About Kay Keenan

Career Summary:
Kay Keenan is a dynamic leader of cross-functional business teams with 24 years of both consumer and business-to-business experience at both a Fortune 200 company and a leading Investor Owned Public Utility. Kay’s experience ranges from start-up ventures with P&L responsibility to creating a Customer conscience within a client environment. She is recognized as creative and goal oriented with demonstrated ability to deliver results that delight customers and exceed business goals.

Kay’s first 18 years were spent at Scott Paper Company beginning as an IT Systems Analyst and culminating as a Director of Marketing, having full profit & loss responsibility, for a major channel of distribution that crossed multiple divisions of Scott Paper.

During her tenure at Scott Paper, Kay held numerous positions of ever-increasing responsibility and achieved consistently successful results in all functional environments – information technology, supply chain/logistics, customer service, and marketing.

Following the merger of Scott Paper Company and Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Kay chose to join Delmarva Power, a Fortune 500 Investor Owned utility as it was creating new strategic business units in the face of deregulation. Kay was selected to be on the leadership team for a start-up business involving one of the first consolidations in the Heating, Air Conditioning and Ventilating Industry with 24 acquisitions in 3 years and over $140 million in revenue. While her focus was Strategic Marketing consulting for the division she was actively involved from the selection of acquisitions, due diligence through the financial management of the division. While at Delmarva Power, Kay participated in executive strategy meetings that resulted in the changing face of the utility by creating multiple businesses and the merger with Atlantic Energy to create Conectiv. Conectiv converted to SAP while Kay was part of the leadership team and initiated SalesLogix as well as large-scale customer and marketing database initiatives.

When deregulation did not proceed as expected by the industry and Conectiv decided to sell the division Kay had helped to create they asked Kay to stay and help with the sale to five companies. When that was completed Kay chose to establish her own consulting company – Growth Consulting Inc – that was opened in 2000.

Kay has consulted for numerous companies in various industries, with heavy emphasis in the areas of improving customer relationship, strategic marketing and sales & marketing effectiveness, primarily for service industries.

Representative Accomplishments:
At Growth Consulting Inc:

Led the identification and development of segment specific marketing programs for the Medical, Insurance and Real Estate markets that helped position a telecommunications company as a leader in these segments.

Created a year long marketing program for the mid-west division of a leading HVAC company including a plan for improving customer focus and retention.

Developed a Customer (client) Relationship Survey that has helped clients in both the IT and Architecture industries develop the urgency for creating a CRM plan for their businesses

Provided marketing direction and support to a leading regional accounting firm as they create IT subsidiaries with unique names from the parent.

An international corporation asked Kay to facilitate the creation of a positioning for a division made up of many newly acquired companies. The participants were in England and two United States locations representing the original companies. The results were declared great by all involved and the division was able to move forward in a more unified manner.

Kay coaches a multi-person team focused on marketing for a computer service company. This team was trying to meet regularly before they hired Kay but found they were floundering. Since working with Kay, the team has created a marketing plan, developed material, increased networking and reports that marketing is no longer a headache.

Working with the Marketing Director of a privately held company, Kay created a presentation for the Consumer Products Safety Commission to help insure the proper issues were taken into consideration in the creation of new regulations. The company management was thrilled with the results and the Marketing Director was able to focus on revenue generating activities while Kay delved into the creation of the presentation.

On behalf of a medical practice, Growth Consulting worked closely with their business management to develop a coordinated marketing plan finding them their first communication agency for a unified advertising campaign. From a new website to an aggressive highly targeted advertising campaign the practice is seeing results with less time spent struggling to decide the effectiveness of different venues.

At Conectiv:

Led the marketing programs for the consolidation of 24 companies resulting in double-digit sales growth both in the residential and commercial service segments.

Led the hiring of the marketing team for both the residential and commercial segments. Responsible for the creation of the positioning for Conectiv Services. This included the development of all collateral, direct mail, print advertising and sales support material.

Led a 20+ person sales force during the search for a Director of Sales.

Developed the first sales standards manual and initiated training programs.

Developed lead generation process that balanced cyclical nature of temperature driven business to increase consistency of workflow. Managed direct response marketing process to more effectively find prospects and convert them to customers.

At Scott Paper:

Created a product line that recognized the unique needs of alternative distribution channels while using non-traditional manufacturing methods, which contributed $135 million in revenue in 1995.

Instituted a major repositioning that simplified the product line and introduced dramatically improved packaging that included use area selling for the Warehouse Club Channel.

Developed jointly with the customer specific marketing programs to help increase store traffic.

Managed the development of a dramatic product repositioning resulting in 50% increases in share and volume.

Developed systems and procedures that allowed reduction of cycle time to rapidly introduce new line extensions.

Initiated a joint customer and Scott Paper profit enhancement team that resulted in mutual substantial cost savings.

Directed sales strategy to maximize profit for Scott Paper while meeting or exceeding customer need.

Presentations, Education and Community Credentials:

Delmarva Power Personal Performance Recognition Award (1997)

Scott Paper Business Excellence Awards (1990, 1992, 1993, 1994)

President, Delaware Forum of Executive Women (1999-2000)

President, Wilmington Women in Business (1985-1986)

M.B.A., Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY (1977)

A.B., Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA (1975)

Caesar Rodney Rotarian of the Month (July 2005)

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