Eileen Gittins

EILEEN GITTINS

http://www.blurb.com/

Net Worth : $815.6 million

Place of Living : China

Eileen Gittins, 54, who is the former CEO of Personify, where she managed the company’s business with particular emphasis on marketing and business development, channel development, corporate communications and direct sales.

“I’ve always been a geek and a reader,” says Eileen Gittins, tech entrepreneur and founder of Blurb.com.

Previously, Gittins was vice president and general manager at Salsa Products, a division of Wall Data, where she created a 100-person department and launched 17 product lines. Specifically, she helped develop products enabling computer users without technical expertise to create databases. She was also co-founder and vice president of marketing at Pivotal Corporation and held various sales, marketing and management positions with Eastman Kodak’s Business Imaging Systems Division.

Gittins completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in art (photography/digital imaging emphasis). She has also completed the Stanford Executive Management Program. Gittins is an active member of The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and the Churchill Club.

Gittins’s first book published with Blurb wasn’t her compendium of former colleagues but a series on Napa she put together in five hours to test the Blurb workflow.

“When I held that first book in my hand,” she says, “it was a revelation: I was holding my company in my hands.”

Today, Blurb has 52 employees and is, according to Gittins, “already profitable” with “double-digit millions in the bank” and revenue of about $30 million.

Eileen says “this is the most fun company she’s ever run, which is saying a fair amount as she has lived and worked all over the world with Kodak and as VP at Wall Data before and after the IPO, CEO of Personify (behavioral segmentation and analytics) and Verb (context search), and outside Board Director at Qbiquity and Popular Demand”.

Women 2.0 In Conversation with Eileen Gittins, Founder & CEO of Blurb.com from Women 2.0 on Vimeo.