A success story has been taking place in Atlanta’s tech scene and she goes by the name, Brooke Beach. We recently spoke with the new Kevy CEO to learn more about her and her rise up the Kevy food chain.
An Atlanta native, Beach graduated Suma Cum Laude from UGA in 2011. After working in California right out of college, she decided to move back to Georgia’s capital, “because the growth is contagious and I wanted to put down some roots,” she recalls. A revenue marketer, Brooke was hired as a Marketing Associate at PGi and concentrated on data and results. “I focused on retaining, stimulating, upselling and engaging PGi’s existing customer base,” says Beach. When former PGi SVP of Global Marketing and Ecommerce, Ed Trimble, left to co-found Kevy with David Cummings in 2012, she was the only PGi employee he brought with him.
At that time, Kevy was focused completely on integration, a hub and spoke model, and Beach began to build a huge amount of inbound leads. “91% of sales were being driven by marketing,” she says. “We noticed that there was a heavy trend of ecommerce, so we reached out to those companies to do customer discovery on what was needed beyond integration. We found these companies needed greater functionality and automation to help drive revenue. Which is ultimately why we built a platform to help online retailers engage customers and grow their business and revenue.”
Beach rose through the ranks at Kevy to Marketing Director due to her results-oriented approach and entrepreneurial knack. While there, she also founded a digital marketing company called Market Wake, which helped her better understand the inner workings of business. Leading her own team taught her that a boss needs to be self-aware as well as the importance of a culture fit in an office environment. “I believe that a good CEO has to hire slowly and fire quickly,” states Beach.
All of these experiences culminated last month when David Cummings stepped down as Kevy’s CEO to allow Beach to lead the team and pave Kevy’s future. As CEO, her first priority is to continue to grow Kevy’s eCommerce Marketing Platform and provide customers with truly competitive and effective offers in this growing marketplace. “I am honored to have the opportunity to lead the Kevy team as we focus on becoming the leading provider of eCommerce Marketing solutions for online retailers,” expresses Beach. “I am proud of the team and all we have accomplished so far. We are optimistic, knowing we are built on a foundation of innovation, that we will be a leader in the industry for eCommerce Marketing.”
As a female entrepreneur, Beach, a member of WIT, also has a strong passion for empowering women to seek success, especially in the tech startup scene. “Tech is very much a boys world and you have to learn how to be strong, assertive and have confidence in yourself,” she says. When asked how she became a CEO at 26, only four years after graduating college, she says, “It comes down to drive and a passion to grow. The desire to learn has been the main driver for me. There’s never going to be a time that I feel like I know enough.” For all those women looking to emulate Brooke’s recent success, she added one last piece of advice: “Being successful also has a lot to do with meeting people with a great network and shadowing them. There’s no meeting too small. I meet with everyone.”
[Photo Credit- Whitlock]
