Name: Vanessa Walmsley
Position: Global Head of Customer Success
Company: Vizrt
Website: https://www.vizrt.com/
About Vanessa Walmsley and Vizrt
Walmsley never thought she was a natural leader. She was always “painfully shy”, as she says, but remembers distinctly when she found her voice.
Starting her career in Marketing, Vanessa was comfortable blending into a team and doing her work. It was only when a senior marketeer started questioning the accuracy of what she presented in a meeting that she felt the need to respond. That feeling, she says, came from her mother: “I felt her saying to me, ‘feel the fear, and do it anyway.’” Then Vanessa spoke up.
Now, she is the Global Head of Customer Success at Vizrt, leading its second-largest department with 132 employees under her leadership. Since finding her voice, Vanessa has made a point to lift others’ voices. A fierce believer in positive change and communication, she turned that belief into initiatives just three months after joining Vizrt, the leader in real-time graphics and live production solutions for content creators, in 2018.
With a 25-year history of inventing new simplified workflows for storytelling whether it is in the news, sports, broadcast, education, entertainment, live events, digital media, advertising, or anywhere else video lives, Vizrt has helped define and reshape the way video is created and shared with the world.
Dedicated to delivering ground-breaking solutions for customers across graphics, cloud, remote and live production, live streaming, sports productions, virtual reality and virtual studios, and infrastructure – Vizrt enables more stories, better told.
Inspiring those under her leadership to push boundaries, Vanessa has advocated for the promotion and the creation of new roles for team members based on their skills – highlighting their best and providing them with the independence and encouragement to grow.
One example is when Vanessa learned of a team member’s dream role following their 1-2-1 meetings. For years, she was on a mission to push them to reach this goal, realising they already had a strong ability to coach, train and empower a team. During the pandemic, she helped develop their skills and gave them a chance to demonstrate leadership through retaining five colleagues in their area of technical expertise. Following their success under Vanessa’s direction, they were promoted to their dream role of Head of Pre-Sales EMEA.
Vanessa also pushed for the creation of the ‘Deputy Global Head of Customer Success’ role. While observing a team member’s natural leadership skills, she knew she had to do everything she could so they could expand their reach and inspire a larger group of team members. At the time, there was no leadership position available – so she created it. And it’s no coincidence that, since the pandemic, the Customer Success team has grown in both size and purpose.
Vanessa’s ethos of understanding colleagues and building strong relationships with team members has been fundamental to the success of the business. When asked what makes her a great leader, a recurring theme can be spotted in her employees’ answers: she truly cares about the people and the business.
Relationship building is at the core of what Customer Success is all about, and Vanessa leads both by example and by encouragement; combining the best of action and observation.
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