Diane Tate
Develop innovating types through programs, communities and events through rigorous communications and team-wrangling.

I love to talk. Writing and speaking highlights here and detailed list here.

I was in a book! Specifically, quoted several times in Foundry Group’s Accelerate.

Advisory board member for Women Who Tech Startup Pitch & Competition and startups in Hackers and Founders SV Co-Op.

Early adopter of social media. Hm.

Some reference quotes from my Mozilla colleagues here.

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PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

SALESFORCE CORPORATION – San Francisco, CA

Senior Manager, Employee & Executive Communications, Technology

Author internal communications strategies, plans and execution for Salesforce’s 13,000+ technology organization and its leadership.

Also drive communications that also extend to other groups including Success from Anywhere, Salesforce’s future of work initiative.

MOZILLA CORPORATION – San Francisco, CA

Senior Program Manager, Communications (April 2015 – Present)
Joined a small crack team of program, communications & event pros to design programs and communications to engage our amazing employees and support our execs.

• Designed a 4-day new hire cultural onboarding program driving a measurable (9-point) lift in employee engagement.
• Manage monthly speaker series featuring experts in various product, technology, policy and business across our various global offices. Previous speakers include Kevin Kelly, Tim Wu, Laszlo Bock, Mikko Hypponen and Nonny de la Peña.
• Launched weekly newsletter serving our 1100 staff worldwide, attaining 65% open rate.

Program Manager, Developer Relations (January 2014 – April 2015)
Mozilla touches millions of Javascript, HTML5 and other web developers worldwide every month through our website, blog, events and various other initiatives.

My role in part was to ensure these efforts are syncing optimally on a project and program level to provide a more effective developer experience. During the 1.5 years I spent in this group, we grew our readership from roughly 1.8M unique monthly (typically developer) visitors to 4M uniques per month.

Specific responsibilities included:

• Conceiving, designing, launching, promoting and running our pilot MDN Fellowship Program intended to attract advanced web developers to the Mozilla mission and engage them in our Learning initiatives intended to make web knowledge scale. For the 5 slots accommodated in the pilot, we received 151 applications representing 32 countries.
• Managing developer reference phone requirements and communications across various stakeholders to ensure phone has proper software builds, documentation and supporting communications for retail channels.  Currently targeting 5K developer phones for first quarter.Working with project leads to develop project-specific KPIs and reporting them up to various levels of management.
• Planning cross-functional meetings and activities for 60-staff (+ ~100 volunteer) division to foster and deepen collaboration across groups.
• Supporting the local developer community by hosting meetups and educational events.

Program Manager, WebFWD Accelerator (September 2011 – January 2014)
WebFWD was Mozilla’s program supporting startups around the world. I grew the program from 2 teams to 4 classes of 8; the 4th class ending November 2013 attracted over 100 applications.

Acquisitions among our 33 participants to date include:

• NudgePad (Microsoft)
• Wercker (Oracle)
• PredictionIO (Salesforce)

Specific responsibilities included:

• Designing and producing 8-week curriculum & graduation program
• Establishing ties and more formal partnerships with tier-1 service providers, VCs, investor groups and accelerators.Creating and cultivating 30+ global volunteer evangelists and even more top technology mentors.
• Supporting 33+ teams representing 4 continents. Select teams received follow-on funding from Greylock, TechStars and 500 Startups.Managing all communications and marketing (events, meetups, blog, social media) as well as presenting at events including TEDxSanLuisObispo, Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics, and the HTML5Dev and ForwardJS conferences.
• Integrating community and best-practices from Mozilla into our program and vice-versa

THUMP GAMES, INC. – Palo Alto, CA
Senior Director, Marketing (2010 – 2011)
Thump was an interactive mobile game allowing sports fans to compete on who predicted the next play and scored them in real time. During my tenure I:

• Obtained favorable industry coverage from leading app review sites including Appolicious and AppCraver; as well as Mashable, Urban Daddy, Silicon Valley Business Journal and Ubergizmo; and premium demo spots at ad:tech New York and the SF AppShow.
• Produced live Twitter event featuring broadcast 2 TV sports celebrities and Bowl Game promotion with leading young male site, BroBible.com (1.7M uniques).
• Tripled Facebook and Twitter fans/followers and opt-in newsletter list.

MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT (2008 – 2011) – San Francisco, CA
Communications

• Extole.
  • Developed corporate repositioning, including sales enablement, PR and corporate communications.
  • Authored company blog, feature bylines, press releases, and executive talking points for events and media.
  • Gained coverage from Inc., CNET and Reuters plus leading social media publications including The Next Web and Mashable.
  • Rehauled product data sheets, sales and event presentations, case studies and website messaging.
• Onavo. Wrote 9 blog posts for startup eventually purchased by Facebook for roughly $150M.

Product Marketing & Business Development

• Popletters (“open letter” app). Retained to amplify reach for bootstrapped site with just 120 Facebook fans. Within 2 weeks after implementing my recommendations, this grew to 800 and then on to over 130K.
• myTafi (consumer financial planning site). Conducted usability and content enhancements to website.
• Triangulate/Wings (Facebook dating app). Hired by Trinity Ventures-backed startup for 2-week engagement; I obtained 5% registration conversion from event attendees at no cost; engaged leading content publishers for demographic: Sugar Inc. (12M uniques) and BettyConfidential (2M uniques), and NYT bestselling dating coach.

Event Production and Promotion

• Geo-Loco and Social-Loco Conferences. Promoted, attracted speaker and sponsors, and managed logistics for flagship event attracting 365 investors, entrepreneurs, brands & agencies and coverage from BusinessWeek, USA Today, Huffington Post, TechCrunch and GigaOM (July 2010). Successor event doubled attendees & obtained coverage from above + Bloomberg, CNET, CBS (May 2011).
• Planning Committee member for bi-annual TEDxSF conference (2010 – 2011).

SOAR BIODYNAMICS – San Francisco, CA
Director, Marketing (March 2009 – February 2010)

• Managed all PR including featured coverage from The Huffington Post, an Op Ed in The San Francisco Chronicle, feature story in the San Francisco Business Times, and mention in “The Decision Tree” by Wired editor Thomas Goetz (Rodale Books, February 2010).
• Led re-architecture and redesign for website and client report.
• Drove institutional partnerships with laboratories and corporations including Safeway and Kaiser.

CHARLES SCHWAB & CO., INC. – San Francisco, CA
Director of Communications (February 2006– December 2008)

• Writing, branding and messaging. Oversaw quarterly content and distribution of executive messaging to managers for 1,000-person technical organization. Crafted executive presentations, business cases, speeches, emails and other high-level communications for both internal and external audiences.
• Public relations. Oversaw annual Computerworld’s “100 Best Places To Work in IT” survey in 2007, spearheading rise from #97 to #53 in 1 year. Developed all related collateral and advertising with agency. Positioned firm as technology innovator to various media.

Senior Product Manager (January 2002 – February 2006)

• Field marketing. Served as end-user advocate by launching and overseeing partnership with field user group to provide extensive input on product features through surveys and usability testing.
• Product & project management. Worked with cross-functional team to drive features & enhancements for trading platform used by ~500 investment advisors and consumers.

Management Associate (August 2000 – December 2001)

• Joined firm as part of MBA rotational leadership program. Obtained NASD Series 7 license.

SUN MICROSYSTEMS – Menlo Park, CA
Market Researcher, Workstations Division (Summer 1999)
Developed and presented strategy to drive adoption of thin-client workstations for MBA internship.

CHRISTIAN & TIMBERS, INC. – Cupertino, CA
Executive Search Recruiting Associate (April 1996 – September 1998)
Sourced, interviewed & recommended C-level candidates for startups & investors. Clients included Netscape and Tivo.

WORLDS INC. – Palo Alto, CA
Business Development Associate (September 1995 – April 1996)
Recruited by cutting-edge 3D virtual world startup to obtain strategic partnerships and investments from corporate partners. Played key role to secure $5M investment from two Japanese conglomerates.

ASIA PACIFIC VENTURES – Menlo Park, CA
Assistant Manager, Business Development (May 1993 – September 1995)
Conducted business development and account management for venture capital and international business development firm focusing on Japan and Korea.

EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS Berkeley, CA
Master of Business Administration (September 1998 – May 2000)

STANFORD UNIVERSITY Stanford, CA
Bachelor of History with Honors in Education (September 1986 – June 1990)

SELECTED ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

Advisor & Judge, Women Who Tech (2015 – present); Board Member for Ravenswood Youth Athletic Association (9/10 – present), Association of Women MBAs (2003 – 2005). Chair, Partners in Hope (2000 – 2002).

Coro Northern California Community Fellow. Public policy leadership program (Fall 2002).