D.C. tech titan Shana Glenzer has had quite the busy year, and with her eyes set on a new role, she has no plans of slowing that down.
On Monday, one of the community's most influential figures started her new role as chief marketing officer at Crowdskout, a data management startup based in Washington, D.C. Before joining the startup's executive team, she was the CMO of MakeOffices, an Arlington, Va.-based co-working space, for a year-and-a-half.
Heading into the new role, Glenzer is most excited about diving headfirst into a tech startup again. It makes sense—anyone who follows D.C. tech knows Glenzer's name. Her resume includes marketing positions and top marketing executive roles at Blackboard, SocialRadar, Aquicore and, of course, MakeOffices.
That doesn't even include her involvement in a number of community organizations: She helped organize the BEACON Initiative with Revolution's Anna Mason; she's one of the organizers for DC Tech Meetup; she's a co-founder of DCFemTech; she's involved in the Vinetta Project and more.
So, naturally, a return to tech excited her, Glenzer says.
"I missed the way that a product team worked with marketing and sales, and I was open to an opportunity to jump back in and be a part of the next big D.C. tech success story," she told DC Inno.
I was open to an opportunity to jump back in and be a part of the next big D.C. tech success story.
Crowdskout has been working pretty heads down over the past few years. Founded in 2013, the startup works with campaigns, nonprofits and advocacy groups to make sure they're analyzing and collecting the best data for their goals. Glenzer heard about them from a VC friend of hers, set up a coffee with CEO Zack Christenson and the rest is history. (And, as Glenzer notes, it also was a big pro that 50 percent of Crowdskout's dev team are women.)
"I was incredibly impressed with the platform and the team that Crowdskout had built, mostly under the radar," she said. "I know a lot of companies in D.C., but this was not one that I was super familiar with."
Glenzer's hiring comes as Crowdskout prepares to take its marketing skills to the next level. Lucy Caldwell, who previously oversaw the company's marketing efforts and has since been promoted to chief strategy officer, said that for better or for worse, the company really focused on building a strong product and customer base before diving into heavier marketing efforts.
"Neither Zack (Crowdskout's CEO) nor I are SaaS marketers and I think that bringing in Shana really is reflective of our desire to grow Crowdskout in a big way, but also how confident we feel in where the product is," Caldwell said. "Often there's a move to build out marketing very early, but for better or for worse, we certainly have not done that. We focused on building a very strong product but also customer success teams."
Coming in fresh, Glenzer plans to start by gaining a deep understanding of how exactly Crowdskout has helped clients, and she's laying out a marketing plan—ripe with stories of customer success and plans to activate the current customer base to promote the brand—to make sure they're attracting and engaging the right audience.
"The company has a lot of really exciting announcements coming down the pipe about new products that they've been diligently working on, and the way that we can bring those to market—not only for current customers, but also to drive growth in the sales pipeline—is exciting."
Images courtesy of Shana Glenzer
