Kay Henze is an accomplished business builder, independent director, and strategic advisor. An expert in expanding businesses, she has worked for scale-up’s to Fortune 15 companies, leading all aspects of business strategy and operations with profit and loss accountability ranging from $10M to $25B. Her deep knowledge in strategy development and execution, customer-centric marketing, digital transformation, and transformational leadership have made her a desirable advisor and leader. She currently serves as the CEO and Executive Director of the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network (BEN) Colorado, where she has served as a lead advisor since 2016. BEN exists to strengthen Colorado’s growing scale-up ecosystem by connecting high-growth companies with successful entrepreneurs and community leaders.
Kay’s experience includes architecting the turnaround of a scale-up telecommunications solutions company, SectorSeven, through building a diverse set of strategic partners, which include three out of the four major US wireless carriers. Henze created the company’s first brand and digital identity, achieved environmentally responsible certifications, launched two new channels of distribution, and built a customer-centric culture across its twenty employees. Kay’s inherent curiosity and her desire to always be learning have both been instrumental in creating growth strategies that have been successfully executed across diverse and geographically dispersed high-performing teams.
Kay’s career in telecommunications began with a small regional wireless provider, that through a series of mergers and acquisitions became the largest wireless provider in the country, Verizon. Throughout her twenty-plus year career, Henze was an innovator building new company structures, divisions, and partnerships. In her last nine years at Verizon, Kay was part of the top 300 company leaders serving as President of the Houston Gulf Coast Region, and CMO of the Northeast area where she led the company for sixteen consecutive quarters in revenue and customer loyalty.
Kay is passionate about giving back and paying it forward across her teams and the broader community, which has been recognized in a series of awards, but most notably in the success of her teammates. Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors for SectorSeven, is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and continues her long tradition of serving on community Boards through her involvement with KidsTek. In 2020, she was awarded “Community Member of the Year” by Silicon Flatirons.
She received her Bachelor’s from King College and most recently her Corporate Board Certification through Corporate Directors International and with a small team is in hot pursuit of Running the Year, 2020 miles in 2020.