CATE GUTOWSKI

• Increased Revenue +61% by building a new growth strategy focused on: 1/ Customers- Transitioned from “All Manufacturers” to profitable Industry SaaS niche: Beverage. 2/ Contacts- Transitioned from “Mid-tier Contacts” (Director of Production) to C-Suite (COO, CIO, CFO).3/ Quantified Value - helped Coca-Cola reduce operating costs by $1MM in 2 years via 1 use case.
• Launched 2 new Product Categories: Quality-as-a-Service’ (QaaS), + Data-as-a-Service (DaaS)—a first in Beverage history. New services provide Data Scientist on-site, reducing unwanted downtime in manufacturing 3-5%, improved quality (50% less recalls), and reduced energy usage 25%.
• Increased Cash by 7X & Reduced Aged Receivables by 50% in (6) months—used six-sigma tools to identify the root causes.

• Increased Revenue +17%— reversed 10 years of Flat Revenue. Led 5 of 5 P&L units to deliver “First-Double-Digit Growth in Company History”. Grew 2 largest profit & loss units Water Direct & Exchange +17% in 12 months (from -1% prior year). Increased growth in (3) smaller units: Premium Brands (Mountain Valley) +6% (from -36%) Water Refill & Filtration +8% (from -21%) Europe +5% (from -31%).
• Led Negotiations on (2) Key Wins – National Account Sales Wins at: Costco and Lowe’s. By improving #1 operations & service metric OTIF and asking for the order we displaced competitor (Nestle/Blue Triton), resulting in new, multi-year contracts, increased market share +14%.
• New wins with Costco and Lowes repositioned Primo Water ($2.3B) from a takeover target ... to a ‘merger of equals’ with the larger, $5B Nestle/Blue Triton. One year later, the newly formed ‘Primo Brands’ ($7B) was announced, now traded under (PRMB).
• Drove New Unit Growth +47% YoY (1.3 to 1.9MM) on #1 most important product - ‘Razor’ (Water Dispenser), to drive profitable sales of ‘Razor Blades’ (5 gallon water bottles) via new e-commerce strategy on Amazon (increased share from 1% to 28%) in (6) months.
• Leveraged strong Sales Leadership Skills to drive a +20-point improvement in Operations on #1 service metric – Improved On-Time and In Full’ metric from 75% to 95% in 12 months— reversing 10-Year Negative Service Trend in Operations, and delivering +10% revenue growth, & a +3 pt improvement in EBITDA (from 13% +16%) at same time.
• Utilized AI-Sentiment Analysis to improve Customer Ratings on Primo’s Mobile App — from (4) years at 1.9 Stars—to 4.9 Stars in 12 mths and 25% fewer calls to Customer Service.

• Promoted in 30 days to a bigger role - adding 2 additional functions: Training & Communications. Member of Leadership Team, in a 'single threaded leader role' - which meant owning all IT, Security, Process for functions. 5 of 10 systems were used daily by 111,000 in 180 countries.
• Championed 2 key changes to AWS Go-to-Market Strategy approved by CEO - pivots from prior 13 year history. 1/Historical focus of ‘CIO-only’ ... to focus on 3 key c-suite roles (CEO, CFO, COO). 2/ Moved from 'All Industries' to ‘Top 6 Industries’ only. Impact: 1a/ Increased wins from C-suite’ from 1.0% in '19 to 39.7% in '21. 2b/ Increased Wins in ‘Target Industries’ from 26% to 55%. Strategy still in place 4 yrs later.
• Utilized Six-Sigma Black Belt Skills to ‘Reduce Time-to-Onboard-Sales by +50% (from 180 to 90 days), increasing Revenue Per Head by +28% in year 1 and +51% in year 2.
• Led Engineering to build new app, 'Learn' - reducing time required to achieve Level 200 Technical Proficiency on Top 40 Cloud Technologies by 50%, from 24 to 12 hours.

