A look at the people behind the numbers in area business:
Carrie Ellis Reeher llc
Title: Vice president of marketing
Age: 41
Carrie Ellis, recently hired to the new role of vice president of marketing at Reeher LLC, is helping the St. Paul-based developer of an online fundraising platform for colleges and universities prepare for continued growth.
In addition to marketing, Ellis is focusing on product strategy, brand development and external communications related to the Reeher Platform, which the company describes as the first shared management platform for higher education fundraising.
Ellis said Reeher was a perfect fit for her background, which blends nonprofit fundraising and marketing as well as experience in product marketing and business development in the software industry.
"It's a small yet growing and really well managed private company," Ellis said. "It's full of passionate, smart, collaborative people, and I enjoy working with companies at this size that are in this stage of their growth."
Ellis most recently worked as vice president of development and marketing at nonprofit Children's HeartLink in Edina. She previously worked in leadership roles at software and technology companies including McAfee and Stellent (now part of Oracle). She has a master's of business administration degree from Stanford University.
The Reeher Platform is a cloud-based, subscription-based software service that helps university development leaders identify opportunities and operate more efficiently, according to the company. Customers include Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Business School, Duke University and Drexel University.
Q: What's your message to prospects about the Reeher Platform?
A: The platform offers university fundraising leaders customized and predictive models that help them better understand and engage with their constituents. It also provides Web-based analytics and reporting tools. One of the biggest assets we offer is a community of their peers that we use to help drive benchmarking data and original research.
Q: What are the company's growth prospects?
A: We're starting to think about how we can expand our product lines and provide other avenues of services and products. I have a background in product management and product marketing as well as more traditional marketing communications, so I think that was some of the reasoning behind bringing me in.
Q: How would you describe your transition from a health care organization to a technology company?
A: Children's was a great opportunity to contribute to a cause that is very close to my heart. Coming into software is a return to my roots a little bit. Seeing how (Children's) needed to reach out to constituents and their donors … that piece is directly relevant to understanding the needs of our higher education customers and some of the challenges they're facing.
Todd Nelson