Tom Kershaw Email & Phone Number

Plymouth, Gb

Working in the Product Marketing team at the intersection of product development, sales and marketing to drive software product adoption; member of Marketing and Education Senior Leadership Teams. Highlights:• Led the development of new product portfolio brand positioning, value proposition and messaging framework for a suite of 20 software applications in an education division that has grown rapidly over recent years by acquisition, and which now serves over 12,000 individual schools with new orders in excess of £20M per year. This has seen a shift in from individual product selling to multi-product solution selling, increasing average order value and recurring revenue.• Directed multiple successful product GTMs, aligning Product, Marketing and Sales teams. Delivered relevant product marketing components of these GTMs, including: market and competitor research; defining target customer segments and ideal customer profiles; persona creation; product positioning and messaging; creation of sales pitch decks, playbooks, battlecards and cheat sheets; sales enablement training; producing product brochures and videos; and writing web copy.• Managed the commercial aspects of new partner SaaS product launches (reseller model), achieving rapid return on investment and demonstrating the success of a new GTM process for faster partner product launch (from months to weeks).• Driven market extension opportunities for existing products, involving market research, competitor analysis, market sizing and segmentation, persona creation, pricing, and sales enablement.• Marketing-qualified lead (MQL) generation through content and event demand generation activities, from top-of-the-funnel thought leadership to optimised bottom-of-the funnel content. These include: blog writing; hosting webinars and podcasts; delivering customer feedback sessions; hosting podcasts and seminars with key customer groups and influencers; and messaging for direct marketing campaigns.

Plymouth, England, United Kingdom

Central role in the Commercial team across strategy, campaign generation and key account support for the IRIS Education portfolio. Highlights:• Sales enablement – Creation of sales collateral (e.g., battlecards and sales stories; use of Showpad and Crayon platforms); sales team training (e.g., induction, product launches); customer-facing support for VIP account deals; advising on major tenders; and channel partner enablement.• Campaign generation – Responsibility for driving cross-sell proportion of annual recurring revenue (ARR); generation of cross-vertical campaigns; and role in customer segmentation and messaging for all key marketing campaigns.• Spokesperson and Edtech thought-leader – Principal representative for IRIS Education, delivering thought leadership content at national education conferences (e.g., National MAT Conference and MAT Growth Conference), and via webinars, podcasts and blogs. Media trained for print and live interviews.• Market segmentation, insights and sales analysis – Identification of market opportunities and threats to inform the overall sales strategy; analysis of internal sales data, including pipeline and performance to target/forecast, using Salesforce CRM, MS PowerBI and Excel.

Plymouth, England, United Kingdom

Key role in managing the day-to-day operations of a software development company that provides online solutions for Local Authorities to deliver training and traded services.• Line-management of Technical Support Team – Management of workflow, performance management, recruitment and onboarding, and improving key skills, such as technical specification writing.• Resource management and scheduling – Controlling resource allocation in day-to-day operations (using Float platform) across Customer, Technical and Development teams for service management delivery under the ITIL framework. Oversight of the request, incident, problem, and change management and release processes (using Freshservice ITSM software), including measuring performance relative to SLAs and developing and monitoring business processes.• Project management – Particularly focused on new product development, pioneered a transition to Agile project management philosophy using Scrum methodology. This included the adoption of user stories as an alternative to product specifications, creating a more collaborative dynamic within the project team.• Quality assurance – Responsibility for ensuring high standard for all developments and changes before customer delivery. Developed methods for improving functional testing documentation to bring in line with industry standards, and metrics for both software development and testing quality.• Data analysis and reporting – Use of MS Excel Power Query, Pivot tables and advanced charting to manipulate service management data to report on quality, efficiency and performance; creation of interactive dashboards for project monitoring and quality measures. • Incident management – Developed and operated an incident management process to resolve the likes of major interruptions to client service, determine root causes and improve subsequent practice.• Web design – Developed a sound understanding of visual design and knowledge of the fundamentals of web development.

Devon, England, United Kingdom

Leadership: In my role as Academic Performance Leader (APL) for Sixth Form, I oversaw the academic progress and post-Sixth Form progression of 400 Sixth Form students (prior to the creation of this role at the beginning of the 2019/20 academic year, I held the position of Head of Year in Sixth Form for 4 years, with a similar remit). Key responsibilities of my APL role were as follows:• Monitoring Academic Progress and improving teaching and learning – Analysing student data and putting measures in place to improve performance or close progress gaps; monitoring and evaluation of teacher performance; and leading whole-College teaching and learning sessions.• Sixth Form Futures and Careers Programme – Designing and delivering a careers programme to meet Gatsby benchmarks. • Leading the Sixth Form pastoral system – Managing a team of 20 Tutors in delivering an effective pastoral support system.• Sixth Form recruitment – Agreeing admissions criteria, interviewing prospective students, creating promotional recruitment material, planning and managing open/transition days, and managing the work of admin staff.• Other – Budget holder for Sixth Form; responsibility for reviewing and updating all Sixth Form policies.Work across schools: I held the position of Sixth Form Network Lead for the South West Teaching School Alliance (SWTSA) for several years, co-ordinating meetings and delivering workshops and CPD for Heads of Sixth Form across the South West of England.Classroom teaching: I taught Chemistry to all secondary ages, including A Level, and all core science subjects at KS3 and 4.• Consistently graded as outstanding in teaching observations.• ITT Mentor for SCITT trainees and University of Exeter PGCE programme. • Held role as Assistant Team Leader of Chemistry for two years.• Advocate for use of digital platforms to support learning; e.g. SLACK, MS Teams and Seneca.

Queens Park, London

I worked as an unqualified science teacher at QPCS while completing a Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) through the London North Consortium (LoNoCo), Middlesex University (achieving a grade of outstanding in my end-of-programme report), and then as a qualified teacher for my NQT year.

Hayes, England, United Kingdom

I was, at various times, head of the Finance and Curriculum & Improvement committees, and I served as Vice-Chair of the governing body for 2 years.

St. Albans, England, United Kingdom

I worked as part of several small teams on the financial audits of middle-market companies, developing an understanding of how businesses work, particularly the operation of internal controls, as well as a basic understanding of accounting systems and financial reporting.

Master Of Arts - Ma, Natural Sciences (Biochemistry), First

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Molecular Cell Biology, Pass

Activities and Societies: Writer for student newspaper, Pi Squared.My thesis work involved investigations into how immune cells regulate.

Pgcert (Education) In Work Based Learning Studies, Secondary Education And Teaching, Pass

I completed a Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) through the London North Consortium (LoNoCo) whilst working at Queens Park Community.

Education record

The Product Marketing Core course covers modules include: Research, Pricing, Objectives & Key Results, Personas, Positioning & Messaging.