Mary Drotar is a strategic innovation professional with extensive industry and consulting experience. Mary’s new product development expertise is in process, lean techniques, organizational development, and team dynamics. She has most recently worked with companies that represent the medical device, industrial, transportation, and consumer electronics industries.

Mary began her career at Ford Motor Company and she progressed through various positions in marketing and development. Mary then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, concentrating in the areas of strategy, voice of the customer and scenario planning.

Mary transitioned to consulting and successfully helped scores of companies in capturing the Voice of the Customer and in gaining clearer understanding of markets and competition. She then leveraged this knowledge in her work developing winning strategies, identifying new product and service opportunities, and designing successful business models. She was Director of Consulting at Cambridge Management Consulting and subsequently appointed the position of Vice President at Targetbase Marketing, a firm specializing in marketing analytics.

Mary has an MS in Organizational Leadership and Development from College of St. Catherine’s and an MBA from The University of Chicago. She is certified as a New Product Development Professional (NPDP) by the Product Development Management Association (PDMA). She is also certified by the PDMA as a NPDP Preparation Review Instructor, and is on the national certification committee. Mary serves on The University of Chicago Innovation Roundtable Board as the VP of Programming.

She also serves as a board member for the PDMA Chicago Chapter as the VP of NPDP certification. Mary is also a patent holder and a member of the Society of Women Engineers. She has guest lectured at Northwestern University in the School of Engineering and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Kathy has over 20 years of experience with Fortune 100 companies specializing in market and customer research, strategy, business processes and models. Kathy’s new product development expertise is in developing innovation, product, technology, and market strategies, as well as product and technology roadmaps. In addition, she also has considerable experience in portfolio management and early-staged new product development activities.

She has most recently worked with companies that represent the medical device, industrial, transportation, consumer electronics and appliance industries.

Kathy was a senior manager in research and strategy positions with Ameritech, Household International and CNA Insurance Companies. She has led research projects to develop customer segmentation systems, quantify customer value and understand customer choices and preferences. She has also led large teams in developing coordinated planning initiatives for business and product strategy. Kathy is also a successful entrepreneur, having founded two businesses in the music industry.

Kathy is a mathematician that has an MS in Statistics from Carnegie-Mellon University and has completed the doctoral core courses. She also has an MBA from the University of Chicago. She is an active and long-standing board member of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association and currently Past-Chair of the national ASA Council of Chapters. Kathy is also licensed to teach Design Thinker, a software simulation program jointly developed by IDEO and Experience Point.

She is certified as a New Product Development Professional (NPDP) by the Product Development Management Association (PDMA) and serves on the Certification Committee. She has guest lectured at Northwestern University in the School of Engineering. She is also a member of The University of Chicago CEO Roundtable.