Snow finds fire through change

FORWARD THINKING: With a background at companies such as State Street, Mari Anne Snow, CEO and founder of SophiaThink Consulting, says technology has always been a part of everything she does. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
FORWARD THINKING: With a background at companies such as State Street, Mari Anne Snow, CEO and founder of SophiaThink Consulting, says technology has always been a part of everything she does. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

For Mari Anne Snow, knowing when to leave a company or abandon an idea that isn’t workable is as important as succeeding in an enterprise.

In a sense, she says, it’s almost a prerequisite.

“My passion,” she said, “is problem-solving and navigating change.”

Change came five years ago at State Street Bank, an international financial-services and investment firm, after Snow, originally from Racine, Wis., had worked there in two capacities – as vice president first of Learning and Development and then of the bank’s CSO Program Services Group. The company was downsizing, and Snow’s job was about to be redefined.

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Instead, she left to face a new world – not of unemployment, but rather, of self-employment.

Leaving corporate America for the world of startups in February 2009 led Snow, now 55, to found SophiaThink Consulting LLC, a digital-strategy consulting firm that is flourishing today. In fact, SophiaThink spawned Sophaya, a firm co-founded with partner Layne Mayer that helps companies develop and manage employees who work remotely.

Having learned not only how to manage people but technology at State Street, Snow – who earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Hampshire in English and education in 1981 – found her niche in digital strategy.

At SophiaThink, Snow has helped large corporations like Novartis, the pharmaceutical firm, with communications, and Pollo Campero, a Guatemalan restaurant company, which sought her help while expanding in the U.S., with online marketing and communications. She also has clients as small as the local dentist. And helping Novartis manage post-doctoral students remotely in virtual lab teams led to the formation of Sophaya, she said.

Between September 2013 and this past May she founded and led a small group of partners in TigerMoth, a firm founded around the idea of developing a wearable device that would make it easier to hear in crowded rooms or in the midst of loud noise. This was the project that failed.

That experience nonetheless taught her how resilient she is – and needs to be – in a world where women face challenges that men don’t.

“I’m having to pitch for money, and I don’t look like anybody in the room. That was uncomfortable. … it’s definitely a male-dominated space,” she said.•

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