Today, we shine a spotlight on Jutta Westerholt, who has been recognized for “Own Our Tomorrow, Today,” one of the ProgressPROUD core values we strive to embody every day.
Jutta Westerholt began her career at Progress over 20 years ago, starting out as a finance and accounting manager before transitioning to the revenue operations team. Her job often requires cross-team collaboration—and a lot of planning ahead. Learn more about Jutta, her experience at Progress and her love of sports in the interview below.
How did you get into the tech field?
Over 40 years ago, I started my career as a tax consultant trainee in an audit company. After that, I worked as a management accountant for a few German companies in multiple markets, including a container transport company, a construction company, a harbor company and an ingredients manufacturer.
I joined Progress in 2002 as a finance and accounting manager for the Central European region. In 2010, I moved to the revenue operations team as the revenue operations manager for EMEA, now based in Cologne, Germany. I still don’t consider myself a tech businessperson; I’m a finance person with a little bit of tech understanding.
How often are you planning ahead in your day-to-day work?
I plan my work ahead every day—mostly I start planning my work for the day during my morning shower. Lately, the plan becomes obsolete a few hours into the workday. I work closely with the Sales, Legal and Custom Order Management (COM) teams, and they will typically set the priority of the day’s work.
What is your favorite part of your job right now?
I enjoy guiding the COM team in executing contracts and/or deals in our systems after working closely with the Sales and Legal teams. Together, we work to bring in as much revenue as possible, as soon as possible.
What do you think makes Progress a great company?
The people—all the employees and managers—make Progress a great company. Even as the company continues to grow with acquisitions, the energy remains the same. Progress is like a family, with everyone showing a lot of respect to their co-workers. Progress also provides its employees with a very flexible working environment.
When you’re not working, what do you like to do?
I am very interested in sports, mainly handball and soccer. After being an active handball player for 35 years, as well as a team manager and referee, I now just watch these sports, so I am a very active passive sportswoman. My favorite handball team is TSV Bayer04 Leverkusen—known in the sports community as “Werkselfen”—and my favorite soccer team is Bayer04 Leverkusen.
I also love spending time with my three grandchildren: Vincent (7 years old), Henry (5 years old) and Emily (4 years old). And I love Italian pop music.
If you weren’t doing the job you have now, what do you think you’d be doing?
I may have been a judge or police officer in white-collar crime.
What are you most excited about for the future of Progress?
I am excited to see how we will manage to get all existing products, policies and ways to handle licenses, maintenance and hardware within one or maybe two internal systems. We’re working a little differently now that we’ve acquired more companies, and it will be interesting to see how that all merges together.
To get to know other Progressers like Jutta, read more of our employee interviews here.
Jessica Kent
Jessica Kent was a content specialist at Progress.