that many working mothers are very overwhelmed and could use more guidance and support.
In my long professional career I have never seen the comradery I have seen recently among women in business to help each other as I see right now. I am optimistic that we have great strength to create positive change and help each other to take on more leadership roles in the business community.
I recently left Phononic and am currently looking for a new opportunity but I am very proud of many accomplishments. I replaced ill-performing Creative and PR agencies with accountable, highly performing ones; creating a new metrics-driven infrastructure for the marketing department. I rebranded, remessaged the organization and launched a new website in only 4 months. In addition, I used content marketing, influencer marketing, and social media strategies to secure major print and television opportunities for our CEO to include: Forbes, CNBC Facebook Live, CNBC SquawkBox and Cheddar.
I was born in Madrid, Spain and my father and his family are from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I am grateful for my father’s hard work to come to this country without speaking the language and build a life that gave me such tremendous opportunity.
I would challenge more male leaders to open more doors and nurture the qualities of female leadership and communication style. Too often for women to succeed and gain credibility in business we must adapt to communicate like our male leadership. Traditionally competitiveness and need for status often found in male leadership is not what drives women. Female leaders are often driven by helping others and the connection we make with our colleagues and customers. Often women are uninterested in winning a disagreement but rather want to be involved in the decision making or resolution, which is often misunderstood or even seen as weak. Women are strong consultants, nurturers, creatives and relationship builders. In a data-driven world, we are losing a lot of the human elements of business that women bring so naturally. Creativity and branding which often relate to how you wish for a customer to feel or believe about a company, for example, are often taken for granted or disregarded as trivial even with new technologies for quantifying them. Women bring so much to the table especially when it comes to building trust, mentorship and relationships. Business will win big when gender differences in leadership are truly embraced.
I have known the names and reputations of many of these powerful and talented women but never had a forum to meet and get to know many of them. I am humbled to be a part of the Alliance for Women in Tech Leadership and I’m excited for the goodness and support we can bring to each other while mentoring the next generation of young professional women as great leaders in the triangle.
Read previous article Introducing Julie Bryce
Our professional woman’s peer group is designed for strong successful leaders in the Triangle. Members include executives in sales, marketing, and business development type roles in technology, pharma, biotech, and healthcare. Our group provides a confidential place to share best practices, discuss strategies, and address business challenges. We share successes, tools, vendors, networks, talent, and ideas that can help each of us grow and develop professionally.
Through our passion, enthusiasm, talent, innovation, recruiting, and success, Women in Tech Leadership support, mentor, and empower one other. We also support one another during trials and transitions, through coaching, collaboration, and resources. Our members are building healthy relationships and stronger networks, creating stronger personal brands, recruiting and retaining talent, positioning ourselves as thought leaders, and communicating with confidence.
We believe in candor and confidentiality, creativity and concision, confidence and circumspection. We believe in taking risks and grasping opportunities that challenge the limits of our capability, and encouraging others to do the same. We believe in winning with integrity, through inspiration and leadership.
Tricia Lucas has over 25 years of demonstrated success in recruiting, marketing communications, and social media and helps technology companies recruit more efficiently by focusing on Recruiting Efficiencies, Employer Branding, and Social Media.