Cathy Lippert is the founder and chief practitioner of ProdOptic, LLC, a company that applies proven product management methodologies, and mentors organizations in their product strategies and execution, embracing an Agile approach. Cathy has over 30 years of experience in the software industry with startups, medium-to-large IT companies, and an R&D consortium. She brings a wealth of practical experience to the formulation of software product strategies and roadmaps, development initiatives and market positioning in order to promote revenue growth, reduce risk and increase company valuation.

Prior to her role at ProdOptic, Cathy served as Vice President of Product Strategy at OnShift, a JumpStart portfolio company specializing in workforce management for the healthcare industry. Here Cathy was a member of the executive team responsible for corporate strategy, product management and partnership development, and in this position, she developed the strategy and supported fundraising for OnShift’s Series C funding of $7M.

In addition, Cathy was formerly Vice President of Product Management for another Cleveland startup, Flashline, where she carved out a leadership position in the service-oriented middleware space; in fact, Forrester Research cited her product as the leading solution for SOA Governance. When BEA Systems acquired Flashline in 2006, and Oracle acquired BEA 22 months later, Cathy followed the acquisition path to Oracle, where she remained Director of Product Management until 2013, achieving her 10-year service award, receiving two patents, and seeing her products represented in several Gartner Group leader quadrants. Cathy also held product line management, marketing, and business unit executive positions at Compuware, The Open Group/OSF, and Hewlett Packard/Apollo, managing product portfolios with revenue of $3 million to $200 million.

Cathy earned her B.A. from Smith College.