DV Seminar: Brooke Partridge
DV Seminar:
Thursday, 28 September, 2006
Seminar speaker:
Brooke Partridge is the founder and principal consultant of Vital Wave Consulting, Inc. With 15 years of international and high-technology business experience, she provides a unique set of skills and knowledge for leading large-scale efforts towards business growth in emerging markets. She manages an organization with broad and deep expertise in terms of geography, business function and technology to provide clients with comprehensive support in the areas of market research, solution design, business case development, and pilot commercialization.
Previously, Partridge was the Business Director of the Emerging Market Solutions Organization at HP where she built the team that designed and commercialized HP’s first technology solutions for developing economies. In this capacity, she led all business functions including R&D, Marketing, Support, Supply Chain, Sales and Business Intelligence. Partridge directed the creation of a global segmentation model for emerging markets as well as the market sizing and business case analysis of a wide variety of emerging market solutions. As a result, her team successfully designed, built and globally commercialized the HP Multi-user 441 Desktop Solution. To support HP’s emerging markets business activities, Partridge led the creation of an ecosystem of worldwide, multi-lateral partnerships with multinational and emerging market corporations, global and local non-government organizations and government entities. Her contributions helped establish HP as the IT leader in emerging market business.
Throughout her career, Partridge has brought to market a wide variety of innovative technology solutions, managing all business functions and maintaining a strong emphasis on business intelligence and market research. In the HP Pavilion PC business she was responsible for the design and development of their first interactive support software program that shipped into 12 language regions around the world. In this process, she managed the global market research – primary and secondary – to validate and address the varying support needs of PC end users around the world. Earlier in her career, she conducted on-site research at the United Nations in Santiago, Chile to assess the market potential across Latin America for MIPS Computer Systems. She also conducted market research and analysis in Mexico for Syntex Pharmaceuticals.
Partridge has lived and worked in several developing economies, including Perú, Chile and México, and spent extended periods of time in Western Europe and in South Africa. She lectured in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford University and holds a Master’s of Pacific International Affairs from UC San Diego, as well as a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics and International Relations from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.