Find Karen Muldoon at Linked IN Karen Muldoon (00:00.172) Okay, amazing. Amy Evans (00:00.797) Yes. Yeah. So Karen, it's such a pleasure to have you today and welcome to the Women in Sales Leadership Podcast. Thank you for being here. Karen Muldoon (00:11.234) Thank you for having me, Amy. Amy Evans (00:12.901) Of course, wonderful. Well, I thought we could start at the beginning and, you know, just tell a little bit about your story, please, and start at the beginning. Where you grew up, school, how did you get to this point? Karen Muldoon (00:26.08) Okay. Karen Muldoon (00:31.03) Okay, amazing. So I'm originally from Dublin, Ireland. I have a little bit of twang as I call it, because I lived in the US for quite a while, but I'm originally from Ireland. And like many Irish, we went to the Catholic Coven schools, right? But I won't get too much into any of that now. And then for university, I actually ended up studying computer programming. And that was quite a while ago. That was when a lot of women, especially women, didn't really enter into those professions. And also was when it was really before the bubble as well. So I'll give my age away, but I was actually a COBOL programmer. And so I learned how to code. And then when I finished college, I was offered what we call a, I guess, a lottery green card. There was a lottery back years ago in Ireland because it was a big... There was a lot of unemployment in Ireland and there was also a lot of them moved to the US and lived illegally. so the US government allotted a certain number of visas to the Irish. I wasn't living in the US at the time, but I was very lucky to get one. So I thought I should have this amazing opportunity. So when I finished college, I moved to Atlanta, where you're from, Amy. Amy Evans (01:57.331) Right. Karen Muldoon (01:58.426) And from there I went into coding. I was a programmer for probably nearly nine years and that brought me into the Y2K era, which was great because I was a mainframe programmer and that's where a lot of the issues were. there was a lot of work, a of consulting, but then there was a transition and we had the whole... Shortly after that, the whole dot com era happened and technology changed, Java, C++, all of that was becoming really popular. So I two paths I could go on. I could either go back and continue to educate myself into these new languages, or I could go into consulting and make some really good money for a while. And I chose the money. I'm not sure if that was the right decision, but that's the path I chose. So I went into consulting for a while. Amy Evans (02:49.98) It's okay. Karen Muldoon (02:53.07) And I worked with Toyota and Lexus. actually had moved to Los Angeles by then. So I was working at those companies out in Los Angeles. And then I really enjoyed the aspect of doing more customer facing roles. And yet I had that technical background. So the next transition was moving into sales. So, and that's actually when I moved to San Francisco, because I loved the Bay Area so much. And I started in inside sales and tech sales into probably that was probably about 2004 and work for a company called Embarkadero Technologies. And then I continued at that for another eight years. And I decided in 2008, my mother, fortunately, was very ill and was given a certain amount of time. So I decided to make my way back to Dublin. That was a pretty tough time because it was 2008. 2001 was tough and then 2008, as many of us know, was pretty tough and it probably was a tough time to make a move, quit a job and make a move. So I ended up actually working in a startup for a while, which that wasn't probably my greatest experience, just I think just because of everything that was going on at the time. And then I took some time out, got some amazing time with my mother. And then I joined Salesforce in 2010 in Dublin as an account manager, a mid-market account manager, where you also worked Amy, and in different countries, but the same company. And then I worked my way up to what we call the GB, account manager, strategic account manager, and then moved to London in 2015 and moved into original vice president role. Amy Evans (04:29.075) That's right. Karen Muldoon (04:47.63) And I stayed at Salesforce till 2018. I loved those eight years. It was an amazing time to be at Salesforce. And then just like, you know, we kind of get to point our career and we kind of think, well, maybe it's time for a change. And so I moved, I joined Zendesk as a sales leader, which are customer service, which a lot of the same, a lot of Salesforce people also work for. my God, my doorbell is just rang. Amy Evans (05:13.959) We can just you go deal with it. can edit it out later No worries Karen Muldoon (06:46.222) I was actually thinking they were trying to deliver yesterday, and I thought they better not deliver on the call. And then of course he couldn't scan the code. I mean, ...
Mehr anzeigen
Weniger anzeigen
Apr 25 202517 Min.