Marianne Johnson, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Equifax, believes that the roles of mother, wife and executive all offer equal access to "leadership moments." Whether dealing with her 125-person team at work or her husband and two girls at home, Marianne strives to evoke what she refers to as "servant leadership." This involves equal doses of listening and talking.
Her success at Equifax illustrates this point. A strong believer in collaborative leadership, Marianne knows the value of bringing people together across business units, disciplines and geographies. Her ability to forge relationships has enabled her to maximize success at every level of the organization. In fact, Marianne has been recognized for her numerous leadership contributions to Equifax. Some examples of initiatives that have helped build Marianne's reputation as a leader include:
Equifax Growth Playbook: Based on her leadership abilities, Marianne was chosen in 2006 as a Team Lead for the creation and execution of the Equifax Growth Playbook. The Playbook provides a framework for Equifax's growth strategy and has been a key focus of Equifax senior management, all the way up to the CEO. Playing a key role in this company-wide initiative, Marianne worked closely with a team of consultants to conceptualize and drive a new company vision for growth.
Decisioning Solution Launches: Marianne was the key driver behind the development and launch of two key products within the Equifax Enabling Technologies portfolio: Equifax InterConnect and DecisionPower Express. From concepting product ideas to developing solutions, Marianne played a major role in bringing these successful products to market. She led a business development team responsible for the Decision Power product suite, including initial customer testing and managing relationships with channel partners and third-party vendors. Today, nearly 1,000 organizations, including some of the world's largest banks and financial institutions, including five of the top eight U.S. card processors rely on Equifax's technology solutions.
Equifax Enabling Technologies: Marianne previously served as Vice President of Equifax Enabling Technologies, a fast-growing business that provides loan origination and credit risk decisioning solutions to leading banks and financial institutions. For the past four years, Enabling Technologies has turned in year-over-year double digit revenue growth with a healthy return on the bottom line. Through the introduction of the decisioning solutions mentioned above, she played an important role in enabling Equifax to leverage technology as a competitive differentiator with many of its customers. In fact, more than 30 percent of Equifax's customers have embedded Equifax technology solutions.
Underscoring Marianne's achievements is a strong belief that "companies, especially technology companies, must never lose sight of leadership. Best-in-class technology has to be paired with best-in-class people, said Marianne." She attracts and retains the best talent by mentoring her people for leadership and involving them in the decision-making processes. Marianne does this by encouraging her team to introduce new concepts and product ideas and then securing buy-in from senior management. Through her mentoring, Marianne empowers her team and people across the organization to embrace change and drive innovation.
An 11-year Equifax veteran, Marianne continues to see changes and opportunity for growth. Under the leadership of Chief Information Officer Rob Webb, Equifax's technology organization continues to look for new ways to realign itself to accelerate future growth and competitive advantage. As a result of his vision, technology is leveraged as a strategic asset that fuels innovation and enables the delivery of customer-centric solutions to the marketplace.
This spirit of embracing change is evident across the company. For example, Equifax Chairman and CEO Rick Smith has focused on bringing more diversity to the senior leadership team. As part of this initiative, Equifax Chief Administrative Officer, Coretha Rushing, has teamed with other female executives to spearhead an initiative to start a Women's Forum at the company. She applauds initiatives like these which empower women and men to become stronger leaders no matter what company they work for.
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