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Profile
Rachel Spasser is a Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer at Accel-KKR Consulting Group. Rachel provides strategic guidance as well as sales and marketing leadership across Accel-KKR’s portfolio. Prior to joining Accel-KKR’s Consulting Group, Rachel was the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Ariba, Inc., an SAP Company. At Ariba she led the design and execution of the company’s marketing strategy and programs.With over 25 years of experience in marketing, business development and general management, Ms. Spasser has spent the past 20 years focused on the business-to-business technology space and speaks frequently on topics such as marketing strategy, demand generation and management and customer adoption marketing. Prior to joining Ariba, she worked in executive marketing roles with numerous cloud software and Internet-related companies including IBM, KnowledgeStorm Inc., Integrated Broadband Services and Cox Search LLC, a division of Cox Enterprises.
Rachel’s current board seats include: Cendyn, ClickDimensions, Duett AS, ESG, Smart Communications, SugarCRM and Travel Tripper.
Ms. Spasser holds an MBA with honors from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ability to find and execute on growth opportunities in every company and situation – with particular focus on go-to-market strategy, messaging/positioning, and demand generation. Our portfolio of companies looks to Rachel for guidance on how to accelerate growth. She has helped numerous companies in our portfolio develop new messaging which has helped propel their organization’s sales engine. For example, at Smart Communications (a software company she also serves as a Board Director), she helped come up with the message, “Scale the Conversation.” While this phrase doesn’t tell you much, the messaging points that support that tagline helped more than double sales growth. Rachel pours her heart and soul into everything she does – she is never outworked and does whatever is needed to make our private equity portfolio companies she works with successful. She holds herself to an incredibly high standard of accountability. Focus and commitment to developing people on her team, within our firm, and across the companies in our private equity portfolio. She is exceptional at putting people in positions to be successful, and one of the best coaches/mentors I’ve seen in my 30 year career. For example, at one of the first firm-wide meetings she attended, she observed several of our team members were not particularly strong presenters. She developed a program/course on the topic, coached people in 1:1 settings, and has repeated this effort each year. Drive to support women in the industries she’s worked – she’s started a Women in Procurement forum at Ariba and a Women in Leadership forum at Accel-KKR
very creative problem solver, excellent business judgement, ability to lead, outstanding communicator, excellent critical thinking skills