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About the Catlin & Cookman
Group
Building a community of CEOs who are growing
great companies
In today's fast-paced world, CEOs have the toughest
job of all. While it's both exciting and rewarding, it can
also be extraordinarily challenging. Where do CEOs turn for
guidance? Since 1989, CEOs of emerging-growth companies have
come to the Catlin & Cookman Group for our unique expertise
and resources — proven methods and frameworks to plan
for and manage growth and change. Our sole focus on the CEO
experience sets us apart, and the highly targeted resources
we offer — CEO forums, consulting processes and practical
tools — are developed exclusively for CEOs who are committed
to growing great companies.
Catlin & Cookman Group Partners
Katherine Catlin, Founding Partner
Katherine Catlin has helped CEOs grow great
companies for over 20 years. With a unique set of proven processes
and practical tools, she addresses the full range of growth
issues, including helping the CEO clarify vision and values
and define the company's strategic and annual plans, while
building the executive team, infrastructure, management process,
and cultural environment critical to achieving aggressive
growth strategies.
Always focusing on the CEO's unique role, she
created and leads High-Growth CEO Forums, where CEOs meet
regularly in small groups to grapple with critical business
challenges, exchange ideas and develop best practices for
growth. In 1989 she created Building the Profit Spiral®,
now a proven, growth-planning process that guides CEOs in
producing winning growth strategies, avoiding typical pitfalls,
building a cohesive management team, and establishing processes
for gaining company-wide alignment and commitment to implementation
of growth goals. She also developed the CEO Performance Evaluator™
based upon her experience in helping numerous CEOs define
the critical responsibilities of an effective leader in growing
organizations. In addition, she has established The CEO Exchange,
a Web site for CEOs that provides articles, ideas and information
on growth issues.
With her expertise in leadership, innovation,
executive teamwork, and the CEO's role in planning and managing
growth and change, Catlin has been a featured speaker at the
Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, Young Entrepreneurs
Organization, Inc. Magazine's Conferences on Growing the Company,
JP Morgan Partners, and Women Presidents' Organization. She
created and led the 7-part “Growing Your Company: The
CEO's Challenge” series for two years for the Massachusetts
Software and Internet Council.
As a thought leader for CEOs of emerging growth
companies, Catlin has written two books, Leading
at the Speed of Growth: Journey from Entrepreneur to CEO
and Building the
Awesome Organization: Six Essential Components that Drive
Entrepreneurial Growth with co-author Jana Matthews in
conjunction with the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.
Published articles include The
Profit Spiral: A Practical Guide for Leaders Committed to
Growing Their Organizations, Secrets
of Innovation, CEOs
Drive Growth with Innovation, and Peer
Groups Help CEOs Succeed in Today's High Risk/High Reward
Environment.
Catlin is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Sweet
Briar College and received a Masters degree from Lesley College
in Cambridge, MA.
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Bouzha Cookman, Partner
Bouzha Cookman has
over 25 years of operational and consulting experience working
in and with high-growth, venture-backed companies. Catlin
& Cookman Group (CCG) partner for the past ten years Bouzha’s
focus is on streamlining the fast-growth trajectory of investor-backed,
technology companies. Cookman runs the company’s
consulting practice, leads two of the company’s High-Growth
CEO Forums™ and is driving CEO Forum expansion to the
Bay Area and Europe. Since 1998, CCG client CEOs have
created over $2.7 billion in liquidity value and the High-Growth
CEO Forum community comprises over 100 investor-backed CEOs
worldwide.
Cookman’s
consulting and CEO Forum leadership role is informed by strong,
diverse and successful senior
management positions held in
companies from start-up through post-IPO stages. Employee
number 20 at Avid Technology she grew a sales organization
from $1.5 to $20 million in revenue over a two-year period;
directed a product marketing effort that increased revenues
from $51 million to $110 million in one year; and was responsible
for Marketing Communications and Business Development for
a $280 million business. Under her direction the company produced
an Academy Award-winning digital film editing system.
