1. You’ve recently joined Ontra as our VP of Product Marketing and Content. Welcome! What drew you to this role, and what excites you most about joining the team?
What drew me to the role was my interactions with some extremely smart and warm Ontra leaders, Ontra’s leadership as a technology provider for private markets, and an opportunity to work with Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Leslie Olsen, again. I worked with Leslie previously when she was the CMO at C2FO, the world’s largest early payment platform for businesses. And I am thrilled to work with her again. Most of all, I am excited about bringing innovative, AI-powered products to market that will take tedious, repetitive tasks off of our customers’ plates.
2. What are your top priorities as you step into this leadership position at Ontra?
My main priority is ensuring the Product Marketing and Content Teams thrive and are empowered to do their best work. We want to make content that customers want and will double down on our commitment to world-class product marketing crafted with customer insights, analytics, and speed. It’s the need of the hour if we want to grow aggressively and double our revenue every couple of years.
3. In your role, positioning Ontra’s product offerings in the market will be key. How do you think Ontra currently differentiates itself in the legal tech industry?
Ontra is unique because of our decade-long experience serving private market customers, our lead in harnessing AI for their specific use cases, and our brand; 800 of the world’s top private market firms, including Blackstone, KKR, and Carlyle, use Ontra. Of course, we won’t be complacent and have to continue our investment in products that delight our customers and our brand.
4. Can you tell us more about your career path and some of the pivotal experiences that have shaped your approach to leadership?
My time at Intuit heavily influenced my leadership values. It was a privilege to learn from CEO Brad Smith and founder Scott Cook, who were themselves coached by Bill Campbell, a Silicon Valley legend. I draw inspiration from them and strive to build trust, insist on open communication, prioritize learning and adaptability, and lead with empathy to bring the best out of teams. My managers encouraged me to uplevel my skills to progress in my career and gave me clear, actionable feedback, and I would love to pay it forward.
5. Looking back at your early career, what was the most important skill you developed that helped you progress in the field of product marketing and content?
The ability to connect with the needs of customers and forge friendships across teams. Earlier in my career, I was too cautious about engaging with customers, but soon realized that I needed to be bolder in order to get candid feedback that went beyond platitudes. If you do it long enough, you also start to appreciate the “Say vs. Do” ratio. Customers don’t always act the way they say they are going to because of very human, cognitive biases to which we are all susceptible.
Building actual friendships across teams earlier in my career also helped me develop a better appreciation for my peers’ priorities and how they connected with the company’s priorities. It made me revise my own functional goals that seemed logical without this context and achieve, what my engineering counterparts often refer to as, global maxima instead of local maxima.
6. What emerging trends in product marketing and content do you think will have the biggest impact on how companies engage with customers in the next few years?
Customization at scale – thanks to AI, it is getting easier and cheaper for companies to customize their outreach based on customers’ unique needs and preferences. Big tech will likely lead the charge with their consumer products, and soon it will become table stakes everywhere. This means that as consumers, we will start to expect more communications and offers hyper-tailored to our needs and preferences (think marketing emails leading you to product pages made or customized just for you when shopping online). And soon enough, this expectation will cross over to all marketing. Just think of what Amazon Prime’s 2-day shipping has done to our delivery expectations from all online shopping.
7. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received, and who gave it to you?
It came from a past manager, Rich Preece, who led small business marketing at Intuit. As an engineer-turned-marketer, in a world of ambiguity, I was looking for precise answers. This often slowed me down or kept me from making decisions. Rich would often say “On key topics, it’s better to have strong opinions that are loosely held than have none at all.” This encouraged me to develop a point of view with incomplete information, make a decision by weighing the risks, and revise it if the context changes. This was a big unlock in my productivity.
8. Can you share a couple of fun facts with us?
Several years ago, I used to have a commercial driver’s license – the one that lets you drive 18-wheelers. I also used to work on the aerodynamics of drag racing cars.
