Accelery, Inc.

Accelery is pioneering a new class of AI-powered management tools designed for today’s dynamic, mid-market organizations. We’re dedicated to helping companies discover and activate the hidden strengths, skills, and networks within their teams—enabling greater engagement, agility, and business performance.

Our technology supports forward-thinking organizations in building high-performing, people-centered cultures where talent and collaboration are fully realized. At Accelery, we believe AI should empower people, not replace them—redefining how teams connect, grow, and deliver results in a rapidly changing world.

If you’re interested in shaping the future of work and exploring new ways to unlock your organization’s true potential, let’s connect.

Founder and CEO

DLA ignite

Social media has changed the world. 

DLA Ignite is transforming businesses around the world through social media. 

Their vision and methodology for social strategy, virtual networking and relationship building, and business transformation perfectly complement our expertise in developing virtual growth experiences. 

We believe that the most excellent use of technology is enabling more authentic human-to-human connections.

It is a pleasure to offer DLA Ignite’s proven social enablement programs through best-in-class collaborative learning technology.

Strategic social selling improves the customer experience through authentic and meaningful conversations.

Helping B2B sales leaders create digital culture means that we’re building the social organization, closing the distance between clients, prospects, remote employees, and potential recruits. 

B2B sales leaders must lead sellers across the organization, and sellers must engage in conversations authentically. We’re building the platform that helps you to dominate in this new environment.

Before we dominate, we have to change. Change takes time. 

For traditional B2B sales teams, authentic conversations mean modern buyers help prospects make sense of conflicting information. 

Authentic conversations mean your customer success team listens to the customer after their purchase for increased customer satisfaction and potentially new revenue opportunities. 

Authentic conversations mean employees share your organization’s purpose beyond its produces and services to recruit and retain talent. 

Training your employees to engage on social media and increase their influence through authentic and meaningful conversations means you’re closing the distance between clients, prospects, remote employees, and potential recruits.

Strategic social selling means investing in your people for competitive advantage.

US Partner - Social Strategy, Virtual Relationship Building & Business Transformation

The Half Percent Project

When I was 8, I had a dog. His name was Brutus. One day, I came home from school to find that my mom sent him away to be with Jesus. After 25 years, my trauma ended when we adopted our dog, Sadie, from the shelter. One year later, Sadie was joined by Andy. After 15 years, they're both gone. But my love for them remains.  I'm helping the Half Percent Project, a non-profit to encourage wealthy philanthropists to donate a half percent of their giving to animals because we can do a lot better by them.

Board Member

ET Business Solutions

Joined the family business to help out Dad. We had different ideas. I did what I could to turn it around. Eventually, I increased revenue to seven figures. But, the business model wasn't sustainable. As I struggled with the realities of entrepreneurship, I discovered I needed to level up and find an opportunity where I could build a legacy. That's when a rare opportunity set me on the path to where I am today. That was the best thing that came out of this experience.

Chief Executive Officer

The Children's Place

Lasting growth comes from our greatest challenges. The Children's Place is where I faced some of my most significant struggles as a young executive. The company was in crisis during most of my tenure. During this period of uncertainty, my lack of leadership training revealed the constraints on my ability to go farther in my career. 

Self-awareness, humility, empathy, and growth mindset would have helped me to be a better, more productive teammate. The seeds of my personal and professional transformation were sown here. Today, I reap the rewards.

Participating in hundreds of Board meetings and decision-making at the highest levels, I observed how an inspiring founder could motivate enthusiasm and loyalty, as well as how a self-serving executive could wreak havoc, demoralizing many—a lifetime of lessons learned in a short time frame.

Trusted C- Level Advisor

Kelley Drye & Warren LLP

Kelley Drye is where I got my first real taste of business. 

Our client, a Rustbelt manufacturer in the steel industry supply chain with global operations, was in the process of transforming its operation to modernize and prepare for new applications. The CFO was negotiating a cutting-edge business process arrangement with one of Canada's largest technology providers. But, the negotiations were at an impasse. I was called in to "see what I could do."

It quickly became clear that we needed to overcome cultural differences and a language barrier to finish the deal. I was able to bridge the communication gap by interpreting what the French Canadians meant and not just listening to the words they used.

Both companies offered me jobs. The CFO also recommended a book for me to read called The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. The principles explained in that book stuck with me so much that I've internalized them and apply them to my worldview.

Life is about overcoming the point of constraint. You can't grow past it no matter how skilled you are in other areas. Focus on removing the most immediate constraint to keep growing.

Midmarket Business Process Outsourcing and General Corporate - Industrial Manufacturing

Pryor Cashman

Delivered essential legal support to the firm’s senior associates and partners focused on advancing the interests of the firm’s corporate clients. Supported senior associates and partners negotiating M&A transactions ranging in size from $50M to $1B and banking transactions ranging in size from $5M to $300M. Prepared annual, quarterly and periodic securities filings including proxy statements, Section 16 filings and 8-K filings.

