Paula Stout Email & Phone Number

Virtual

Trout Republic is a boutique consulting firm investing and advising small, medium and large businesses on how to become more profitable and successful. As Expert-in-Resident, lead team to architect social media strategies for clients including government agencies, ISPs, main street retailers, start-ups and hospitality businesses.

Palo Alto, Ca

HP is the IT industry’s largest company, with revenues of $130 billion and 320,000 employees. Responsibilities included core operations such as budgeting, business process development, team organization and team infrastructure. As support for the Chief Communications Officer, I assisted in annual planning, led the interaction and collaboration with other global functions plus provided special project leadership and management.

Bossa Nova Robotics, a spin-out of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, is a leading developer of interactive play experiences for children, using today’s most innovative technologies including robotics and online gaming. As COO, I was responsible for the company’s day-to-day oversight with direct line authority and responsibility for all outsourced manufacturing in Hong Kong, internal business process creation and execution, plus financial goal management including expense, cost and margin control including the rollout of NetSuite. Accountabilities were operation management, fiscal management, organization/employee development, vendor relationships, and culture/corporate communications.

As global go-to-market lead across all product lines and business units, I was responsible for building business practices to maximize budgets, resources and manpower to meet corporate growth objectives, as well as being part of the strategic and creative team for development of campaigns. Go-to-Market campaigns include: defining business outcome aligned with corporate sales quota, campaign asset development, demand generation campaign and return-on-investment dashboards and metrics. Additional responsibilities included M&A activity.

Utilizing more than 20 years of global business development, marketing, communication, direct and indirect sales channel, and public service experience I sold and managed more than 40 large-scale client engagements with the Fortune 1000 as well as emerging companies for the Phelon Group. I have extensive experience in enterprise software and applications (including SOA), hardware, software-as-a-service, and security. The total value of the long-term engagements of my practice area exceeded 45% percent of Phelon Group annual revenue. I carried a multi-million dollar quota and sold to clients such as ADT, Autodesk, Amdocs, IBM, Lexis-Nexis, Microsoft, NetApp and Sun Microsystems.I worked closely with C-level client contacts to develop and implement wide ranging programs that enabled client companies to: • More strategically and effectively manage customer accounts, including creating Executive Sponsor programs; • Cross-sell and up-sell products and solution with corresponding sales enablement tools such as value selling; • Develop next-generation products based on customer input and customer communities;• Take new products to market;• Leverage existing relationships to develop new sales opportunities;• Grow both existing and new account revenue.Elements frequently included in client engagements:• Establish customer listening posts enabling clients to more accurately project customer pain points/budgets and, thereby maximize opportunity;• Identify and eliminate barriers to the sales and business development process;• Work with senior level management to improve key account performance;• Align marketing output to sales needs;• Assist companies and individual business units with long-term business strategy including: product direction, partnerships and operational strategy/implementation.

In an effort to assist individuals displaced by Hurricane Katrina to Texas, four of my friends (all Texans) and I created Bay Area Relief. Local organizations in San Antonio, Texas provided water, food, & housing to the approximately 35,000 individuals who fled there from Katrina. We worked with these organizations to ensure that the displaced individuals had access to well-maintained clothes, shoes and personal hygiene products. The effort was recognized by Rep Nancy Pelosi for a special Congressional Commendation as well as commended by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Khumbu Region, Nepal

Over the course of five years, was tasked with a multitude of internal and external facing jobs. Each opportunity drew upon my intimate experience of the SAP organization including field sales, corporate development, product development, human resources, corporate marketing, corporate communications, corporate governance and human resources across six worldwide regions and my ability to reconcile internal factors with external needs and expectations to help the company be more successful.

Created corporate messaging that was utilized for internal and external audiences. Served as official corporate spokesperson. Managed strategic and day-to-day implementation of public relations, financial and industry analysts, customers, partners and channel partners. Managed investor and board communications.

Provided integrated marketing and communications advisory services to Cisco for launching the Cisco Networking Academy Program - a program that trains secondary and post-secondary students to design, build and maintain computer networks. The program is now in 145 countries with over 9800 schools enrolled.• Arranged for and prepared Cisco executives to meet with key members of the White House, Congress, and Executive Branch agencies;• Represented Cisco Systems in the partnership and national media launch of the Abilene Network. Lead story on evening news on CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN;• Developed and nurtured key media relationships to increase Cisco’s positioning in the education market. Garnered significant media coverage from: USA Today, CNN Sunday Morning, Meet the Press and Oprah;• Created grassroots public relations guidelines for the local Cisco Networking Academies to generate their own press. The web-based template press kit continues to be used to generate coverage in local and regional press around the world.

Provided counsel, strategic and tactical action programs for public relations, advertising, fundraising, events planning, marketing and crisis communications for the RFK Memorial and its partners. - Handled media relations including crisis communications for executive staff, human rights advocates and the Kennedy family with national and international media. Results include numerous front-page stories, wire stories, featured articles, op-ed placements, favorable editorials and televised footage including two stories chosen as "ABC’s Person of the Week". - Served as Director of the RFK Journalism Award, the largest single award to honor outstanding reporting on problems of the disadvantaged. Special tie-in promotions arranged with HBO.- Authored the organization’s strategic communications plan and orchestrated successful effort to update vision, mission and values statement. Oversaw development of first generation web site.

Conceived, developed and directed top-flight public relations throughout the nation. Special focus on media relations for literary works, as well as contractual relationship as part of the White House Advance Team. - Introduced more than 50 new books to market- Handled media relations for national events including: launch of AmeriCorps, the 75th anniversary of the Suffrage Amendment in the State of Texas (co-chaired by First Lady Laura Bush), and events at The Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. - Conceived, planned, staffed, publicized and/or directed 100+ special events, including the 80th Birthday celebration for Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s "Politics of Meaning" speech and President Bill Clinton’s "Clean Our House of Racism", which was carried live on 3 national networks. - Developed course content and taught public relations training seminars to small and regional publishers across the nation.