This blog features a Q&A with Senior Advocacy Consultant Barbara Leavy, in which she speaks about her experience managing the advocacy program at a fortune 500 company. Topics include navigating acquisitions, setting client expectations, the challenges of massive product portfolios and more!

It’s never too late to act. Making time for planning and team building will set the foundation for a successful year ahead. Here are six things to think about that may help!

With so many years of experience in customer advocacy – founded in 1994 and renamed, Referential, in 2012 – our company upholds the sincere belief that putting customer needs first should be at the forefront of every organization’s gameplan: the success of one is directly linked to the success of the other…

Join us in welcoming Kristian Gallego, a new member of the Referential team! His diverse occupational background has enabled him to develop a wide range of skills on his journey to Referential, which have equipped him perfectly for his role as an advocacy consultant.

Introducing Jyothi Krishnegowda, today one of Referential’s Advocacy Consultants. Jyothi’s breadth of experience in customer advocacy makes her an ideal asset to every account team she joins. Her attention to detail and process-oriented approach makes her an expert at navigating new reference management systems and databases. She loves to ‘put the customer first’ and is always looking for ways to create unique, individualized experiences for advocates.

Emily joined Referential as a Customer Advocacy Consultant after a career spanning project and program management, partner relations, and talent pipeline recruiting. She pulls threads from each of these past lives to support her clients and their sales organizations through the recruitment of customer advocates.

Emily enjoys meeting new people and making connections for mutual advantage. She likens recruiting customer advocates to being a maître d'hôtel in a top restaurant: welcoming newcomers with individual attention and finding them a desirable table with stimulating dining companions.

Being one of the Managing Partners of Referential, David Feber has invested enormous amounts of time and effort in building the company up to where it is today. Dave’s academic background as an engineer serves as an inspiration and motivation to continually measure all aspects of advocacy, which always keeps work intellectually interesting and intriguing for him. It’s also what makes Referential a unique player in the market!

Apart from helping steer the company from a business perspective, he also handles the company’s IT strategy and oversees the asset creation team. To date, he’s edited well over a thousand case studies and he finds his hybrid technical/business background helps him train the writing team to translate the impact and success of clients’ offerings in a way that people can easily understand.

Perhaps one of the strongest driving forces behind Referential’s daily operations is Helen Feber, who also happens to be a Managing Partner alongside her husband and business partner, David Feber. She originally started the company in 1994, and from that point on the rest is history!

Helen built up her skill set and experience in customer advocacy after she “fell in” (as she puts it) to being a consultant after having left Hewlett Packard. Through a project she was asked to work on, she came to recognize the obvious lack of customers who would be able to talk about and provide insight on a product. And she credits that experience bringing her awareness to the absence of customer advocacy in so many corporations, and to the absolute necessity for these programs.

Denise Taylor came to Referential with a unique background in business and marketing and has worked at both small and large software firms, including running her own business. Prior to Referential, she was a Marketing Operations Manager at RO Innovation (now part of Upland Software) and was part of the team that launched an installed-base awards program for customer advocacy programs. A constant champion for the promotion of the Voice of the Customer through various channels, she was a key player in developing RO Innovation’s own advocacy program.

Prior to joining Referential, Emily was a Transaction Services Manager at Ernst & Young (EY). She began her career with EY in their auditing practice, performing the annual audits of multi-billion-dollar companies. She then transitioned to Transaction Services in San Francisco, CA and worked with companies of varying sizes to perform financial due diligence for mergers and acquisitions.

Emily was excited to join the Referential team as she believes the customer advocacy space has a lot of growth potential, and Referential in particular provides unique services and expertise that make the firm a leader in the customer advocacy world. Additionally, she was drawn to the culture at Referential as everyone is inclusive, helpful, and collaborative, which makes for a great work environment.

A former Air Force pilot, prior to joining Referential, Jerry worked at Fogdog Sports, an eCommerce online sporting goods company. From there he settled into the telecommunications industry, landing at Portal Software, then spending 13 years in Oracle’s communications industry group, and finally in the advocacy program at 8x8. Jerry views his past roles – such as Production Analyst, Curriculum Developer and Technical Instructor – as invaluable experiences that have all helped prepare him for his career in customer advocacy where he is now in his 16th year.