Susan DeFife

Susan is a results-oriented leader with proven experience in customer acquisition, revenue growth, business integration and product development. Most recently she served as Vice President of Software and Games at the NPD Group, a leading global market information company, where she was responsible for multimillion-dollar P&Ls, customer relationships, sales and marketing and product development. Under her leadership, the businesses experienced strong revenue growth: from 4 percent in the more mature video games business to 26 percent and 31 percent in the recently acquired PC Games and Non-Games Software businesses, respectively.

Susan also has experience running early-stage companies. Prior to the NPD Group, she was CEO of StreamingText, which combined proprietary processes and technology to create digital text from live audio and stream it via the Internet. Susan developed the business plan and strategy to expand the company into vertical markets with the largest and earliest revenue-generating opportunities, initiated and closed sales to nearly triple the customer base, and ultimately positioned the company for acquisition by Media Map (renamed FDfn and later acquired by CCBN). Susan also was the founder and CEO of womenCONNECT.com, the leading Internet portal for professional women and women business owners. WomenCONNECT.com, which focused on content and community, generated high CPMs, consistently sold out ad inventory and achieved a clickthrough-to-sales-ratio for e-commerce partners that was more than four times the industry average. The company had partnerships with major media companies including CNN, USAToday.com, Lycos, and CompuServe.