Kristen is an experienced executive sales leader with a demonstrated success in building teams, large scale transformation, strategy, program execution, operational excellence, solution selling, acquiring new markets and accelerating growth. She is a passionate and inspirational leader who throughout her career has held various sales, strategy and leadership roles. She has been widely recognized for her leadership and was named as one of Sales Hacker’s Top Female Sales Leaders in 2020, The Awards MagazineTop 50 Women in Tech Influencers of 2021, and Industry Era’s Most Inspiring Women Leaders of 2021.
Kristen has just recently joined Ilusive as the Vice President of Sales for the Americas. Illusive protects customers against the attack vector exploited in all recent ransomware and targeted cyber-attacks by continuously discovering and automatically mitigating privileged identity risk.
Prior to joining Illusive, Kristen was the Vice President of Business Development and Mid-Enterprise Sales for FireMon.
Prior to joining FireMon, Kristen was the Vice President of the North America Inside Sales organization for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, where she was responsible for building a best in class, high performing sales culture. In this role she successfully implemented and enhanced training and enablement programs, talent and recruiting initiatives, and drove rigorous operational excellence. She developed a focused go to market strategy in which had a heavy focus on demand generation, business development, acquisition of net new logos, transactional volume business, install base and specialized, technical functions. Under her leadership, she enabled the team to execute on a shared vision and developed talented and diverse future sales leaders for HPE.
Kristen is a 15-year veteran in the sales industry with experience in a variety of field-sales roles, including specialist sales, account management, and sales strategy. She has proven expertise in business, technology, and solution selling. Her experience, drive for delivering positive customer outcomes and her passion for leading, coaching, and mentoring have been key to her success.
Kristen also serves as the President of the Dallas Chapter for the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP), is a proud member of the Executive Advisory Board for the Sales Program at University Texas Dallas, is a certified mentor for #girlsclub, and serves on the advisory board for the Sales Community.
Kristen is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Bentley University, where she earned a B.S. in Marketing and Spanish. She lives in Frisco, TX with her husband Reese, her son Liam, her daughter Lily, and her two dogs Isabelle and Lexi. She enjoys travelling, fitness, and spending time with her family and friends.
Silke Koehnecke is a Director of Corporate Sales at Southwest Airlines where her responsibilities include revolutionizing business travel through value, simplicity, and service to Government, Higher Education, Small & Medium Business, as well as leading the growing Inside Sales team.
Silke began her career with Southwest in 1998, splitting her time between marketing and sales, but her passion for People, aviation and travel has been life long, having grown up traveling the world as an Air Force dependent.
Silke is a proud supporter of AA-ISP, leading the local Dallas Chapter with the mission of connecting the Inside Sales community to information, trends, technology and people in the spirit of advancing the industry together.
Silke received her Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration at the University of Texas at El Paso with concentrations in Marketing and Production Operations.
Marcela Montelongo Soto is a Business Planning manager for the North America Sales Strategy and Planning team at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).
Following her time at the University of Central Arkansas, where she holds a double major in Communication and Public Relationship, Marcela began her career with HPE in 2014 as an Inside Sales Rep in Conway, AR. From there she volunteered to move to the DFW area to help train new inside sales reps in Plano for HPE. She has held different individual contributor inside sales roles and was a strategic supporter of the inside sales community.
In her free time, Marcela enjoys spending time outdoors, trying out new recipes, going to concerts, and spending time with her new puppy.
Emily is the director of business development and marketing for Prototype IT, a Managed IT Services company. The past 13 years she has pioneered the inside sales process and team for 3 different IT companies. Emily is very passionate about all things relating to sales. She holds a multilayered sales role that is responsible for increasing and driving a company’s revenue and overseeing the strategic marketing direction. She is a key member of the sales management team who will track new markets and emerging trends, propose and develop new strategic partnerships, planning marketing events and driving attendance for them. Emily is an extreme morning person and eternal optimist. When Emily is not busy with work, she loves spending time with her wonderful husband and 2 children. Emily got her college degree from Indiana University where she held a double major in Communication and Culture and Telecommunications. During her 4 years at college, she had a part time job where she cold called on Indiana University Alumni and asked them to donate money. It was during college that Emily discovered her true love and passion for sales!