• Increased Revenue from $17B to $57B as part of AWS Leadership team. Recruited to build first-ever ‘Professional Worldwide Sales Enablement Function to Scale Growth’, due to increased competition from Microsoft, Google.
• Designed, built and implemented Sales Enablement that enabled effective scaling - from 10,000+ sellers in 70 countries to 44,000 sellers in 180 countries in 3 years.
• Won ‘CEO Grand Challenge’ in month 2: Andy Jassy approved build of first-ever AI & ML based Sales Tools: Curiosity, a ‘Netflix Style Recommendation Engine’ pushed training just-in time, based on data & key words entered into the CRM.
• Designed, built & implemented globally (3) Proprietary Sales Mechanisms that enabled scaling by +$42B: 1/AWS Field Competency Model, 2/AWS Field Assessment Model, 3/AWS Sales Methodology & AWS Leadership Methodology. All (3) are still in use 4 years later. In 2024, AWS sold $100B+.

• Increased growth +21% YoY, $2.5B Revenue vs. prior 3 years of negative growth (-5% in 17, -4% in 16, -11% in 15).
• Increased Operating Profit from 16% to 21% by selling more high margin digital services with top 10 most influential customers (Emirates, Singapore Airlines, Delta, American, British Airways, United).
• Sold first SaaS License in company — leading to creation of first dedicated SaaS P&L Unit. Built new Sales team for SaaS, growing Pipeline from $0 to $320MM in 8 months by recruiting top talent Google, Meta, Oracle.

• Nominated by CEO to Lead GE’s digital transformation of Sales globally for 10 Business Units. Co-owned with CIO $155MM of cloud & licensed SaaS. Supported IT for (10) Business Units: 25,000 Field Sales in 180 countries across: Power, Energy, Aviation, Oil & Gas, Healthcare, Digital, Transportation, Renewables, Lighting & Appliances.
• Launched (5) AI & ML based tools in 1 year: Roadmap built using crowdsourcing from 17K (68%) of Sales. Launched 5 of 5 on-time and on-budget. 4 of 5 exceeded usage goals: 76% average adoption in 6 months.
• Disrupted CRM Model with new AI ‘Digital Assistant’: Enabled 4 of 10 Business Units to exit $9MM of Salesforce contracts: 3 of 4 chose to replace Salesforce with the new GE Digital Assistant, saving $9MM annually, and logged: 8X more CRM data per day, improving CRM data quantity and quality. 1300+ sellers across (4) units now able to enter CRM data ‘on-the-go’ via Text or Voice (SIRI/ALEXA). 1 of 3 directly attributed increased sales to use of the tool (+40% sales increase GE Energy).
• Increased GE Pipeline $482MM via new AI Tool – GE Connect, connecting sales teams from different business units in 3 minutes (vs. 3 weeks of manual emailing efforts). Built first-ever ‘Customer Data Lake’ - which used Machine Learning to reduce 1.5B disparate data sets into 350K ‘clean’ data sets.
• Results delivered enabled our global recognition in: Wall Street Journal, NBC, CNBC, CIO Magazine, Gartner, Forrester, Harvard, MIT & more.

• Nominated by CEO for role - led Sales & Marketing functions globally: 25,000 sellers & 3,500 marketers in 180 countries. Reported to Vice Chair.
• Led (2) Company-Wide ‘One-GE Enterprise Selling’ org, exceeded plan +8% in ‘16, +10% in ‘17, delivering $5.17B in new mega project, multi-business deals. Led Access GE/Consulting & Professional Services to deliver +31% to $393MM in ‘17, +14% or 301MM in '16.
• Drove YoY Growth by increasing focus on Technology/Cloud resulting in +$340MM in Multi-Year-Contracts for(10) Business Units, enabling (4) new wins with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

Full P&L Leadership: Increased Revenue of Multi-Product Line P&L: +10% Lighting Fixture Hardware & created first-ever Software P&L. Grew existing hardware P&L +10% ($515MM to $566MM). Led engineering to add IoT + (via sensors, video camera) to lighting fixtures, enabling first IoT, IIoT, 'Digital' revenue, creating a new category.

• Full P&L Leadership: increased Revenue of Multi-Product Line P&L +10% Indoor Lighting Fixture Indoor (from $515 to $566MM), and Increased Outdoor Lighting Fixture +16% (from $202 to $234MM).
• Increased EBITDA in (2) P&Ls: +5.8% Indoor, +12% Outdoor via new localization strategy in Saudi Arabia, UAE & Turkey and reduced operating expenses in plants by 25%.
• Built first-ever Software P&L unit: created New Category for Retail, “Intelligent Infrastructure”. Grew new P&L from $0 to $4.2MM in Revenue via first cloud-based, AL/ML app for retailers and first IoT/video enabled fixtures. Impact: UK based retailer Boots/Walgreens sold $7MM in software licenses, and data to 2 suppliers.
• Reduced Product Development Cycle Times by 50%, enabling delivery of 62 New Products and 14 New Wins by implementing AGILE. Reduced cycle time enabled (14) new Smart City wins generating +$190MM new revenue (Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Boots, & Vodafone) and $254MM in new pipeline.

