Grace W. Ueng
Founder and CEO
 Ms. Ueng has a passion for success and carries this desire to her clients. Her 20 years of work experience spans from consulting for global strategic management consultancy Bain & Company to working inside Fortune 500 brand leaders Coca-Cola, IBM, Time Inc., General Mills, and Clorox to contributing to five successful consumer and enterprise software ventures that had successful exits through public offerings or acquisition. She has been a key member of executive teams that have delivered to investors a return of over $1 billion.
Prior to founding Savvy Marketing Group, Ms. Ueng was vice president of marketing for SmartPath, the visionary leader in the marketing resource management category sold to DoubleClick. Prior to joining SmartPath's executive team, Ms. Ueng served as vice president of worldwide marketing for TogetherSoft, a high growth, late stage enterprise software company, and leader in software application development tools, which was acquired by Borland. Prior to TogetherSoft, she was the vice president of marketing for OpenSite Technologies, market leader of dynamic commerce software and services. Ms. Ueng built and maintained leading brand awareness and market share resulting in acquisition by Siebel Systems for $542MM, 45x revenues. She was named senior director, product marketing for Siebel Systems, the world's leading provider of customer relationship management solutions, since acquired by Oracle.
Ms. Ueng earned her undergraduate degree in management science from MIT's Sloan School and her MBA from Harvard Business School. She continues to be sought after internationally for speaking engagements and serves as an adjunct professor teaching “Entrepreneurial Marketing and Innovation” for Fudan’s International MBA program in Shanghai, a joint venture with MIT Sloan School. She has also served on adjunct faculty at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School as well as the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business eMBA program.
Ms. Ueng serves on the board of directors for RemedEase and advisory boards for Virtual Heroes and Ideabahn. An advisor to the North Carolina Chinese Business Association and Visual Art Exchange, board member of The Harvard Club of Research Triangle and a board trustee for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Eastern North Carolina Chapter, Ms. Ueng is a frequent keynote speaker, panelist, guest lecturer and served as co-chair of the CED Entrepreneur conference. Past honors include being named Business Leader's Woman Extraordinaire, and Triangle Business Journal's "40 under 40" as well as "Top 25 Women in Business". While at MIT, she was recognized as one of Glamour’s Top 10 College Women in the nation based on leadership and academic achievement. Her personal interests include endurance sports, health issues, and community service.
Robert L. Pickens
Managing Director, Resolute Ventures™
Mr. Pickens has over 35 years of management experience ranging from early
stage technology companies to Fortune 500 leaders. For over two decades, he
has held the roles of CEO, COO, or CFO of emerging growth companies taking
them from start-up to IPO, first venture funding to successful exit, and emerging
growth stage to acquisition by a Fortune 500 company. Savvy Marketing Group
clients where he has served as interim CFO include First Research which exited
to D&B as well as Virtual Heroes. He has international experience as North
American CEO of a publicly traded German company and from starting and operating
international divisions of multinational companies.
Mr. Pickens has orchestrated the raising of over $100 million through venture
capital, debt financings, strategic partner investments, IPOs and sales of
companies. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, he spent 17 years with Kaiser
Aluminum and Chemical Corporation in positions of increasing responsibility
in operations, sales and marketing. He has served on the board of directors
of Washington Aluminum Company, Red Storm Entertainment (sold to Ubisoft),
DataFlux (sold to SAS), Interactive Magic, and ViOS.
He is a graduate of Davidson College with a B.A. in psychology and has completed
studies toward MBA and MS in Applied Behavioral Science at Johns Hopkins University.
Amy K. DeWinter, Principal
Ms. DeWinter is a seasoned marketing professional with a dozen years of medical device marketing experience. She assists growing organizations with go to market initiatives including market research, product management, marketing communications, clinical marketing, and product launch and sales execution activities. She carries an excellent industry reputation garnered through both her start-up and mid-size company experience in the medical device arena.
Ms. DeWinter’s first start-up experience was at CardioThoracic Systems, a company that revolutionized cardiac surgery through the introduction of the beating-heart bypass technique. There she built the tradeshow program and helped manage Scientific Advisory Board events, as well as development of their corporate identity through marketing communications.
Ms. DeWinter then went on to work at TherOx, Inc., another start-up where she helped foster a highly-technical product concept into a user-friendly product for interventional treatment of acute heart attack. Following TherOx, she joined Edwards Lifesciences, launching the most successful heart valve product for the company in more than five years.
Most recently, she simultaneously managed six product lines at Teleflex Medical in the surgical division, working on business development activities and evaluating opportunities with such thought leaders as The Cleveland Clinic.
Jane Foreman, Principal
Ms. Foreman delights in delivering, measuring and improving on results for her clients. With over 25 years of experience launching products and services in the consumer packaged goods, information technology, and e-commerce sectors, she has consistently delivered profitable results. She has been a key figure in leading ventures that delivered significant results to their customers as well as investors. She is highly regarded for her marketing and branding advice and her passion for mentoring growing companies and entrepreneurs.
