Katherine (Fye) Sears

Building and scaling lifecycle systems that turn early interest into trust, engagement, and growth over long B2B buying journeys. Leading lifecycle strategy, buyer and customer journey design, and cross-functional marketing programs to educate and nurture Leap's enterprise audience — Fortune 500 HR and benefits leaders navigating complex, high-stakes decisions about specialty infusion care. Responsible for designing thoughtful, high-value nurture experiences that support both pipeline development and long-term client relationships in a mission-driven healthcare company transforming how self-funded employers access transparent, patient-centered infusion care.

Avalara leverages agentic AI to streamline tax and compliance; I owned global lifecycle strategy and email operations, leading a 12–14 person team across the U.S., India, and Brazil to drive retention, expansion, and LTV across complex customer funnels.​​ - Designed and led cohort-based lifecycle programs across onboarding, adoption, cross-sell/upsell, and renewal, using customer insights and performance data to refine content, incentives, and testing.​ - Orchestrated the migration of complex, multi-region lifecycle and operational programs from Eloqua to Marketo with zero downtime, aligning data, governance, and QA to sustain performance and compliance for all global customer communications. - Key revenue program included building a lifecycle “moment” nurture that triggered a two-email journey into a self-serve purchase flow, generating approximately $2M per year in zero-touch revenue and ~$7M in total program impact.​ - Owned planning, build, QA, and launch of 5–7 weekly lifecycle and customer campaigns, including newsletters, triggered journeys, and urgent policy/product updates with 1–24 hour SLAs.​ - Led email compliance and deliverability across multiple platforms (Eloqua, Marketo, Everest, Drift, and more), including list governance, inbox placement, and mitigation of blocklisting and spam issues.​ - Consolidated and governed more than 30 disparate email-sending platforms at Avalara, improving quality, consistency, and sender reputation for global customer communications.​ - Embedded AI (ChatGPT, N8N, Rovo, custom GPTs) into daily operations to accelerate journey design, copy, QA, and reporting, increasing testing velocity and freeing the team for higher-impact strategy work.​ - Partnered closely with RevOps, Product, Data Science, Sales, and CX to align lifecycle programs to key journey moments and present activation, usage, churn, LTV, and expansion KPIs directly to executive leadership.​

- Owned and operated a consulting business focused on enhancing online and social media presence for small businesses. - Provided tailored training and developed ongoing marketing plans for clients, ensuring their long-term success. - Collaborated with notable clients such as Brite-Strike Technologies and Salon Bliss Redmond, delivering impactful marketing strategies.

- Responsible for all external Litnerd content - Wrote and designed all marketing brochures and collateral pieces - Wrote and distributed relevant press articles highlighting the need for literacy services to support the Litnerd mission - Developed an Ed-Tech-centered social media strategy, created all social media content, and executed on all primary platforms. - Responsible for sourcing of children's books and negotiation of subsequent licensing agreements or contracts

- Partnered with authors in a Guided Author–style program to clarify book objectives, audience, and positioning, helping them develop a clear “North Star” and chapter-level roadmap for their manuscripts. - Coordinated with internal editorial, design, and publishing teams to move manuscripts from draft through edit, design, and full publishing and distribution. - Advised authors on launch and promotion tactics, including email, social media, and Amazon-focused campaigns, aligned with Scribe’s Launch Promotions and Book Launch Blueprint frameworks. - Managed all third-party warehousing logistics operations for the company with Amazon

The Booktrope pitch: How do you publish a book? In the past, two choices: traditional publishing houses (hard to access) or self-publishing (not always good quality and/or expensive for the author). We pioneered a new option, Team Publishing - a low-overhead network of autonomous creative teams who collaborate to first create, then market, books. A typical team included: author, editor, marketing manager and designer. Team members were paid using a royalty structure following book sales, which allowed us to keep overhead low while also delivering a high quality book. - Extremely adept at investor presentations and all facets of fundraising for the start-up environment. - Y-Combinator Spring 2015 Cohort - winner, Seattle Angel Conference 2014 - winner, WTIA First Look Forum 2014 - Over 1000+ books published and 1100+ creatives using the platform before shutdown - Pioneered a social media-focused book marketing method published as “How to Market a Book,” resulting in multiple bestsellers on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and USA Today. - Highly experienced at creating and presenting investor pitches - $1+ million raised in seed round (led by Khosla Ventures). - PR – Booktrope was featured in many media outlets, from a cover feature in Seattle magazine to a video feature on Geekwire.

Kantrak was an early stage company focused on building the next generation applications using proprietary Compete Context™ Solutions. Many concepts that would be considered AI learning today we pioneered then. In short - we were too early to market. - Applications leveraging automated learning of an individual, business, or organization to customize results or analyze business directions. - Several proof-of-concept products were developed, ranging from a contextual search engine to an aging-in-place enabled apartment (with Washington State University).

• Spearheaded the overhaul of service offerings to better serve nearline and disc storage users. • Launched the first customer-facing web service portal with case management tools and knowledgebase. • Implemented a new service strategy emphasizing eService to reduce operational costs and personnel reliance.

- Led the evolution of NetApp’s services from high‑tech focused to enterprise‑class offerings, with an emphasis on revenue growth, cost management, and scalable, repeatable processes. - Developed and launched 6+ new integrated hardware/software/service programs over two years, including the first NetApp Services hardware/software platform (Support Console). - Drove install‑base and new‑logo marketing campaigns that generated more than $30M in incremental services revenue.

eManage.com was a co-location and managed services company selling rack space and the needed services to monitor and keep the infrastructure running. - Developed and launched managed services and proprietary software tools for Managed Maintenance and Change Control products. - Successfully managed the integration program, installing 35 customers and generating over $1M in monthly revenue. - Contributed to the rapid growth of eManage.com during the dot-com boom, focusing on customer acquisition and service delivery.