Also known as: katherine
Katherine “Kat†Nelson-Reid, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, has a multifaceted background built over the course of her career that’s given her the ability to be placed in virtually any segment of a business and manage it with skill and proficiency. She has a solid business consulting acumen that she’s applied to building the operational side of Obtiva as well as several hundred startups when she managed her own consulting firm. While her background is entrenched in finance, operations and process development, she’s achieved multimodality in sales, marketing, and business development. At Obtiva, Kat plays a central role in shaping the growth and development of the company and its people. She is in her element in a start-up technology environment, and after joining Obtiva in early 2008 she rolled up her sleeves and got to work streamlining the internal accounting, finance and human resource functions. Today, she and the Obtiva senior management team oversee day-to-day operations while adding strategic value as key change agents to the progression and evolution of the firm. With more than 15 years of corporate operational experience, Kat began her career as an auditor while still in college, eventually expanding beyond finance and accounting into business operations spanning marketing, legal, human resources and process management. She left the corporate world to establish a business consulting firm where she specialized in process implementation, change management, growth strategy development and start-up consulting. Born and raised in the South, Kat’s career and penchant for tall buildings, fine dining and traffic jams brought her to Chicago. She’s a fixture in the Chicago technology community, speaking and supporting start-up and women in business initiatives. She’s a foodie, coffee addict, wine enthusiast and teaches the occasional yoga class.   Â
