Michelle Sangster – Business Development Expert
COUNTRY OF BIRTH
United States
INDUSTRY
Technology
TOP ACHIEVEMENTS
Michelle Sangster is the vice president of business development at Zest Finance, a financial technology firm that uses big data to help commerce companies provide better, more transparent and fair credit to their customers. Sangster is also an angel investor and mentor. She has spent several years creating comprehensive strategies geared for developing startups and tech companies and has formed strategic partnerships with exceptional companies in various tech related fields.
Sangster is a veteran businesswoman with vast experience in identifying market potential, fundraising, guiding startups through seed investment processes and marketing strategy development. She is passionate about building game-changing, effective and resilient partnerships enabling the involved companies to grow and realize their full potential. At Zest, she introduces major tech firms to the benefits of her company’s advanced finance platform and engages them in a process that significantly improves and transforms their credit operations.
Michelle Sangster, VP of business development at ZestFinance
Education and Early Years
Sangster enrolled at UCLA in 1985 where she studied for her BA in Business Economics with a concentration on computer programming. In 1994 she graduated from Harvard Business School with an MBA. Between her academic degrees she consulted for Price Waterhouse Management Consultants, and worked in the marketing department of ComSystems.
Career
Before landing at Zest, Michelle Sangster gained experience in a wide range of tech sectors including social media, gaming, education technology, search and monetization. After achieving her MBA, she worked as the director of business development at Encyclopedia Britannica. She then joined PointCast as GM and director of business development after which she was appointed at Junglee which was later acquired by Amzon.com. At Junglee Sangster sealed the company’s first deal with Apple. Roughly two years later she left this position to become co-founder of WishClick, a social shopping eCommerce platform, and raised US$12 million in venture financing. She also held senior positions at Collectivity, a technology provider cooperative for nonprofit organizations, Yahoo!, and Kosmix, an online guide to the web which was acquired by Walmart Labs. Sangster was also head of Business Development at the P.Relan YouWeb Incubator and the Studio 9+ Accelerator Program.
ZestFinance
Michelle joined Zest in June 2014. ZestFinance is a technology company in the financial arena. The company makes use of data science and machine learning to help clients make financial decisions based on accurate and relevant facts. As VP Biz Dev Sangster is responsible for forming strategic alliances and supporting existing partnerships with the ultimate goal of accelerating the company’s growth and improving revenue while increasing transparency and fairness toward the end customer.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
– Sangster featured on theBoardlist’s list of 20 women Silicon Valley Tech companies should add to their boards -She has formed strategic alliances with some of the biggest companies in the world like Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo! -She has advised several startups including GotIt!, an on demand knowledge platform, Crowdstar and Spaceport.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Varsha Rao’s first company, Eve.com, sold for US$110 million in 2000.
- Named by the San Francisco Business Times as one of the ‘Most Influential Business Women’ in 2014.
- Lives with her husband, Cameron Poetzscher, and their children in the Bay Area of San Francisco.
