Colleen Smith, Vice President of Marketing, Progress OpenEdge
As part of our continued tribute to the Women of Progress® during Women in History Month, we’d like to recognize Colleen Smith, Vice President, Product Marketing, Progress® OpenEdge®. This wearer of many hats has been with Progress for nearly 10 years. In that time, she has done many things to drive our company forward. Colleen has not only managed our extensive partner program, headed up our SaaS/Cloud initiatives and led product marketing in multiple capacities, but she has travelled the world evangelizing and educating markets large and small on all things Progress.
Colleen brought to Progress a unique perspective and level of industry expertise like no other. In addition to living and breathing enterprise software for nearly three decades, Colleen spent four years as an industry analyst at AMR (now part of Gartner). Having deep insight into the market, the vendors in that space and forward-looking opportunities enables Colleen to see the “big picture” around technology, market trends and end-user value. Fortunately for us, Colleen carried that analytical perspective with her to Progress, and has helped drive business strategies and programs with demonstrable results.
In addition to her deep technical knowhow, Colleen is a conversationalist and knows the OpenEdge customer and Partner community better than many know their own name. She’s always quick to share an anecdote, a unique implementation story or industry trend, and speak about how Progress and its Partners were doing it “years before it was cool.”
Colleen is a person that is not only well liked, but also highly respected by all those who are fortunate to work with her. That is why today we want to recognize her as a Woman of Progress and acknowledge her contributions in helping empower our developer community to new heights of success.
Erica McShane
Erica McShane has more than 20 years of experience in high-tech public relations and corporate communications. With a focus on building awareness across the media, analyst and influencer communities, she has worked with all kinds of businesses—from startup to global tech giants—to build visibility, credibility and market awareness within the business, trade and online media. At Progress, Erica and her team are responsible for the company's global PR efforts, analyst relations, social media, content, customer programs as well as internal communications and corporate social responsibility initiatives.