About Me

Heather Read
(Photo by William Thomas Cain/cainimages.com)

Leveraging extensive experience digitally transforming and branding businesses, I help companies seeking expert assistance with scaling, growth, employee performance, and efficiency. My key areas of expertise include business process optimization, product development, digital strategy, marketing, crisis management, team building, and talent management. I have a proven track record of building multi-million dollar SaaS products and counseling Fortune 1000 companies on how to scale social media operations and integrate the ecosystem of marketing technologies to transform marketing and customer service.

Throughout that time a few things have always remained true: I focus on process, I create stories, and I try to make sure the organizations I work for care about people (and show it).

RESEARCH INTEREST

Digital platforms, Ecosystems, Internationalization, Technology Regulation & Policy.

EDUCATION

PhD in Business Administration, International Business concentration (anticipated graduation 2023) – The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

  • Dissertation: Digital Platforms & Ecosystems
  • Inducted in 2022: Phi Kappa Phi honor society (top 10% of UNCG graduate students)

Master of Business Administration (MBA) – Temple University, Fox School of Business and Management – Philadelphia, PA

Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Communications – Rutgers University/ School of Communication Information and Library Studies – New Brunswick, NJ.  Major: Communication, with PR concentration; Minor: Psychology.

academic appointments

Coastal Carolina University, E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business – Conway, SC

  • Lecturer of Marketing – Aug 2019 – January 2023 (affiliated Graduate faculty) Student blog and podcast project: TeachingSocialMedia.org
  • Graduate Program Manager – June 2018 – present
  • Adjunct Instructor, Management – June 2018- Aug 2019; January 2023 – present

COURSES TAUGHT

Coastal Carolina University

  • Undergraduate: CBAD 301 Management and Organizations. CBAD 350 Marketing. MKTG 452 Social Media Marketing. MKTG 455 Personal Selling & Sales Management.
  • Graduate: MBA 631 Marketing Strategies. MBA 633 Sales & Relationship Mgt. MBA 660 Global Business.

Webster University

  • Graduate: MRKT 5000 Marketing Strategy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Guest lecturer, PI.90s Crisis Management and Business Continuity (2012-2013)

Who I’ve worked for

Territorium – currently serving as product manager for the Comprehensive Learner Record and LifeJourney products.

Coastal Carolina University – served as the graduate program manager for the Wall College of Business overseeing the recruitment, marketing, and administration of our MBA program. I also served as Lecturer of Marketing for undergraduate and graduate courses at the Wall College of Business.

Sprinklr, Inc.

Associate Vice President, People & Places 

Senior Director Product Management

Built a number of multi-million dollar product lines including Analytics, Social Display, Competitive benchmarking, API, and Integrations. Then moved on to work on streamlining HR processes and infrastructure to address the need to scale the organization and build the company’s first diversity program.

DuPont

Program Manager, Social Media / Crisis Management

Hired to develop the social media issues and crisis methodology for a risk-averse company operating in a highly regulated industry. After we rolled out the crisis process and software infrastructure for 12 multi-billion dollar business units, I led the cross-functional corporate social media team to engage fans across our corporate message platform, promote executive visibility, and share financial information. I oversaw our SMMS with 200 community managers around the world.

Afilias

Senior Director, Communications

Led all global communications, public affairs, partner marketing, digital marketing, and crisis communications that ran part of the world’s core Internet infrastructure. We launched the first new top-level domain (.INFO) and built it into the most successful new TLD ever launched. I also devised the communications plan for the media and our registrar channel to manage the first-ever registry transition of a TLD from one provider to another when .ORG was reassigned; we transitioned 3 million names and hundreds of registrars with zero impact on domain owners. I spent 10 years in community outreach and media relations on DNS, Internet policy, cybersecurity, technical standards, and technology regulation issues that govern how the Internet is still used today. I cut my teeth here on “new media” before Twitter existed, when blogs were still on blogspot, and the first online activism was on message boards.

Hill & Knowlton

Account Executive

Worked in the Technology Group of one of the largest PR companies on the planet, creating media and messaging strategies for clients in the hardware, mobile & wireless, security, and Internet space.

Siemens Corporation – Public Relations

Levine & Furman Attorneys at Law – Marketing Coordinator

Springboard PR – PR Support Specialist

My management style

I have led remote teams my entire career. I pride myself on being a great team leader that sets high expectations but also provides clarity of vision and goals. I also believe in developing people and seeing their potential. I look for the unique talent in people and believe more in developing them to grow than simply hiring someone else who has “done it before.”

One of the great joys in my life are the times when I’ve had team members who needed to move on to another career opportunity tell me that the most difficult part of the decision was leaving my team. More specifically, leaving me as their manager. While it’s hard to see people go, I have been so proud of the careers that some of my team members have developed and the talent they have.

I believe that a high-performance team is one with data, accountability, transparency, and psychological safety to take risks and innovate. I am decisive and have a bias toward action. My key strengths are that I am a systems (or data/process) thinker and I thrive on connecting the dots between disparate ideas to move ahead. Compliance and policy positions follow me wherever I am. I attract “Fixer” projects. If I don’t know something I need to do a job, I learn it and I expect my teams to have the same mindset and drive.