Speakers

Neil was a founding member of the original Varicent leadership team. He has led high-growth teams in sales, marketing, product, design, services, cloud, support, and operations. Neil's executive experience ranges from startup to large enterprise.

In his time at Ada Support Inc., Neil developed and launched new product integrations, intelligence, and analytics features leading to millions in new revenue. As well, when at IBM Neil determined the product vision and strategy, with an aim to delight customers in every interaction with the product. From motivating small innovative teams to guiding large, distributed teams, Neil can deliver sophisticated platforms for a variety of use cases.

Neil is passionate about analytics, customer success, and creating experiences users love. As COO, Neil oversees Varicent's product, service, and customer operations.

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Kyle Uebelhor is a principal in the Chicago office. He is a leader in the firm’s Manufacturing and Distribution practices. Kyle’s clients include leading companies throughout manufacturing and wholesale/distribution. By applying deep industry expertise and a pragmatic approach to each situation, he helps companies achieve their organic growth objectives. He brings nuanced perspective to the complexities of sizing the total available global market, delivering differentiated value, creating omnichannel designs, and motivating partners and the commercial team. Kyle frequently speaks on sales enablement topics. He has authored several articles and whitepapers including “The Power of Playbooks: Execute Your Vision” and most recently “Digitizing the Revenue Growth Model.”

Prior to joining the Alexander Group, Kyle spent 10 years in commercial banking. As a relationship manager and lender to large middle-market companies, he developed broad expertise across numerous manufacturing industries and developed solutions-based selling strategies with his C-suite corporate clients. Kyle has an MBA from the University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business and B.A. from Wabash College. He is also a Certified Sales Compensation Professional (CSCP).

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Professor Joel Shapiro, J.D., Ph.D., is Chief Analytics Officer at Varicent and Clinical Associate Professor of Data Analytics at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. Joel is an expert in helping organizations generate business value by building and scaling enterprise-wide analytics strategies that achieve important business goals. With a laser focus on building real and lasting business value, Joel teaches business leaders how to ensure smart analytics investment and sustainable success.

Joel runs Kellogg’s Analytical Consulting Lab, teaches advanced analytics electives in Kellogg’s MBA program, and teaches hundreds of executive education students each year. His work has been featured globally via regular keynote addresses, thought-leader authorship in Harvard Business Review and other top journals, as a contributor to CNBC, and is often cited by top business publications.

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Nicole brings more than 20 years of experience as an accomplished organizational leader with significant operations, sales, merger and acquisition, and global human capital generalist expertise.

A former customer of Varicent while working at US-based healthcare company Optum, Nicole led a team of more than 20 compensation professionals in support of over 150,000 employees and 30,000 managers through compensation planning—including base salary, bonus, sales and quarterly variable incentives, and equity awards, with a strong focus on aligning rewards with performance.

Most recently Nicole served as SVP of Revenue and Operations at Datica, a digital health company focused on health IT’s most difficult challenges in interoperability and cloud compliance. Her extensive experience across all facets of sales performance management—as well as having been a long-time customer of Varicent—will give Nicole a unique edge in her role.

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Zach has deep experience in transforming sales organizations to align client needs with technology. He comes to Varicent from IBM where he was responsible for revenue and go to market strategy for the Sales Performance Management business. Zach’s additional experiences at Pfizer, Avaya and IBM have created a profound understanding of a diverse set of markets. Zach has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Wisconsin.

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Colin Wong is the General Manager, Financial Services at Varicent. Colin brings to Varicent over 25 years banking experience with M&T Bank, Bank of America, SunTrust Bank and Citizens. In that time, he has lead customer-facing teams and had enterprise impact through a variety of corporate roles including leading teams focused on sales performance management and incentive plan administration.

Colin has a Bachelor of Computer Science from Carleton University and a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Economics from the Simon School at the University of Rochester.

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Sanj Sanampudi is the General Manager of Varicent Concert and former co-founder and CEO of Concert, an incentive compensation platform built on the science and psychology of performance. Sanampudi has spoken about Sales Comp at the 2019 SaaStr Annual and the 2019, 2020, and 2021 WorldatWork Spotlight on Sales Comp. Sanampudi has also co-authored three annual “How to Create Better Comp Plans” guides with Modern Sales Pros. Prior to Concert, Sanampudi was a CFO with deep experience in designing and administering compensation plans. He holds an MBA from Columbia University.

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Sunshine has been with Varicent for 6.5 years, starting her career as a Technical Analyst fresh out of post-secondary, then as a Customer Success Manager, and most recently a Solution Consultant. Sunshine is focused on speaking with businesses, discovering pain points in their processes, and demonstrating how Varicent is able to help.

Outside of work, she enjoys the sunshine (ha), Rubik’s cubes, and weightlifting.
Sunshine holds a Master of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto.

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