Ms. Foreman began her marketing career with Fortune 500 brand leader Sara Lee, where she managed new product launches in two direct marketing divisions. She then went on to launch new programs in a variety of successful new ventures including Art.com, Avesair, Accipiter, Engage, and Intersolv. Her most recent experience was as director of marketing with the pioneering Web services venture, StrikeIron, recently named Cool Technology Vendor by Gartner Group and one of the top technologies to watch for 2008.
She has been a key executive on several new venture management teams. She was a founding member of Avesair, where she developed the business plan that secured $16MM in funding from Nokia and New Things Ventures. Avesair was sold to Inphonic in 2004. She was also on the founding team of Accipiter, and spearheaded the marketing efforts which led to their becoming the leading online ad management system used by industry powerhouses like MSN and CNET. Accipiter was sold to CMGI in a deal that yielded investors a return of $500MM. At Engage, she served as vice president of marketing for their Enabling Technologies group and contributed to their successful exit -- an IPO in July 1999. Prior to Engage, Ms Foreman managed marketing programs at Intersolv, where she directed the advertising, direct mail, collateral, and co-op channel programs yielding strong results - product revenues grew at an annual rate of 100% during her tenure.
Ms. Foreman holds a Bachelor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University and an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business. She is a board member of the Triangle Community Foundation Entrepreneurs Partnership, Superintendent of Church School at White Memorial Presbyterian Church and devotes her extracurricular efforts toward serving her community.
Gene Pinder, Principal
Mr. Pinder has conducted numerous actionable qualitative and quantitative studies in his 20-year marketing career. Combining a strong communications and marketing background with a rigorous analytical approach to marketing and business problems, Mr. Pinder has been finding answers that most business leaders need to drive strategy. In addition, he has been a key player in several startup ventures, and has significant experience in key industries, including public health, finance, consumer products, and e-learning. Mr. Pinder’s specialties include survey development, online and telephone research implementation, brand awareness and customer attitudinal studies, lead generation services, and online and proprietary database searches and research.
His areas of expertise and interest include positioning, brand awareness, buyer motivations, marketing metrics, pricing and segmentation studies. In addition to being an experienced focus group moderator, Mr. Pinder is also a skilled questionnaire developer and has extensive market research project management experience. For example, he was the lead researcher for a four-state communications campaign study directed at arthritis sufferers and authorized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Mr. Pinder began his career as a working journalist for several television stations in Southeast. After moving over to the non-profit environment to lead several organizations with their strategic marketing, marketing research and marketing communications efforts (including leading the brand development efforts for the immensely popular U.S. Space Camp), he began applying analytical marketing techniques to several e-learning companies, including starport.com and Learning Machines, Inc. As the director of marketing for starport.com, Mr. Pinder led a number of market research initiatives to identify optimal targets and effectively position the company. Starport.com was acquired for an undisclosed amount to Space.com, a $50MM venture capital-backed company located in New York City. At Learning Machines, Inc. Mr. Pinder was responsible for all sales and strategic marketing efforts for the company, which included new product development studies and lead generation efforts. In addition, Mr. Pinder founded his own market research firm – PinOak Analytics – which specialized in telephone and online surveys, lead generation services, and online and proprietary database information services.
Mr. Pinder holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He is a frequent guest lecturer of the FastTrac entrepreneurial program and is the past state president and national delegate of the Arthritis Foundation. His awards include an EFFIE, presented by the New York chapter of the American Marketing Association and a national volunteer service award by the Arthritis Foundation. He resides in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sean Lilly Wilson, Principal
Sean specializes in creating and executing marketing programs with a strong sales impact. Over the past twelve years, Sean has led marketing and sales teams in high technology, consumer packaged goods, and service initiatives. His command of the written word -- and his keen eye for design – brings clients a rapid increase in sales and a clear path to profitability.
As the Duke Alumni Association’s Director of Member Benefits, Sean raised more than $1 million in dues revenue for the first time in the association’s history, a 20 percent increase from previous years. He did this while cutting production costs 30 percent, reducing the cost to raise a dollar from $0.26 to around a nickel – a figure unheard of among alumni associations.
Product design experience includes packaged goods in the natural foods sector, designing and selling a successful clothing line, logo design and company branding, and creating the Duke Alumni magnetic stripe card, which provides alumni benefits such as free parking, gym access, and store discounts.
His focus on efficiency in sales and marketing programs helped two high technology startups shorten sales cycles and fill the pipeline with qualified sales leads. But with Sean, it’s not all about efficiency. He is a creative, engaging leader who enjoys pursuing what some might think impossible. He started a lobbying organization that changed a seventy-year-old North Carolina law – a deregulation that led to the creation of hundreds of new North Carolina jobs at no additional cost to taxpayers.
Sean offers clients launch experience for the web, derived from his work with technology upstart ViOS and more recently with his Pop The Cap lobbying effort. The latter involved building an online audience of several thousand email subscribers, monthly newsletters, and blog updates. He is well-versed with Web 2.0 technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and RSS. Savvy Marketing Group clients include First Research, a division of Hoover’s (a D&B company) and A Shred Ahead.
Sean received both an M.B.A. and Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.) from Duke University and a B.A. from Wheaton College in Illinois. Sean enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters. Hobbies include cooking for friends and family, brewing beer, and gardening.
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