Vanessa Thomas
"Vanessa is an expert in many areas of technology, including AI and digital transformation - both of which are critical for any business today. Vanessa has over 20 years of global business experience and also has an unquenchable thirst for learning - she is always willing to stretch and add to her arsenal of intelligence.
When asked about her biggest accomplishment, she told me about a product she brought to market six years ago which was during a pivotal point in the technology industry. She built a model that is now a $1.5B business and of course, others have since followed that model. She enjoyed the challenges and successes of bringing a new product to market and dealing with all the complexities of that. Now Vanessa wants to bring her unique business background to serve on a corporate board or two, which she is perfectly qualified for."
Michele Ashby, CEO, ACE LLC
Vanessa is an accomplished leader with over 20 years of global business experience and results across many domains. A technology forward, SaaS experienced, Lean Six Sigma expert and AI strategy savvy executive with International MBA. The vast majority of her career has involved direct engagement on corporate business strategy and revenue interlock planning, and direct input into cadence of Board of Director business reviews.
Progressive leadership roles with Nortel Networks including institutionalizing Lean Six Sigma in company culture and management decision-making framework. Vanessa was chosen early in her career with Nortel for global leadership development, and later again to become one of only two homegrown Master Black Belts in Lean Six Sigma. Her tenure with Nortel culminated with successfully transitioning ~$1B global support services business to each of the Buyers as part of Canada’s largest global bankruptcy case.
Vanessa held multiple senior leader roles with Avaya in global product management and sales. She led a large multi-disciplinary product team to design and bring to market a premier solution driving well over $500M annually. She transitioned to executive roles with the Americas sales organization where annual accountability grew from $40M to $800M+. Vanessa earned a top Global Renewal Sales Award, brokered multi-year, multi-million dollar innovative win-win commercial agreements, developed repeatable approaches to SaaS transformation sales, and led the roll-out of an Artificial Intelligence based solution to target accounts.
"Within a complex, fast changing and highly competitive technology industry, I have curated leadership roles that span strategy, operations, large-scale change management programs, product management and sales, positioning me to bring unique boundary-spanning perspective and expertise to a Board."
~ Vanessa Thomas