| |
Gary Katz, President, CEO & Founder
Dick Heermance, Founding Partner
Murry Shohat, Founding Partner
Mar Junge, Founding Partner
Tom Pencek, Founding Partner
Michael Teeling, Associate Partner
Linda Popky, Associate Partner
Sharyn Fitzpatrick, Associate Partner
 Gary Katz, President, CEO & Founder
In addition to founding and leading the company, Gary Katz is also CEO of CommPros' sister company, Marketing Operations Partners. Gary is a veteran with more than twenty years of
marketing experience in the technology industry in corporate,
agency and entrepreneurial positions, where he directed corporate
marketing, communications, public relations, lead generation
and qualification, investor relations, and employee communications
programs. Previously, he served as director of communications
for ShoreTel, director of corporate marketing for Aplix Corporation
and senior manager of corporate communications for Insignia
Solutions. Before that, he worked as a director, account supervisor,
or preferred subcontractor for more than a dozen leading public
relations and marketing communications agencies. Gary has
extensive experience working with companies in the telecommunications,
networking, enterprise software, mass storage and semiconductor
markets, as well as industry associations such as the Embedded
Linux Consortium. He holds a master's degree in organization
development from the University of San Francisco and a bachelor's
degree in public relations from San Jose State University.
Gary is past president of the Silicon Valley Chapter, Public
Relations Society of America, and a certified strategic planning
process facilitator by the Institute of Cultural Affairs.
Back to Top
 Dick
Heermance, Founding Partner
Dick Heermance leads CommPros' Customer Reference Power service. He has 30 years of experience in marketing and
marketing communications with growing and dynamic software
companies. Prior to joining the CommPros Group, Dick was an
independent marketing services consultant for Aplix, Blazent,
Neptium, ShoreTel, and others. Previously, he was director
of marketing communications at Insignia Solutions, where he
developed and implemented re-branding/re-positioning strategies
and directed worldwide public relations. As the company's
senior marketing manger for Unix products, Dick successfully
launched six new products in eight months, creating and implementing
the supporting advertising, PR, packaging, trade show, direct
marketing, sales collateral and partner programs. Earlier,
Dick was marketing manager at Software Publishing Corporation
and Informix Software, where he managed numerous successful
product launch campaigns and marketing programs, created sales
presentations and collateral material, managed events, and
created and launched partner and channel marketing programs.
Before that, Dick managed major OEM, third-party and VAR accounts
at Oracle Corporation and held positions in sales and professional
services management at Tymshare, Inc., exceeding sales quotas
and receiving high marks for excellent customer relations.
Back to Top
 Murry
Shohat, Founding Partner
Murry Shohat directs CommPros' Mindshare Builder service. He has worked as a magazine editor and reporter, public relations consultant and Fortune 100 PR executive with several Silicon Valley firms over the last two decades. Before joining CommPros, Murry was the co-founder and executive director of the Embedded Linux Consortium, where he was responsible for creating consensus among board members from 19 competing software companies. In just three years, the Consortium produced the visibility and ROI to drive membership to more than 175 corporations and individuals. Previously, Murry worked as a public relations consultant for Agilent's Test & Measurement Group during its spinout from HP. He also was director of public relations for Philips Electronics for five years and spearheaded the launch of analog memory for Information Storage Devices (ISD), which became the basis for digital music and digital voice recorders and players. In addition, Murry has had his hand on several PR tillers for players in the VMEbus industry. With a degree in Journalism and an MBA (Systems Approach / Team Action emphasis) in process, Murry continues to help global and local companies achieve mindshare marketplace traction for their technologies and products.
Back to Top
 Mar
Junge, Founding Partner
Mar Junge leads CommPros' Content Creator service. She has 30 years of experience creating and managing
public relations, advertising and marketing communications
programs for 3COM, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Sanmina, Seagate and
Solectron, as well as hundreds of emerging companies. She
began her career in corporate marketing communications management
with Liebert Corp., and was a senior copywriter with several
local agencies including Peak PR and Huddleston Iknoian. In
addition to specializing in content creation for CommPros,
Mar is principal of c3PR, a Silicon-Valley based PR agency
serving emerging and growing companies in the wireless communications,
semiconductor, and RF power systems industries. A talented
writer and ghostwriter with two nonfiction books and credits
in more than 50 trade publications, Mar was recently named
a Gold Finalist in the International MarCom Creativity Awards
competition for her cover feature for Sensors Magazine. She
is a frequent speaker on email marketing best practices and
has been on the board of the Silicon Valley Chapter of PRSA
for five years. Mar graduated cum laude from San Jose
State University with a B.A. in Public Relations.
