Featured Speaker(s)

Kristen Lauria is currently the vice president, Marketing and Channels for Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, IBM Software Group. In this role, she is responsible for leading the worldwide Marketing efforts for all events, launches and demand generation activities for the business unit. She also has overall responsibility for growing the unit’s Business Partner pipeline. Kristen leads a team charged with raising awareness about how the IBM collaboration portfolio empowers people to connect, team and innovate to drive better business outcomes.

Kristen joined IBM in 2003 where she has held several executive positions in both Marketing and Strategy. Most recently, Kristen was vice president, Marketing and Strategy for IBM Global Financing. In this role, she led a high performance team that spanned Strategy, Program Management, Offering Development and Market Intelligence. As VP of Marketing, Kristen strengthened the relationships with the geography Marketing leaders and helped drive broader global awareness for Global Financing. Kristen also led an effort which standardized the Global Financing portfolio of products and reduced the number of offerings from over 100 to less than 20.

Prior to joining IBM, Kristen spent three years at Akamai Technologies as director of Product Marketing and Product Management. During her tenure, she was responsible for product line Go-to-Market Strategy and OEM service partnerships. Additionally, Kristen’s team built and managed several complimentary product lines, contributing over 10% to the company’s 2002 revenue. Kristen spent seven years at Xerox Corporation where she held positions in manufacturing, product development, technology, and corporate strategy. During her tenure at Xerox, Kristen participated in a company wide initiative to redefine Xerox’s Time-to-Market Process and was a member of the team that formulated Xerox’s Internet strategy.

Kristen has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. While on educational leave from Xerox to pursue her MBA, Kristen assisted the Xerox Chief Engineer in the development of the Center for Innovation in Product Development at MIT.