Having
experienced the issues fast-growth organizations face, Bouzha's
goal is to help CEOs build sustainable companies that innovate,
thrive, and provide winning environments for all stakeholders.
Cookman is a Cum Laude graduate of the University of
Pennsylvania. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School
and was honored to be selected by faculty to tutor first-year
students. Currently, she is loving raising Alexander,
her 9-year old son, singing in a community chorus, taking
a break from town service after 10 years on the Concord MA
Zoning Board of Appeals and on the BoD of a technology start-up.
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Nikki Fisher
Leader – High Growth CEO Forum™
As a member of leadership teams at industry
pioneers in long distance telecommunications, cellular telephony
and Internet consulting, Nikki Fisher has learned through
hands-on experience what it means to be at the center of the
high-tech/high-growth whirlwind. As a result, she brings to
the Catlin & Cookman Group a unique ability to provide
practical insight and support to CEOs striving to build not
only fast-growing but also sustainable and profitable enterprises.
For the past eight years, Fisher has been President
of The Fisher Group Consulting, LLC where she specializes
in helping high tech companies grow profitably by improving
the customer focus and integration of their sales, marketing
and service functions. Strategic projects include helping
a global technology company develop the vision and plans to
transform itself from a product to a services/solutions business,
helping a software startup use deep customer research to determine
its next breakout product, and coaching a CEO and his team
to successfully bring a 30-year-old direct marketing company
online.
Fisher began her career as employee #379 at
an upstart company called MCI where, after writing the company’s
first annual reports, Congressional testimony and marketing
materials, she led the in-house litigation support group for
MCI’s antitrust suit against AT&T. After the initial
suit was won, she was asked to lead the interdisciplinary
team that created MCI’s first cellular applications
to the FCC, then became the company’s first female VP,
heading up marketing, customer service, procurement, human
resources and IT for MCI’s newly-formed paging and cellular
subsidiary.
After nearly ten years at MCI -- during which
time the company grew from $6 million in revenue to $3.6 billion,
Fisher was recruited to become a member of the leadership
team at Sprint’s startup cellular venture. There, after
turning around an ailing sales organization, she was tapped
by the CEO to lead all customer service and operations support.
After three years in the cellular subsidiary,
Fisher joined Sprint’s $6 billion business-to-business
long distance division where, as a VP in Corporate Marketing,
she implemented industry-leading processes and systems in
sales compensation and database marketing. In 1995, at the
height of the “long distance wars,” Fisher was
named President of a skunkworks startup that established Sprint's
first non-branded reseller of long distance services to small
businesses.
In 1996, Fisher joined another startup –
IT services pioneer Sapient. Over the next three years, as
the company grew from $49 million to $276 million in revenue,
she established the first marketing, strategic planning and
alliance functions. As Chief Marketing Officer, she was also
a critical player in the company's highly successful efforts
to rebrand itself as a full-service Internet consulting firm.
Fisher graduated cum laude with a BA in English
from the University of Missouri and has completed executive
education courses at the Wharton School at the University
of Pennsylvania and the Darden School at the University of
Virginia. Although she has lived in a number of cities including
Washington, DC, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Kansas City, Pittsburgh
and Boston, she recently returned to her Midwestern roots,
settling happily in a house near Lake Michigan in Racine,
Wisconsin.
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Susan T. Gauff
Leader – High-Growth CEO Forum®
Susan Gauff comes to Catlin & Cookman Group
with extensive experience in business consulting and senior-level
corporate positions. As founder of The Growth Solutions Group,
Ms. Gauff has worked closely with senior executive teams,
coaching leaders to put strategy into action. Recent major
projects include leadership development for sales managers
at an independent mortgage company, executive coaching for
an IT consulting firm and team building for a start-up pharmaceutical
company. She has developed an employee retention program at
a public accounting firm that helped reduce turnover from
23% to 11%. She was also responsible for organization development
and HR process improvement during a $100 million+ expansion
at the Liberty Science Center.