Back to Top
Tom Pencek, Founding Partner
Tom Pencek directs CommPros' Demand Driver service. He brings more than 20 years of experience in sales,
sales management, service development and marketing to the
CommPros Group. An expert in the development, management and
measurement of lead generation programs, Tom has worked with
Tandem, SGI, Compaq, HP and many emerging technology companies.
Recently, he was awarded a Service Marketing Professional
Certification by Information Technology Services Marketing
Association (ITSMA). Tom specializes in designing programs
that integrate with mainstream marketing campaigns to generate,
capture and monetize prospect-volunteered needs and requirements—with
the end result of turning customer needs into corporate profits.
Tom leads a team of marketing services providers focused on
building lead-generation and lead maturation programs that provide an exemplary
return-on-investment (ROI) for our clients.
Back to Top
Michael Teeling, Associate Partner
 Mike is a 17-year veteran of the marketing and public relations industry with experience on both the corporate and agency side. He founded his own firm, INFLUENTIAL, in 2000 to provide management consulting to a variety of technology start-ups and established players with services spanning all marketing communications functions - either as an individual contributor or in an "acting director" capacity. In recent years, his consulting practice has focused on strategic but frequently overlooked areas such as industry analyst contract ROI and B2B technology brand creation. His blog, Buyer2Brand, communicates his progress while examining what makes a fearless B2B technology brand. Before founding INFLUENTIAL, Mike was director of marketing at Active Decisions Inc. (formerly Active Research); account supervisor at The Horn Group and account manager at Fleishman-Hillard; marketing manager at a telecommunications carrier that was acquired by Worldcom and later merged into MCI. Earlier in his career, he did entertainment publicity for Family Channel, NBC, and Warner Brothers Television. He holds a Bachelor's degree with honors in mass communication from Boston College.
Back to Top
Linda Popky, Associate Partner
 Linda is a senior marketing professional with more than 20 years of proven performance in technology and B2B marketing, including extensive experience with Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems. Her expertise includes strategic marketing, marketing operations, marketing team development, facilitation, communications and messaging, sales training and support, channel/field marketing, industry/market development and product marketing. Linda has architected leading edge customer loyalty and retention programs with a focus on improved business efficiency, customer advocacy and quality, and she has a reputation for strong leadership and team management, as well as strategic program development and delivery skills. Her work with business process improvement includes a study mission to Japan on Employee/Customer Loyalty. In addition to her roles at CommPros Group and its sister company, Marketing Operations partners, Linda is president of her own firm, L2M Associates, Inc., where her clients range from startups and small businesses to Fortune 100 companies. Linda served as a charter member of the Conference Board Council on Customer Strategy. She is in demand as a speaker for both corporate and non-profit presentations, as well as for professional associations, and her marketing and business related articles have been published in a number of online and print publications. She has an MBA and a BS in Communications from Boston University.
Back to Top
Sharyn Fitzpatrick, Associate Partner
 Sharyn brings more than twenty-five years experience in sales and marketing with expertise in global marketing communications to deliver real results to companies which need innovative and cost-effective programs. This includes pre-and post IPO preparation and marketing, investor relations, lead generation, event management (online via webinars and live in-person), creating direct, measurable top and bottom-line results for her clients. Sharyn is an experienced translator of senior executive vision into effective, impactful communication strategies and programs. In addition to her roles with CommPros Group and its sister company, Marketing Operations Partners, Sharyn has held a variety of senior level positions at Knight-Ridder, Inc., SumTotal, The Learning Company, Accolade, Inc., Pacific Bell/SBC, Atari, and Warner Communications. Her client list includes Interwise, Rapt, SignalDemand, SumTotal, Vitesse Learning, MindCrossings, American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), Aperto Networks, Ronin Ventures, Skillsoft and others. For long-time client Interwise, Sharyn creates revenue-generating web seminar programs and partnerships with technology and eLearning publications and trade shows. Her team is responsible for event management, technology and audience development for more than 350+ web seminars per year for CMP, VoiceCon, Interop, Crain, CIO, Chief Learning Officer and Workforce Performance magazines, and others. She is an author and frequent speaker on “Using Web Seminars for Lead Generation and Revenue” as well as a number of other marketing topics. Sharyn is Chairman of the Industry Council for ConferZone and she also serves on the Penn State University Alumni Association Board for Directors for the College of Communications.
Back to Top
Robert David, Senior Advisor
Back to Top |
|
