Welcome to Ground Truth by Dogpatch Advisors, a podcast about company builders, leadership, and how operators use data to build the future of sales. Ground Truth is hosted by Mercy Bell alongside Kyle Williams and Ben Salzman. To learn more, check out www.groundtruthpod.com or dogpatch.com/podcast for other Ground Truth episodes and a deeper dive into each story. 

The guest for Episode 3 is Christine Trodella, a Director at Facebook and head of the Americas for their Workplace division. We loved chatting with her as she shared her journey from rural Iowa all the way to Silicon Valley, where over her nearly two-decade career as a sales leader, she’s found herself at the tip of the spear of just about every pivotal shift in the tech industry.

Podcast Summary: 

01:29 - On Christine’s childhood, her parents and her move to California for college.

04:50 - How she switched to tech after working as an economist

07:33 - Her first corporate development role and how they adapted their rudimentary tools to the arrival of the Internet.

09:44 - Christine’s biggest career leap to Yahoo! building out the advertising industry

15:40 - A new life: motherhood, working from home and her role at WebMD

17:31 - How Christine’s quiet life took a 180º turn as she joined Facebook in 2010

19:43 - Looking back at customer acquisition ten years ago

22:58 - How Christine, Workplace’s biggest fan, ended up leading the Americas for Workplace

27:19 - An insider look at Workplace’s go to market strategy

32:34 - How Workplace has responded to the COVID-19 crisis

38:21 - On her team’s strategies to find and use data to measure impact

Credits

Ground Truth is a production of Dogpatch Advisors. This episode was written by Jack Buehrer from Campfire Labs, sound engineering and studio space provided by TJ Bonaventura and Julian Lewis from StudioPod, editing and mixing by Jorge Gonzalez from Nodalab, video production by Nick Shaheen from Above Treeline Studios and and cover art by Eric Miller.