Midmarket General Corporate and Banking Focus - Legal Industry

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC

Midmarket General Corporate and Securities Focus - Legal Industry

Monopoly, Charades, and Rummikub -- dominating family game nights for 30 years and counting

After leaving a successful corporate law career, I’ve dedicated more than a decade to deeply understanding behavior change—and helping people transform their habits and performance quickly, at scale. Solving for behavior change is complex, especially within fast-moving organizations. That’s why my work has always focused on one principle: using artificial intelligence to assist and augment people, not replace them.

This commitment drove me to found Accelery, Inc., where we’re building the first AI-powered adaptive management platform for mid-market companies. Our flagship product, IRMA (Intelligently Re-Mapping Assets), uncovers and activates the hidden skills, networks, and motivations that drive real engagement and performance—insights traditional HR tools can’t deliver.

Through agile 90-day sprints, IRMA empowers teams to achieve measurable outcomes—connecting talent and business value with intelligence and empathy. Our approach puts people at the center, leveraging AI to reveal untapped human potential and accelerate meaningful change.

We invite forward-thinking HR and business leaders to join our exclusive early adopter pilot—where you and your teams:

- Access breakthrough AI 
- Directly shape the future of our platform
- Position your organization as an industry innovation leader

If, like me, you’re driven to build high-performing, human-centered organizations—and want to co-create the future of work—let’s connect. My journey, and ours, is just beginning.

Lenwood M. Ross

Accenture

Associate Director

Translating the language and connecting the right people between two great global companies to create value for our mutual clients in the UK and Ireland is what my role is all about. I was at Oracle at the birth of Oracle SaaS so it's fantastic to be back in the Oracle ecosystem with Accenture, now that Oracle's Cloud capabilities have reached adulthood across IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

Senior Manager, UKI Oracle Market Development Lead

Joining Accenture gave me the opportunity to experience the second acquisition of my career which meant I was very well prepared for the transition to new business practices, systems and culture, as well as being able to help our team adjust. 

My role transitioned to Sales and Business Development and I am now responsible for winning consulting service engagements helping CFO's and the Finance function with business and finance transformation projects using digital technologies such as Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solutions, Finance Systems, Reporting and Analytics solutions to aid business growth, business agility and unlock business potential. Much more than the technology, these projects are always about people and process change. 

I work with large and medium size companies HQ’d in the UK, currently with clients in the Chemical, Communications, Financial Services, Public Sector and Utilities industries. 

Having relationships with leading and emerging software vendors such as Anaplan, Board, Oracle, OneStream, SAP, Tagetik and Workday is a part of the role in order to help clients with the technology that best meets their needs. 

Opportunities and proposals vary in size and complexity, sometimes global, giving me the opportunity to continually develop and hone my commercial and sales skills.

Senior Manager, Accenture, EPM Sales and Business Development

PureApps, now part of Accenture Strategy

The annual cycle of plan and execute at a software company had become too familiar to me and I needed to find a route to expand my skills and experience. The timing proved to be ideal when the Managing Director of PureApps, an Oracle Platinum Partner specialising in Enterprise Performance Management, was building a management layer within the company in order to prepare it for possible sale. 

As Sales & Marketing Director I was responsible for managing the sales, marketing and business development teams of 12 people to deliver pipeline and the company’s annual revenue targets for software license, consulting, Cloud/hosting and support services. 

This was a great chance to help shape a business for acquisition. The focus needed to be on sales success as well as having repeatable and robust processes. Foundations I put in place in my first year included: implementation of a new CRM system to support accurate forecasting, launch of a new Cloud/hosting sub-brand and service, launch of a new website and use of social networks in all sales and marketing activities.

This culminated in the successful sale and acquisition of PureApps by Accenture, a year ahead of plan. 

This was a hugely exciting and rewarding time where I was able to learn first-hand about most aspects of running a business and how to help it be ready for acquisition. Commercially I developed my skills and experience across all aspects of a business from cashflow, costs, price, margin, people, contracts, sales and marketing.

Sales And Marketing Director

Oracle

I led a team of Sales Development Managers across Western Europe focused on programmatically driving pipeline creation for the Oracle CFO or Office of Finance application portfolio including: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Governance Risk & Compliance (GRC) and Financial Management (FMS). 

This was the first time a dedicated team was established with the sole purpose to create, plan and execute CFO focused value propositions through all channels including sales, telesales, marketing and partners. Best practice was taken from across Western Europe, packaged and reused.  

This was at the time when the software application market started to make the pivot from traditional perpetual license and highly bespoke applications to SaaS (Software As A Service) or Cloud configured applications. 

