Kathy Benson, President & Co-Founder of ORI

Kathy Benson is the President of ORI, a multi-million dollar market research and business intelligence firm that she founded with business partner Sue Lynd. Now celebrating its 25^th year, ORI helps government, business, association, and not-for-profit clients connect with key audiences and make evidence-based decisions to greatly improve their performance.

A dynamic entrepreneur, Kathy’s vision and networking skills enabled her to find the partners and opportunities to fuel ORI’s exponential growth. The firm’s client portfolio now features the Department of Labor, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of State, as well as major non-profits and commercial firms.

Kathy has a keen eye for innovative solutions. For example, she was an early advocate of flextime and telework to give career opportunities to women with children at home (an underused segment of the workforce). She also built ORI using a network of subject matter experts that let her tap into specific talents while keeping her organization lean.

Kathy shares her expertise as a sought-after contributor to organizations such as Conscious Venture Lab and NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners). Kathy is a warm and engaging person whose curiosity and genuine enthusiasm are evident in every business interaction and have been fundamental to ORI’s success.

About the Strategic Business Forum:

The purpose of the Strategic Business Forum is to educate and inspire business owners and other leaders to create remarkably successful enterprises. We do this through interviewing founders who have grown their businesses above at least $3M in revenue or CEOs of larger companies that have led their companies through growth periods. The forum is run at breakeven, there are no sales pitches, and there is nothing to join. The Strategic Business Forum is a pure lunch and learn, with some light networking thrown in, for the express purpose of enabling business owners to learn from the great successes of others.

Using an interview format, questions are typically along the lines of:

General background (where the speaker grew up, went to college, etc. Basically any interesting aspects of his/her formative years,etc.)
How he/she started or took over the business
How did he/she grow the business to where it is today (or where it was when he/she exited). Looking for events, strategies, key hires, key fires, etc. Whatever were the key building blocks to getting him/her there.
What were some of his/her most exciting victories (war stories)
What were some of his/her biggest failures? Things that if he/she had a chance to do over again, he/she would do it differently (common items here are waiting too long to fire someone, micromanaging, etc.). Again, looking for war stories.
What are the key takeaways that the speaker really wants the audience to know (ANYTHING that is important – lessons learned, processes, key advisers, hires, fires, leadership, marketing, tenacity, facing reality, etc., etc.)
Anything else the speaker wants to share with the group? Any words of wisdom? Who is/was his/her mentor? Where does he/she go for encouragement? What book is he/she reading? Etc.

We’ll then end with Q&A from the audience.