• Increased Revenue $1.0B to $1.7B in 2.5 years: led most significant technology change in 100+ years of GE Lighting: led transition from Incandescent to LED technology with key retailers (Walmart, Target, Safeway, CVS, Walgreens). Led Marketing to successfully communicate changes to consumers, leading to record levels of consumer adoption & driving growth: +25% in ‘11, +41% in ‘12, +22% in ‘13.
• Increased EBITDA +24% by changing Sales Incentive Compensation to focus on Product Mix (vs. Revenue only): +4.2% in 2011, +6.4 in 2012, and +10% in 2013.
• Coached team to convert (+16) new national accounts using new sales methodology, delivering $305MM in incremental sales. Highlights: Lowes $150MM, Amazon, $21MM, AHOLD $10MM, Big Lots $9MM.

• Increased Revenue: from $210MM to $348MM in 3 years with key, must-win global & national accounts in Retail, (Apple, Starbucks, Target, Nordstrom, Lulu Lemon), Hospitality (Marriott, Ritz Carlton), Property Management (CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield). Earned reputation on ability to deliver growth ‘despite turbulent economic conditions’, delivering: +6% in ‘08, +12% in ‘09, +44% in ‘10.

• Increased Revenue $43MM to $78MM in 3 years, by building GE’s first team of ‘Hunters’. Trained them in a new sales methodology. New Hunter model reduced GE Dependence on Distributors, enabling GE to create direct relationships with end-users resulting in: +14% ‘05, +32% in ‘06, +21% in ‘07.
• Based on strong success in North America, Latin America CEO requested I work for his team, resulting in a new, expanded role. Delivered +23MM in New Pipeline & +4.2MM in New Revenue in 2 years. Partnered closely with Latin America CEO to design strategy, and worked side-by-side to implement.
• Delivered first-ever ‘Multi-Business Enterprise Win focused on Sustainability’, delivering first: ‘GE Ecomagination Homes Community’ in US, at Withers Preserve, multi-year contract for (6) different GE businesses, resulting in $+2.4MM, 5-year contract for first “Green Community in US”, earning media recognition on Today Show, CNBC, New York Times, Forbes, Coastal Living.

• Supported build of GE's first-ever Customer Website: collected Voice-of-the-Customer to build requirements for e-commerce & direct purchases, resulting in (6) new tools: Price & Availability, Order Tracking, Order Delivery, e-Orders. Converted 26% from manually faxed to e-order.
• Mentored & closed (14) Greenbelt Projects that delivered $436K of cost-out, and $578K of new incremental Revenue growth.
• Closed (2) Customer Black Belt Projects, winning #2 place in Global GE Competition: “Reduced Damaged Motors +55% for OEM customer, ATP in China” Saved customer $1.5MM & GE $909K. Black Belt #2: “Improving Time to View Invoices”, from: 7.8 days to 1.0 day & $160K

• Increased Revenue +$1.8MM - from $2.0MM to $3.8MM in 2 years with: Distributors (Rexel, Mayer), Contractors/Electricians (Power Design, AA Electric), Industrials (Cott Beverage- now Primo Water, Tropicana), Manufacturing (Publix, Refresco). Grew GE market share +5pts from 33 to 38%.
• Rated Top 1% of Talent in GE as “High Potential”, making me eligible to have GE pay for my MBA while working.

• Increased Revenue from $2.1MM to $4.4MM in 2 years
• After graduating from GE's 2-Year Technical Leadership Program, I became the first-ever Retail Account Manager, based on a pilot program I led the year prior. I sold load centers, circuit breakers, spa panels to the Home Depot, a 'first' in 100+ year history (where GE only went to market via retailers).
• Launched ‘First Customer Retailer Greenbelt Project’: ‘Improve Fill Rates in Puerto Rico’ – improved fill rates by +23% in 6 months.