Alpa Agarwal

ALPA AGARWAL 3161 Alma Street, Palo Alto, CA 94306; 206-251-3949; AlpaAgarwal@gmail.com PROFILE -Five years experience leading teams and impacting strategy, product development, R&D and M&A at Microsoft -Recommend investments in technology and services regularly to Microsoft’s senior leaders including Bill Gates -Authored white papers for Bill Gates’ Think Week -Awarded Microsoft’s 2005 Gold Star Stock Award for organizational impact -Directly increased revenue by US$22 million at Sprint through four years experience in new product development -Four years experience in high-tech product marketing at Sprint, supporting US$41 million in annual sales -President, American Marketing Association, Kansas City, 1997-1998 -Won the American Marketing Association's NOVA award for increasing sales by 500% -Author of articles on marketing and received editorial coverage in international and local business journals EXPERIENCE Microsoft Online Services, Group Product Manager, Strategic Research, Mountain View, 2002-present -Lead a global team in conducting market research on industry & technology trends, business models and startups -Experience in conducting research in Europe and Asia, including China -Transformed role into a highly-demanded, high-impact, high visibility service; selected as a Microsoft Best Practice -Impact product development, strategy, mergers and acquisitions, talent acquisition, investments -Lead presentations to Microsoft’s senior leadership team to influence strategic decision-making -Manage an annual research budget of US$1.5 million Microsoft MSN, Product Manager, MSN Broadband, Redmond, 2000-2002 -Grew customer satisfaction 58% by designing MSN Broadband’s Internet access customer experience -Conducted market research; developed positioning, branding, messaging and customer communications; performed strategic analysis to identify optimal name of service, and also secret sauce, “IntelliSpeed” MarketingCafe.com, Founder, Kansas City, 2000 Company description: Marketing and eBusiness consulting -Built Web site as an online community for marketing professionals -Increased customer inquiry rate by assisting online analytical processing (OLAP) ASP, CRM and data mining company with customer acquisition through an imaginative, B-to-B marketing plan; created brand category, “customer intelligence technology” Sprint Corporation, New Product Development, Kansas City, 1995-2000 -Increased revenue by US$22 million; identified new high-tech products for development; developed marketing requirements documents (MRD); performed financial analysis; developed product specifications -Lowered costs by 20% by negotiating with international manufacturers to purchase high-tech products -Appointed by vice president; led division’s strategic and global entry plan and brand initiative, “value made easy” -Managed division’s ecommerce solution and created up-sell and cross-sell tools -Built division’s intranet site to increase sales, streamline operations and reduce costs -Created software specifications to speed up the analysis of data for new product development Sprint Corporation, Product Marketing, Kansas City, 1992–1995 -B-to-B product marketing of high-tech hardware from 200 suppliers; $41 million in annual sales -Developed and executed product marketing plans including customer, industry and competitive market research; SWOT; perceptual mapping; Porter’s five-forces model; product and market opportunity matrix; strategic planning grid; product life cycle; customer segmentation; target market identification; positioning, branding and tagline creation; pricing; direct mail, advertising, trade shows, collateral, catalog; sales promotions; sales tools and training -Appointed by vice president; reduced costs and delivery time by 20% to 50% via business process improvements Webster University, Adjunct Professor, Executive MBA, Kansas City, 1997-2000 -Received over 90% satisfaction scores for teaching online and offline marketing and international business courses EDUCATION -University of Missouri, Columbia, MBA, Management Information Systems, May 1992 -University of Bombay, India, BA, Economics, May 1988

Educational opportunities for the 'bottom of the pyramid;' Tantra; market research

Market Research, Experience Design, Cognitive Science, Product Marketing

I'm very resourceful at finding solutions to challenging problems. My favorite experiences at Sprint were to build a marketing program to sell 5 years of overstocked inventory in one year, etc.