Let’s Change the World

Christine Mertz

Christine Mertz, EQuipt

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Story

I was born in Philadelphia, the oldest of two children and part of a large, closely-knit working-class family.  Two things defined my youth, hard work and devotion to family. My father was early into the tech space and without a college education navigated from computer operator to software sales.  My mother was a homemaker when I was young and restarted her career when I was 14. My parents valued education and were determined that college would be the path for my brother and me.  Born driven, I excelled in school and sports was motivated to work hard to gain continued praise from my parents and achieve as they expected.

Our extended family was integral to my life, so it was jarring when two young relatives were killed in car accidents.  A young teen, I witnessed up close the intense grief and aftermath of these deaths, as well as the care and commitment of our family to support those left behind.  I (observed/learned/took from these experiences) that life is fragile, and evolved to become an intense, hard-working adult, ever vigilant, and quick to be supportive and caring of others.  

I followed my father into the tech space, selling enterprise hardware and software.   At 27, I was married, expecting my first child and working at a software start-up when Dad got cancer.  After a painful 2.5 years, he died at 56, leaving my mom a widow at 53. Losing my dad felt like someone ripped a rug out from under me. The security of his love was gone, and I was left more vigilant than ever.  

By my mid 40’s, I was leading a team at a global software company when a simple reminder to screen for the cancer that took my dad jolted me to the realization that I was living his life of intensity and hard work in the name of devotion to family.   Reflecting, I saw that I needed new perspective, less fear, more trust and to create better balance in my life.  

I enrolled in Erickson Coaching training. Coaching training teaches us to recognize our fears and define steps to live well and achieve despite them.  At the same time, I accepted a new role to create, launch and run an Early Talent Sales Development program.   Over the past 9 years, I have coached and mentored hundreds of young sales professionals and their leaders, being mindful to leverage my training and life experience to ensure a focus on the whole person. 

Today, I support people with their career goals, as well as strategies to integrate work and life, so they may achieve balance to be and feel their best.  As listening is a critical foundational skill to authentic relationships and leadership, I am inspired by the mission of EQuipt, to support connection by changing the paradigm of how we listen, and to support our clients to build fulfilling lives.

Bio

 A long-time sales and marketing professional, Christine served 32 years in the technology industry, before pursuing her own coaching practice full-time.  With a brand as a passionate, results-driven leader, she now brings together her corporate experience, with her desire to help others fulfill their goals. Christine is particularly attuned to supporting the growth of young professionals and early-career leaders and helping companies optimize performance across a multigenerational workforce.

Christine began her career selling IBM hardware, ERP software, and consulting services for companies including JD Edwards and SCT (Infor).  She built and lead tele sales and demand generation teams, implemented CRM systems, and created models to scale customer support, increasing sales, enhancing customer and employee engagement.

Christine joined SAP in 2006 and over the course of 16.5 years, she led various marketing and customer engagement functions, nationally and internationally, and most recently helped build SAP’s international Academy for Sales – an award winning and highly sought-after sales development program for high-performing, early-career leaders.  As the program’s NA leader, Christine hired, managed, mentored and coached more than 300 early-career Sales professionals. As a thought leader and change agent, one of the areas she was most proud to impact was diversity of hiring – more than 50% of the hires were female, increasing the percent of women in sales at SAP to over 30%.  Building on her passion for supporting early-career leaders, Christine has also been a coach to sales leaders and executives who have looked to evolve their leadership skills to optimally support this future generation of leaders. 

A native Philadelphian, Christine has a direct style and engages her clients with high energy and focus yet is warm and friendly with a quick sense of humor. Her coaching training and experience inspired her to commit to the on-going study of human skills and our ability to impact our own performance and quality of life through meaningful connection with others, intentional listening, emotional and positive intelligence, and understanding how bias impacts our perception.  

She coaches with a strong belief in the power of the whole person and that success comes via a fulfilling integration of work, life, and relationships, as well as physical health and emotional well-being. She aspires to support her clients in getting clear on what they truly want and need and supports them in building a plan to achieve their goals.

Christine most enjoys the outdoors and has hiked and backpacked throughout the US and parts of Canada.  She and her husband of 31 years also love to travel abroad and explore new cultures.  Together they have 2 young adult kids, and post covid, 2 cats!

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