Ellen Grace Henson

Current

Owner, Managing Director at MARKETING MECHANICS (Sole Proprietorship)

Past

Vice President, Product Management and Marketing at WorkSpot
Product Manager, Program Manager at Silicon Graphics
Product and Program Management at SGI

Technical Manager at Seiko Instruments

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Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Recommended

12 people have recommended Ellen Grace

Connections

408 connections

Industry

Management Consulting

Websites

My Company

Ellen Grace Henson’s Summary

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Ellen Grace Henson is a strategic product management, marketing and technology consultant. She brings more than 20 years of experience in high tech markets to her clients. She has consulted to companies of diverse size (start-up to $2B) within diverse markets including manufacturing, energy, enterprise applications and services, interactive and streaming media, database, personalization, interactive training, networking, communications and collaboration.

Ellen Grace drove product and marketing communications activities as VP Marketing for WorkSpot, a business services start-up. Before this executive position, Ellen Grace spent nine and a half years at Silicon Graphics, where she proved her management, leadership and influencing skills across both hardware and software products. She built skills in managing all aspects of a product's lifecycle and consistently delivered strong return on product and project investment. She helped pioneer integrated media technology for Silicon Graphics and later in her tenure led an international team to reposition the server line for enterprise markets.

Early in her career, after graduation from MIT, she spent five years as a graphics software engineer and technical manager. This experience added technical depth to her creative and strategic skills and helped build her unique ability to translate between technical capabilities and market requirements.

Ellen Grace Henson’s Specialties:

Delivering growth, revenue, and profitability by bridging the gap between technology and market requirements

Ellen Grace Henson’s Experience

Owner, Managing Director
MARKETING MECHANICS (Sole Proprietorship)

(Sole Proprietorship; 1-10 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)

May 2005 — Present (4 years 3 months)

Marketing Mechanics helps our clients define and deliver successful products, from concept to general availability and beyond.

We help our clients
* develop a deep and detailed understanding of their market,
* identify the optimal customer, customer needs, and why they buy
* work with a cross-functional team to deliver the Whole Product into the hands of customers in a timely and profitable manner
Vice President, Product Management and Marketing

WorkSpot

(Information Technology and Services industry)

April 2000 — May 2001 (1 year 2 months)

•Worked with senior management team to redefine company strategic direction from a Linux-newbie consumer services play to an open source, standards based enterprise ASP
•Built a highly-motivated team of marketing professionals, covering all areas including market research, product management, marketing communications
•Developed a product definition and delivery process which takes into account industry best practices as well as the unique organizational and cultural aspects of WorkSpot, Inc.
•Managed all aspects of corporate identity and branding
Product Manager, Program Manager

Silicon Graphics

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Computer Hardware industry)

1988 — 1998 (10 years)

Managed several cross-functional projects as well as innovative digital media products including the first commercial IP-based video conferencing suite and media authoring tools for the non-media professional.

Worked extensively with partners, customers, and sales towards delivering hardware sales across all vertical markets and a highly satisfied user base.

Worked with the high-end server team and industry analysts to reposition SGI server technology from 'bleeding-edge' to 'innovation plus reliability', building a world-wide campaign to deliver new positioning into financial services and other enterprise markets.
Product and Program Management

SGI

(Management Consulting industry)

1988 — 1998 (10 years)
Technical Manager

Seiko Instruments

(Privately Held; 10,001 or more employees; Computer Hardware industry)

1985 — 1988 (3 years)

Managed a support team of U.S. and Japanese engineers. Acted as technical liaison to Japanese engineering team for 3D graphic terminals and printer products.