It was said by the majority of the sales teams and partners that CFO’s would never put their accounting systems and financial data in the ‘Cloud’. There was a huge reluctance to change, but the Oracle business had to change and I was fortunate to have a role on the UK Sales Application business board where we developed a strategy to change and I was given responsibility to train the sales teams and developed, piloted and tested marketing messages and telemarketing campaigns to support the launch of Oracle's Cloud ERP applications in the UK. This success in fact became the start of the roll out globally. 

I was incredibly fortunate to be on the business board and gain first hand experience of changing a sales business that had a deeply entrenched set of behaviors and processes. Bringing people along the journey is a challenge for sure!

Leading a European team was a new experience which taught me how to balance local differences with a corporate desire for consistency and finding ways to compromise to get the best outcomes.

Western Europe Enterprise Performance Management & Finance Applications Sales Development Director

By early 2008, it became clear where I could add value and I put a case forward that I focus on Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Business Development and I was given responsibility  for creating and driving the execution of a UKI EPM marketing and demand generation plan in order to meet the  revenue target (in FY12 of $30 million). 

Core elements of the role were creation of sales messages, initiatives and campaigns for EPM and enablement of sales, marketing, partners, inside sales and agencies to deliver pipeline and ultimately revenue. 

This was a new role to Oracle and after the 1st year of success, was used as a template and replicated across 6 other Western Europe countries, establishing a new programmatic way to support the growth of the business.

This was at a time when the 'traditional' tools of outbound email marketing, events and telesales were starting to show declining success so we started to trial and innovate by building communities, nurturing relationships and using social networks. This would be the start of my interest and use of social networks.

Enterprise Performance Management Business Development Manager

The 1st year as an acquired company is a huge time of change and in all honesty, I wasn’t at all sure Oracle would be a culturally good fit for me. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that adaptability, creative thinking and a ‘can do’ attitude was in fact highly valued at Oracle and as it turned out key to my success and what turned into a tenure of 6 years with the company. 

For myself, the 1st year was one of adjustment to new ways of working and new people to work with and to influence to ensure a voice and a message for Hyperion was still heard in the market place from within a company which was primarily known by CIO’s and IT rather than CFO’s and Finance. A chance to work out how I could use my skills to make a real impact.

Business Intelligence

Hyperion Solutions

Hyperion recognised they needed to focus on their BI go to market activities and I was fortunate that my background was ideally suited for the BI Business Development Manager role where I was responsible for defining, developing and executing these activities working with marketing, inside sales, sales and partners. 

Working out what to do and how was both the challenge and the joy of the role, creating something from nothing and learning through trial and error what would deliver results. 

We must have been doing something right because in 2007 Hyperion was acquired by Oracle for $3.3 billion!

BI Business Development Manager

Gradually, I started to realise there was something missing for me at IBM. It was hard to pin down what it was but eventually thanks to the encouragement of an ex-colleague I recognised that I was craving the opportunity to have a broader remit which would allow me to build on, grow and expand my skills. 

Hyperion turned out to be my light bulb moment when I realised I would have an opportunity to draw on all my skills as well as learn about and become conversant with the world of the CFO and the Finance function of companies. 

Hyperion had a new integrated platform which at the time was innovative, although now the norm. I was asked to pilot a new role as Technical Account Manager working with UK client’s BT and Astra Zeneca in order to help them to identify the right business opportunities and use cases for this platform. Being a pilot, I had to shape the role and worked with both clients’ to help them become early adopters and advocates of the platform. The pilot very quickly proved the role was valuable and it was scaled out and up globally.

Hyperion Technical Account Manager

IBM was investing in data warehousing and business intelligence and were growing a specialist sales and presales team in the UK. My Teradata experience was a great foundation and I joined a strong and experienced IBM team. DB2 was back in my world, this time on open systems with parallel computing. 

What was different at IBM was that my speciality was competing with numerous other specialities within IBM to gain client and account management time and mind share. Selling internally within IBM was almost as important as selling to a client. Creating simple messages and explaining value became a core skill and it proved to be something I took to well. I attended external conferences and events giving me my first foray into business development, marketing and offering development.  

At the time, IBM had the data warehouse and would partner with BI vendors, this was way before IBM had made acquisitions such as Cognos. My relationships with BI vendors continued to be important, this time developing joint solutions and proposals for clients. One, in particular, for a UK retail bank, involved partnering with Hyperion to provide a comprehensive solution combining relational, multi-dimensional and analytical capabilities. Little did I know that this was laying the foundation for what would turn out to be an important next step in my career. 

Whilst at IBM I was given the opportunity to step over the line from technical into a sales role and I attended the IBM Global Sales School, considered one of the best programs in the world at the time, and I’m proud to say I graduated top of my class!

