Carolyn Layne is an accomplished marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience directing marketing for large and small software companies. She has a successful track record of leading marketing with a focus on delivering results that enhance corporate performance for VC-funded companies poised for growth to multi-billion-dollar business units of global corporations. Carolyn is passionate about the dynamics of marketing and successful at spearheading the full range of marketing activity, from strategy and branding, to communications, product marketing and demand generation.

Carolyn came to Mereo from IBM, where she led branding and messaging for the Watson Customer Engagement business with applications for marketing, commerce and supply chain leaders. In her leadership role at IBM, she helped shape and develop the go-to-market message, strategy and alignment across other IBM master brands.

Previously, she was the VP of Corporate Marketing for Sterling Commerce, bought by IBM in 2010, where she directed branding, advertising, corporate messaging and global interactive marketing. During her leadership at Sterling Commerce, she drove a 175% increase in search conversions, helped contribute 25% of pipeline and drove the experience for their customers’ SaaS interactive experience integrated with the global web presence.

Carolyn joined Sterling Commerce through the acquisition of Comergent, a VC-funded company, in 2007. At Comergent, Carolyn was VP of marketing. During her tenure, she helped double the size of the company and attain profitability. At Comergent she directed demand generation, product marketing, corporate marketing, and analyst and public relations. She increased leads generated by marketing by over 274%, contributed over 50% of the pipeline and doubled search marketing results. She also spearheaded an effort to get industry analysts to initiate new research and rankings for B2B commerce and distributed order management.

Carolyn’s previous experience includes leading marketing for Sabrix, an enterprise transaction tax SaaS solution company, acquired by Thomson Reuters. She also served as a General Manager and VP of Marketing at Ascential Software and Informix, both bought by IBM. In addition, Carolyn has held leadership roles at Tele-TV, Pacific Telesis and HP.

Carolyn earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of California, Davis. She is an active tennis player, skier, and overall Italian food and wine lover.