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Gartner Expert
Penny Gillespie
VP Analyst
Penny Gillespie is a Vice President and Gartner Fellow within Marketing & Communications. Ms. Gillespie is responsible for conducting research and developing publications aimed at helping CMOs and digital commerce executives recognize opportunities to drive growth and deliver value. She assists executives in developing competitive strategies, improving digital performance, and identifying the criteria for vendor selection of digital commerce and personalization technologies. She advises on best practices for innovation, personalization, digital commerce and use of emerging technologies (i.e., AI, GenAI, chatbots, virtual agents) in commerce and CX. She coaches clients on idea generation, creating revenue, finding growth opportunities, calculating value and selling their ideas. She introduced rogue thinking (an approach to idea generation) and is currently facilitating research on how customer centricity is a natural path to growth.
Previous experience
Prior to joining Gartner in 2012, Ms. Gillespie founded and managed Gillespie International, a consulting service providing insight to clients in the areas of mobile and online commerce, product development, market and product strategy, and financial supply chain automation. Earlier, she covered the e-finance space at Forrester Research and Giga Information Group with a focus on online banking, electronic billing and online payments, as well as mobile payments. She has published more than 225 articles. Over the years, she has held various roles in product and marketing management for such applications as global online banking, U.S. electronic bill presentment aggregation, and multiapplication campus cards, as well as various financial analyst positions for budgeting, loan servicing and real estate management. She has diverse additional experience: two years as a Senior Product Manager in CyberMark (Sallie Mae subsidiary), four years as a Systems Development Manager/Financial System Analyst/Liaison in Sallie Mae, and nine years as a Real Estate Systems Manager/Analyst/Auditor in JCPenney.
Professional background
Forrester Research/Giga Information Group, Senior Industry Analyst, 5 years
Gillespie International, Founder and President, 7 years
Integrion Financial Network/Visa Interactive, Product Manager, 4 years
Areas of coverage
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Customer Experience
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Digital Commerce
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Marketing Leadership and Strategy
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Executive Leadership: Digital Business Strategy and Planning
Education
M.B.A., The George Washington University
B.S., cum laude, Greensboro College
Top Issues That I Help Clients Address
Create a competitive strategy to fuel transformation and growth.
Optimize digital commerce, GenAI, and personalization technologies in your organization.
Evaluate and select vendors for digital commerce platforms and personalization engines (new coverage)
Generate and sell ideas within your organization.
Best practices for driving revenue