Previously, Ms. Gauff was Senior Vice President and Chief
Administrative Officer with Sarnoff Corporation. During her
five year tenure there she was responsible for increasing
Sarnoff’s visibility and reputation as a high technology
incubator for new ventures. This involved significant culture
change and re-engineering programs. During her tenure, Sarnoff
intellectual property in electronics, communications and bio-technology
resulted in twelve investor-funded spin-offs where Ms. Gauff
contributed expertise in recruiting CEOs and setting up operating
policies and procedures for the new ventures.
Ms. Gauff has also been Vice President, Corporate
Communications for Lexmark International where she led the
communications activities surrounding the company's highly
successful initial public offering. She was responsible for
building Lexmark's investor relations, employee communications,
corporate branding and public relations programs.
As Senior Director, Market and Corporate Communications
for Siemens/ROLM Business Communications Systems, Ms. Gauff
led a corporate culture change and re-engineering program
that resulted in 250% profit improvement over three years.
Her employee relations programs were credited with a major
role in maintaining employee satisfaction at 89% during a
50% downsizing of the workforce. Other accomplishments included
implementing one of the industry's earliest www sites to support
business-to-business order generation and improve sales force
productivity.
A graduate of Centenary College, Ms. Gauff has
been awarded the Business Marketing Association's G.D. Crain
Jr. Award presented annually by Advertising Age magazine for
leadership in business-to-business marketing. She was the
29th honoree and the first woman to receive this award. Her
other honors and accomplishments include the Silicon Valley
Tribute to Women in Industry Award and listing in various
Who's Who directories. Under her leadership, Sarnoff’s
Human Resources function was named Delaware Valley HR Department
of the Year. She is named in the 25th Silver Anniversary Edition
of Who's Who of American Women, is a member of the Rider University
Business Advisory Board and the New Jersey Technology Council.
Recently Ms. Gauff was named “Expert Contributor”
to NJEntreprener.com, a business building resource for emerging
and mid-sized businesses.
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Kathryn Roy
Leader - High Growth CEO Forum™
Kathryn Roy has over 20 years of experience
helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B
companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T, Kronos,
Novell, and dozens of VC-funded technology companies.
As managing partner of Precision Thinking, a
marketing and strategy consulting firm, Kathryn has helped
companies:
devise, execute, and leverage primary research
to hone strategy, positioning, and messaging
boost sales productivity through delivery of
sales enablement training and tools
evaluate and prioritize market opportunities
She also facilitates strategic planning off-sites.
Prior to Precision Thinking, Kathryn was CMO
on the executive team that took Phase Forward through its
turnaround and successful IPO. In this capacity, she led product
management, product marketing, corporate marketing and strategic
planning.
As general manager at BBN Planet (later Genuity),
Kathryn helped build a $100 million nationwide Internet service
by leveraging and combining the operations of three regional
providers.
At Lotus, Kathryn headed up strategic marketing
where she helped recharge the corporate brand, overhaul the
volume sales program, restructure the channel sales system,
and revamp the market research organization.
At Interleaf, Kathryn formed a team to win the
company’s first multi-million dollar services contract.
She then led the team to deliver the project on time and on
budget as well as to sell follow-on services.
Kathryn has published in HBS Working Knowledge,
Marketing Profs, Guidestar, and Mass High Technology. She
speaks regularly on B2B marketing to industry groups.
Kathryn holds an MBA from Harvard Business School
and an MS in Operations Research from the University of California
at Berkeley, in addition to a BA in Math from Colgate University.
Kathryn is also an alumnus of the US Peace Corps, where she
served in Papua New Guinea.
She is on the board of the HBSAB Community Action
Partners, where Harvard Business School alumni provide pro
bono consulting to non profits.
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