Karsten Scherer

NAMI’s the largest grassroots mental health organization in the US, focusing on advocacy, education, support and public awareness. We design and deliver support group programs both for people living with serious mental illness and for those helping people dealing with those issues. In this role, I focus on community outreach, overall strategy and engaging specifically with corporate leadership functions. I speak frequently at hospitals, police departments, in and outpatient programs as well as schools.

We're a content, strategy, and analyst relations consultancy committed to helping you improve your ideas, develop new ones, and share them effectively. Forge & Refine has worked with thought leaders at Gartner, Greycroft, ICR, the Las Vegas Sands, Oracle, Persado, Verizon, and Wonderlic, as well as ​AfricNenda, the ​Aspen Institute, ​​CapitalPlus Exchange, Innovations for Poverty Action, ​Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business, and​ ​the World Bank.

Focus: Developed and led influencer program and PR for $5B+ IT services company. Responsibilities included: - Merged global AR and PR programs into influencer relations function - Co-led in-house strategy development initiatives with LoBs to develop new service offerings - Developed custom thought leadership research in support of new service offerings - Developed and delivered tech and industry ‘state of the union’ content for F100 clients and in-house sales teams

Focus: Developed and implemented AR program to generate analyst coverage and influence. Responsibilities included: - Built, from scratch, first formal AR program in company history - Developed soup-to-nuts AR practice - Spearheaded an matrix-focused AR strategy to support sales verticalization in partnership with senior executives - Revamped corporate thought leadership strategy and research agenda with in-house research team and external partners

Focus: Maintained business continuity within restructured and downsized business analytics software vendor - Served all North American F500 accounts, total value $11M+ - Spearheaded business model shift from software to next-gen SaaS - Won IBM Global Services and Accenture as strategic partners

Focus: analyst relations and market research program design, continuity management during downsizing - Built AR plan from scratch, integrated existing marketing intelligence and competitive analysis functions - Briefed CxO team quarterly on technology, market behavior and changing buyer dynamic trends - Responsible for all contract (re)negotiations

Focus: AR program development and implementation - Built AR program from scratch - Successfully repositioned company from network inventory management to IP service automation player

Focus: Organizational & Team Development Consulting, Industry & Advisory Journalism, Industry Analyst Relations, Business & Strategy Consulting Clients included Gartner Germany, Human Synergistics Germany, facit marketing forschung; WorldGuide Premium and Sextant Business Development

Focus: Organizational & business development for startups, methodology engineering & implementation - First employee hired across all startups in the incubator - Lead org dev consultant across multiple projects - Developed business plan for productization of pilot projects - Managed pilot implementation of mobile field service application

Focus: Corporate Business Transformation and Strategy Deployment - Post-reorganization integration and alignment of change initiatives - Six Sigma program development (curricula development, incentive systems design and adjustment for Black Belt ecosystem, team dynamics troubleshooting, best-practice sharing platform development) - Scope of non-Six Sigma projects: high-potential identification and career development program, continuous improvement initiative, pre-acquisition organizational due diligence

Focus: Training & facilitation, process improvement - Team dynamics consultant and trainer across Europe & Asia - Supported and maintained global change management community