Fueled by insights from interviews, data analysis and instincts honed during a decade of investigations, I identify and drive the implementation of opportunities for process improvements, sales enablement and revenue growth.

Unique among my marketing colleagues, I cut my teeth in the world of major-metropolitan journalism. Fast paced. Results oriented. Deadline driven. I was trained and expected from day one to second-guess the status quo, uncover inefficiencies and lay the groundwork for change by presenting my findings in easy-to-understand reports.

My managers, colleagues and I have been pleasantly surprised by how well these skills have transferred to the world of business.

While I’m immensely enjoying my career in marketing, I’ve yet to face a tougher challenge or uncover more revenue potential than I did in 2010 as a reporter investigating an organization with an operating budget of more than $1.2 billion: Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Over the course of six months, my team and I sparked public policy changes, revealed criminal misconduct and identified $21 million in lost revenue.

The project required diving into an unfamiliar organization, identifying and earning the confidence of subject-matter experts and then, within a matter of weeks, learning convoluted processes governed by complex policies and state laws. We scrutinized more than 100,000 documents by hand, identifying policy breaches and alterations that were illegal. Using public records laws, I acquired from the county more than 4 million electronic records. The findings of my analyses, coupled with information gleaned from extensive interviews conducted were detailed in more than 30 articles written on deadline over a six-month period and published on the front-page of Ohio’s largest newspaper and online news site, which together reach more than 1.4 million readers.

The project, branded “A Question of Values,” won two statewide awards and was a finalist for a national prize.

Since 2012, I have leveraged the skills that fueled the success of this journalistic project to pinpoint breakdowns in sales cycles, refine sales presentations, create Challenger Sale messaging, isolate best practices, analyze business data sets and identify avenues for revenue growth.