Team

Janet Gregory - Co-Founder & Principal

Janet has over 25 years of management experience with successful and innovative companies offering business productivity tools. Her business experience is in building highly effective sales organizations selling both direct and through channel partners. Janet is a cofounder of KickStart Alliance where she runs the sales optimization practice. Janet's most recent corporate experience was with ShoreTel where as the VP Sales in 3-years she helped the company turn-around to achieve profitability and rise from obscurity to #8 in IP Telephony marketshare. Prior to ShoreTel, Janet was as a member of the founding executive team at Latitude Communications (later acquired by Cisco), a pioneer in voice and web conferencing with the MeetingPlace conference server. In her six years as VP Sales at Latitude, Janet took the company from zero revenue to profitability and a successful IPO. Prior business experience includes Octel Communications (now Avaya) and ROLM/IBM (now Siemens). Janet received the Silicon Valley Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award in 1994. She graduated magna cum laude from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC and holds a B.A. in English. Janet is an active Junior Achievement volunteer.

Mary Gospe - Co-Founder & Principal

Mary Gospe, co-founder of KickStart Alliance, is a proven leader in initiating programs to build and nurture sales pipelines, shorten the sales cycle, and accelerate revenue creation. Her practice areas include planning and executing integrated marketing campaigns, building inside sales organizations, spinning up outsourced telemarketing vendors and streamlining sales and marketing operations. Prior to beginning her consulting career in 2000, Mary gained experience in a variety of sales, marketing and customer support leadership roles with Dialog Information Services, Apple Computer and Latitude Communications. Mary earned a B.S. in Business Administration from Cal State University, East Bay and an MBA from Santa Clara University. She also completed a certification in Direct and Interactive Marketing from San Jose State University.

Mike Gospe - Co-Founder & Principal


Mike is an author, integrated marketing strategist, and professional facilitator. As a Co-founder and Principal of KickStart Alliance, his specialties include marketing operations, integrated marketing campaign planning, and conducting workshops for marketers on the best-practices of personas, positioning statements, and customer-ready messaging. Mike is also a professional facilitator with an expertise in Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meetings and executive offsites. Prior to founding KickStart in 2002, Mike held marketing executive leadership positions at HP, Sun, and several startups. He’s authored a number of marketing- and sales-related articles and blogs, and is a frequent guest speaker at companies, marketing associations, and business schools. His books, Marketing Campaign Development: what executives need to know about architecting global integrated marketing campaigns, and The Marketing High Ground: the essential playbook for B2B marketing practitioners everywhere have been put to use by more than 1,500 companies around the globe. His new two-volume set, The Flipchart Guide to Customer Advisory Boards was just published in January 2013. See all of Mike's books Visit Mike's blogs:

Janice Hulse - Principal

Janice joined KickStart Alliance in 2012 as a Principal and adds her expertise to our sales optimization and organizational strategies practices, bringing a wealth of international experience. As an accomplished executive with 20+ years experience in sales, marketing & operations, she has led globally diverse teams of professionals in highly competitive markets, most notably in Asia Pacific where she spent 15 years leading business development, channel strategies and direct customer relationships in the ICT sector. Janice’s most recent corporate experience was with Cisco Systems Asia Pacific as VP for Global Enterprise Accounts where she grew regional customer sales through collaborative innovation strategies in emerging markets. Janice is also skilled in assisting sales and marketing leadership teams in nurturing cultural diversity, mentorship, and change management. Janice is Canadian and graduated from John Abbott College, Quebec, Canada. She has been instrumental in building success in new start-ups (both in Canada and the US), breaking new ground in areas of telephony technology and networking. She has also been instrumental in sponsoring numerous programs for “Women in Technology” with her past employers, and continues to mentor aspiring young professionals in ICT.


Dan Maier - Principal


Dan joined KickStart Alliance in 2012 as a Principal and brings his expertise in product and corporate marketing to the team. He is also an experience facilitator of Customer Advisory Boards. Dan is a senior hi-tech marketing consultant with 20 years of experience driving product strategy, corporate strategy and marketing execution for both public companies and startups. Skills and expertise include B2B marketing, cloud/SaaS markets, startup/guerilla marketing, turnarounds, and acquisition integration. He’s cultivated strong domain knowledge in gamification, business intelligence, security, file transfer, development tools, and collaboration markets. Prior to his consulting work, Dan was the VP of Marketing at Tumbleweed Communications where he helped solidify the company’s leadership position in the market and drove strategic new product initiatives. Dan has also held marketing positions with Platinum Technology, ePeople, Expert Edge, and Oracle, and strategy positions with ABB and Price Waterhouse. Dan has a BA in Economics from Stanford University, and an MBA in marketing and operations from UCLA.



Mary Sullivan - KickStart Alliance Co-Founder & Advisor

Mary was one of the founders of KickStart Alliance, and for more than ten years, she helped clients launch new products, refine their messaging, and reach their target customers through content marketing. Since stepping down from her role with KickStart, she remains an advisor to the KickStart team. She is currently defining a new position for herself, advocating for climate and resource policy. Consistent with her graduate study in Resource Economics and her clean tech focus while with KickStart, she continues to support the development of products that contribute to the use of renewable resources and clean energy. She is working to reframe the way organizations and government agencies discuss climate change and its impacts.