Professional Background:

Karen Henken brings 25+ years of experience in worldwide sales and marketing management across a range of high tech companies from Fortune 500 to startups. She helps companies identify the key market segments for success and develop the sales and marketing tools to establish a leading position in those segments.

She has successfully established sales channels both in the US and internationally, developed worldwide industry marketing programs that dramatically enhanced revenue generation, and established key partnerships for OEMs, distribution and marketing across the globe.

• At Sun Microsystems, she established Sun’s early lead in the Japanese market through major OEM deals with Toshiba, Fujitsu and Fuji Xerox. She grew revenue from $5M to $400M in four years.
• As Director of Business Development at Sybase, she developed and managed Sybase’s worldwide indirect channel programs, including VARs and Systems Integrators. She also initiated and managed industry marketing programs, recruiting over 150 ISVs to support this effort.
• As Director of International Sales at Borland, she managed the $80M Asia/ Pacific region, driving sales through third party channels as well as establishing global systems integrator relationships with Siemens, IBM and Arthur Andersen.
• As VP of Worldwide Channel Sales at Pillar Corporation, she developed European wide distribution channels.

Representative Experience/Recent Engagements

Karen Henken’s clients span a range of industries and stages of growth and include The Magellan Network, Nortel Networks, Ascend Communications, Clarify Inc (acquired by Nortel Networks), Fujitsu Semiconductor, VA Linux, Wyse Technology, Platinum Software, Verifone (acquired by Hewlett Packard) and Blyth Software.

Representative engagements include:

• For an online restaurant reservations company, created and launched all aspects of sales and marketing strategies and programs. Created corporate messaging, website, all sales and marketing tools. Launched highly successful direct marketing and telesales campaign closing 200 customers in first 90 days of campaign.
• For a leading telecommunications hardware provider, developed channel sales strategy and sales force restructuring. Developed systems integrator program to drive their entry into new market segments
• For leading financial services hardware and software provider, developed sales strategy to support their move into “software only” sales focus. Developed systems integrator program to support this focus, identified systems integrator candidates and conducted initial negotiations.
• For major telecommunications equipment manufacturer, developed channel strategy and identified key partner prospects for new product line in Asian market
• For a hardware peripherals manufacturer, identified key new market segment opportunities, defined entry strategies and organizational requirements to support this
  

Functional Expertise:

Sales and distribution strategy and organization, channel development, channel marketing and management, market segmentation, customer profiling, market development, international market entry strategies

Industry Experience:

Internet services, Networking hardware and software, financial planning software, software development tools, PC desktop applications, DBMS, Unix systems and workstations ,online software services, semiconductors

Education:

Karen holds a BA in Government from Bowdoin College and an MBA from Stanford University. She also received a Fulbright Fellowship for teaching in Japan and a Rotary Graduate Fellowship for study in Tokyo, Japan. She speaks Spanish and Japanese fluently.

Contact Karen Henken, Principal, Highland Team at
karen@henken.com
Cell: 760 271 5413
Office: 760-632-2429