Heidi Sinclair, a 30-year communications and marketing veteran, recently joined Weber Shandwick as president of its Global Technology Practice. She is responsible for overseeing the firm’s work with clients including Samsung, Motorola, Juniper, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. Previously, Heidi was CEO for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she served as the personal advisor to Bill and Melinda Gates on all communications matters. Prior to that, she was CEO for Burson-Marsteller EMEA with oversight for over 60 operations across the region. Heidi was also global chairman of technology for Burson-Marsteller and the client leader for several of the company’s largest clients including SAP, HP, Sun and Apple. Heidi also founded two companies, the first at age 23. She is on the board of several venture-backed consumer companies and is a regular commentator on CNBC and CNN and authors a blog for the Huffington Post.
Business
Tech Companies: Cut the Geek Speak!
Recently, I heard a little girl standing with her father in the security line at the San Francisco airport ask, “Daddy, how does the Cloud work?” He leaned in and started to explain how water vapor molecules clump together due to air movements and temperature. She shook her head as if to imply he was really slow and said, “No daddy. The cloud. Like Apple’s iCloud.” To which he replied, “Oh honey, I have no idea how that works.”
Business
Adapting Our Business Model to Leverage the New Techonomy
For those of us who have worked in the technology space for decades, now is our time. We dreamed big dreams thirty years ago: technology would become the global engine transforming every industry and entity; it would impact all life on our planet. Those dreams have become a reality. Now we need to adjust our ambitions and—in the case of my organization—our business models to think bigger.
