Jackie’s relationship to North Bridge and to me personally spanned nearly seven years of collaboration to create and implement a wide range of marketing and thought leadership initiatives – often several happening simultaneously. Marketing in a venture capital environment is unique, involving a careful balance of relationship management, tenacity, and timing in order to be well placed with entrepreneurs and innovators. As the investment climate is constantly in flux – one has to be prepared to change direction and emphasis when needed. To that end, Jackie showed incredible dexterity – dealing with all levels of the firm’s relationships, engendering trust with me and my partners.

Among my favorite characteristics of Jackie’s service to NB was her ability to balance strategy and action, keep to deadlines, source and lead teams of marketing specialists, and leverage her own network to strengthen the projects. The results are evident in the growth of several key multi-faceted programs – the Future of Open Source and Future of Cloud Computing programs plus other significant “firsts” such as the large gatherings for keynote events such as Geoffrey Moore, Andy Jassy of AWS, and Jim Whitehurst of Red Hat, part of my Startup Secrets series at the Harvard iLab. She also strengthened keystone relationships with major partners such as AWS, Microsoft, Gigaom, and over 150 companies to design industry collaborations that made each program a success. An entrepreneur in her own right, she melded well with our portfolio companies, CEO’s, and marketing teams, raising their comfort level while being persistent about their involvement with the programs. As the firm did not have an internal marketing lead for most of Jackie’s engagement with North Bridge, she was particularly resourceful and creative in her approach.