Susan Collins: Quiet Power, Real GTM Change

If you sat next to Susan Collins on a Tuesday, you might not immediately guess the scale of what she touches. She would probably be in a working session with a B2B SaaS team, double-checking how they are using large language models inside a workflow, or pressure-testing a go-to-market idea against reality, not wishful thinking. Somewhere between those meetings, she would be on a virtual coffee with a colleague or mentee, talking through how to use technology, including AI, to solve real business problems, measure what matters, and stay honest about what AI can and cannot do in their context.

Her influence often shows up in what does not happen. A risky launch that gets redesigned before it fails. A team that stops chasing every AI buzzword and focuses on the handful of workflows that genuinely move revenue. A woman leader who starts talking about her role not in terms of “campaigns,” but in terms of the full go-to-market motion and the financial metrics she drives.

Finding and Fixing What Others Miss

When something is not working in go-to-market, people call Susan. The plan might look strong in a slide deck, but execution is choppy. Teams are busy, but progress feels slower than it should. Somewhere between strategy and reality, the work is getting stuck.

Susan’s gift is to find and fix what is actually blocking momentum. She is brought in to diagnose where GTM strategy and execution are misaligned and to turn a plan into something cross-functional teams can run. She looks for the human friction points as much as the structural ones.

Often, that means noticing where interpersonal or cross-regional tension is quietly derailing execution. A sales team and a product team that are not really talking. A regional team that feels overruled and stops sharing what they know. Susan gets the right conversations on the table and guides teams through change in a way that preserves trust and raises performance, rather than burning people out.

She describes her style as calm, direct, and resilient. People sometimes assume she is just “quietly nice” with a giving personality. That is part of the story, but not the whole story. She also brings a sharp outside-in view, anchored in revenue operations precision around data, pipeline, and impact. She helps women, and the teams around them, see the system they are operating in and then use smart experiments, clean communication, and candor to move work forward in a people-first way that still reduces risk, grows revenue, and makes space for innovation.

The Rules Really Are Different

One of the truths Susan has learned the hard way is that the rules for women are different. She does not say that as a complaint, but as a piece of clarity she wishes more women had earlier. Her billboard-level message is simple. Know your value, find people who see it, and trade the notion of perfection for steady progress, learning, and openness to change.

In practice, that means letting go of the belief that you have to get everything right the first time or show up without a single gap. It means choosing environments, leaders, and peers who are capable of recognizing what you bring and are willing to sponsor it. And it means letting small, disciplined improvements matter more than dramatic, unsustainable big swings.

From Campaigns to Full Go-To-Market

One woman Susan worked with was a senior marketer, trusted and experienced, but still describing her work primarily as “campaigns.” The language kept her own sense of impact smaller than it needed to be, making it easier for others to underestimate the scope of what she was holding.

Together, they mapped her work to a handful of concrete financial metrics. Pipeline. Win rate. Customer expansion. They then rewrote how she described her role and impact, shifting it from isolated activities to fuller ownership of the go-to-market motion.

The change was not flashy. It was grounded and repeatable. Susan believes that is what many women actually need from a coach. Someone who believes in small, consistent improvements instead of constant heroic leaps, and who trusts that if you bring curiosity, discipline, and a willingness to adapt, your growth will follow.

An Anchor in the Noise

When things get loud, Susan does not speed up. She returns to a simple practice of time-out and reflection. Pause. Try to understand what is really happening. Ask what you can learn or adjust today to move things forward.

This habit keeps her grounded and curious. It allows her to lead with a clear head instead of being pulled into the same reactive energy that often swirls around high-growth environments. In a moment when AI, markets, and expectations are shifting quickly, that kind of steady presence is as much a part of her value as any framework or playbook.

Making AI Useful in the Work That Actually Pays the Bills

Right now, Susan is particularly energized by a specific question. How do we make AI genuinely useful in today’s go-to-market work, not just interesting at the edges?

She spends a lot of time mapping where AI truly helps in the funnel. That includes research, targeting, enablement, diagnostics, and governance, with the insistence that all of it ties back to metrics like pipeline, win rate, and cost to serve. Then she works on turning those insights into simple, measurable workflows teams can adopt without losing their minds or their standards.

The part she could talk about for hours is doing this with women and underserved communities. She cares about helping them build an AI skill stack that plugs into real revenue work and opens new career paths, rather than leaving them on the outside of yet another technology shift.

Why Empressa Felt Like the Right Place

For Susan, Empressa is not just a platform. It is a response to a moment. AI is reshaping power, work, and who gets heard. This is not, in her view, the time for women to go it alone.

What she sees in Empressa is a community where women at any stage of their career can build relevant skills, sharpen their critical thinking, and bring their collective emotional intelligence into rooms that badly need it. It is a place to practice leading through instability, holding teams steady, and changing how opportunity works, while cheering each other on from the sidelines.

She chose to put her experience here because she wants more women to understand and use AI, not just watch it reshape their work from a distance. She is interested in challenging the status quo that keeps women out of the most technical and strategic conversations, especially now.

What She Would Tell a Woman Coming Up Behind Her

If Susan could pull one woman aside earlier in her journey, she would keep it straightforward. Stay curious. Embrace learning opportunities. Maintain high standards.

You do not need to shrink to be effective. In her words, curiosity plus standards plus small acts of courage, practiced over time, build a career you can be proud of. The point is not to become someone else entirely. It is to keep bringing a truer version of yourself into more and more meaningful rooms, with skills that match your ambition.

Who Susan Is in the Work

Professionally, Susan is a B2B SaaS marketing and go-to-market leader who has helped bring some of the most complex enterprise software to market for some of the world’s most important companies. She works in cross-functional environments and aligns product, sales, partners, and executives around data-informed growth strategies. She leads with customer-focused narratives that drive adoption and revenue, and she builds teams that can grow, navigate change, and stay ahead.

AI is not abstract to her. She uses it inside GTM and operations to improve how teams work and execute, helping them move faster and make better decisions without losing sight of the people and customers at the center.

You can find more of her work and thinking here:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/se1collins/
• Substack: https://substack.com/@cxntech01

Learning the Machines Behind the Buzz

Susan is also co-leading an upcoming Empressa workshop with fellow Imperial Council member Usha Jagannathan.

AI Evaluation in Practice: Seeing the Unseen with Dr. Usha Jagannathan and Susan Collins

This live session explores what happens when AI systems make decisions without enough clarity, control, or accountability, and how to spot those failures in the products and tools we use every day. Using the ARIA framework, participants will build practical knowledge and mental models to evaluate AI behavior, surface risk, and think more clearly about responsible, scalable AI in practice.

• May 22, 2026 | 12 PM–1 PM EST
• Free for Imperial Council Members | 50 USD for Non Members
• Earn your Empressa Certification in AI Foundations in Machine Learning Literacy.

Register here: https://council.empressa.ai/events/5DF0A5

If Susan’s way of thinking about GTM, AI, and women’s growth speaks to you, you can connect with her through Empressa at empressa.ai and step into the Imperial Council community, where women are not just adapting to the future of AI but helping define it.