Analyst Profile

Penny Gillespie

Penny Gillespie

VP Analyst

11 years at Gartner,  35 years industry experience

Location:  VA USA  | Language(s):  English

Roles and Responsibilities

Penny Gillespie is a Vice President and Gartner Fellow in Gartner's Customer Experience/Digital Commerce team which resides in the larger Applications and Software Engineer Leaders Group. Ms. Gillespie is responsible for conducting research and developing publications aimed at helping IT leaders recognize digital opportunities, develop a competitive strategy for digital commerce as well as improve digital commerce performance. She focuses on best practices digital CX, personalization, and building trust as well as overcoming the hurdles to online selling. She introduced rogue thinking and continues to expand the reseach. Rogue thinking is an approach for idea generation to drive revenue and ignite transformation. Rogue thinking goes against conventional, mature business wisdom by connecting what may appear to be disparate elements in ways that redefine category norms and expectations that produce business value. It facilitates idea execution through the common barriers of benefit recognition, measurement, risk assessment, funding, delivery, and communications. In essence, rogue thinking is a recipe for identifying business opportunities. Rogue thinking has been applies to CX, privacy, value and B2B digital commerce in her research.

Background

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

Education

  • B.S., cum laude, Greensboro College
  • M.B.A., The George Washington University

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