LEAVE A REPLY
Profile
Jacqueline Cook began her professional career 11 years ago. Today, she is the Chief Operating Officer of Vendasta. Vendasta is the leading platform for channel partners who provide digital solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Cook first got her start in 2010 as an owner and co-founder at Thread Media. From there, she went on to Triumf, before eventually rising to founding director at Recess Guardians, her most recent position prior to joining Vendasta.
Cook graduated and from the University of Saskatchewan with an undergraduate degree in commerce.
Jacqueline is responsible for driving a growth mindset throughout Vendasta through alignment, focus and execution cross-functionally in Engineering, Design, Product Management, Operations, Marketing, Sales, Support and Success. She leads Vendasta’s internationalization efforts and gathers key organizational data and customer insights to drive product strategy and ensure the company is achieving its long-term goals. She acts as General Manager of the Product Division, responsible for the P&L of the division and the development of Vendasta’s foundational solutions, which currently comprise over half of the company’s revenue. Jacqueline is an alumnus of The Next 36 Entrepreneurial Institute, Canada’s premier entrepreneurial leadership initiative. During the program, she co-founded and was CEO of Triumf Mobile Rewards: a tablet and Smartphone-based platform for small and medium-sized businesses to customize their own loyalty rewards programs. She has been a speaker at events such as Tejo Talks, sponsored by Canada’s Embassy to Portugal as part of Web Summit, TEDx UofS and WE DAY, and has represented Canada at the 2010 G8 and G20 Summits, the 2010 APEC Summit in Japan, and at the 2011 G20 Young Entrepreneur Summit in France. Jacqueline has been a recipient of CBC Saskatchewan’s Future 40 under 40 and a YWCA Women of Distinction Award. She is the President of Recess Guardians and serves on the board of Care and Share and Co.Labs, Saskatchewan’s first technology incubator. She currently resides in Saskatoon, Canada with her husband, Jeff Wandzura.
I like to take complex, seemingly impossible challenges and break them down into smaller, actionable steps. I try my best to inspire my teams to see a vision, intrinsically buy into that vision, and then get out of their way or remove obstacles while they work to achieve that vision. I spend most of my time trying to understand our customers, empathize with them and get to the core of what makes their lives better. I try very hard to communicate difficult concepts to our many diverse stakeholder groups. I am in love with data, but lead with creativity because it’s human. I am extremely passionate about what I do.
Jacqueline is a leader who operates at all levels of Vendasta, from top-level strategic decision making to one-on-one mentorship. She is intimately aware of the platform company’s customer pain points and intuitively navigates complex and challenging problems, rallying teams to produce some of their most creative and ambitious work. Her pleasant demeanor, can-do attitude and team-building skills contribute deeply to the company’s culture and growth.
Excellent communication skills Effective negotiation skills Conflict resolution skills Collaboration skills Strong cross-functional knowledge of the company Being able to see the “big picture” A strategic mindset