IBM was a great learning experience, I worked with highly intelligent and successful people, in a complex matrix organisation.

Information Management Sales, Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence Specialist

None

Redundancy from Teradata was overshadowed by my husband suffering a stroke at age 39 just a few weeks before Christmas in 2001, just a month before he was to start a new career in the police. With 2 young children to care for and a husband partly paralysed my priorities were solely on caring for my family. 

I won't go into any of the details of this time other than to say that my husband's determination and drive thankfully meant his paralysis was temporary, although he was never able to start with the police.

Our parenting roles changed, my husband became our children's full-time parent and I became the full-time bread earner. All I can say is we were fortunate.

Carer

Teradata

In mid 1992, MMI was suffering heavy losses and insolvency or redundancy was in the air, so I decided it was time to move and I started approaching a select number of companies seeking a new role. Bear in mind this was pre-email or internet job advertising so my approaches were by individual personalised  letters sent in the post.

Teradata was a company I'd heard off at Lloyds and I kept a keen interest in it. This was when massively parallel processing and data warehousing was in it's infancy and Teradata was the innovator. It also happened that their UK HQ was 20 minutes from my home and I was fortunate that my letter arrived at the right time with the right people. Even more fortunate, I was interviewed by a guy who was a new father who was in full support of employing me on a 3 day week basis, through the birth of my second son, a 2 month sabbatical and later ramping up to full-time. This was a very rare thing in 1993 and in the Technology industry. 

I was hired in a new role to build relationships with BI and Data Mining vendors. I set up and created a new way to showcase these tools to Teradata clients and prospects. It was a hugely fun and rewarding role which gave me the opportunity to show clients innovation and new ways of working they'd often not seen before. 

In the last 18 months of my time at Teradata, my sons were now in full-time school, so I decided I was ready to return to full-time work as a Teradata consultant. Working with a retailer to implement a customer insight and analytics solution and a defense client to implement an asset analytics solution.

I also had the opportunity to attend my first Sales course and learnt 'Holden Sales'.

My time at Teradata was hugely rewarding. However I didn't spot the warning signs of challenges and was made redundant bringing my time to an unplanned end.

DW and BI Specialist

MUNICIPAL MUTUAL INSURANCE LIMITED

At a time when personal financial advice was in its infancy I joined a start-up, setup as a subsidiary within MMI. A curious combination of old choosing to be innovative because MMI was established in 1903 by UK local authorities and insured most public sector bodies, including councils, police and fire authorities. 

The start-up business needed everything - people, processes and then where I came in, offices and technology. Bear in mind this was when technology was in the very early days of digital. A mobile phone was as big as a brick, PC's were desktop size, laptops hadn't been created and the internet was only available on dial-up and expensive. 

My role as IT Project Manager meant working closely with the Sales Director of the start-up and the CIO of MMI to ensure everything IT related was ready in time for the launch of the start-up. I managed the selection of a hand held Life and Pension quotation system for use by the 200 strong direct sales force and the IT infrastructure deployment for six new sales offices, including all architectural and software links to central operational systems. 

At the time, I didn't appreciate that this was probably one of the earliest digital sales force and quotation projects in the UK. 

Working out what needed to be done and how to do it, apply common sense and considered decisions to succeed was essential. The entrepreneurial spirit was central to everything and something I discovered I thrived on. I  was fortunate to be given the freedom to get the job done and encouraged and trusted by a CIO to succeed. 

On a personal level, my first son was born and thanks to a supportive Manager I was able to return to work 3 days a week in a new role to define and develop MMI's 5 year IT Strategy in order to modernise and prepare for the future.

IT Project Manager - Life & Pensions Start-Up

Lloyds Bank

Straight out of 6th form college and chosen by Lloyds Bank to be one of the annual intake of 40 people they trained as a programmer for their Data Processing department in London.  

This proved to be a fabulous company to learn, develop and grow. In my 8 years with the Bank I rose from being a programmer, Database Administrator, Team Leader and finally a Project Manager.

I worked on different applications, teams and technologies. Some of the most interesting areas were full life cycle development of the Bank's mainframe common reference database system, team leader of the Tandem CHAPS development team, a beta trial and subsequent implementation of the DB2 relational database, trialing of 4GL languages and project managing the roll out of PC’s to every developer for one of the largest IT Development departments in the UK retail banking sector at the time. 

Little did I know that this was the start of a long and exciting adventure in a fast changing and exciting industry. I made some great lifetime friends at the Bank and after 8 years of commuting into London I was ready to spread my wings and find a new role outside of London that would allow me to build on my skills and give me a new challenge to grow. I was especially looking for a role that would allow me to work closer to the business side of a company.

Programmer to Project Manager

It was freezing as we walked to the water edge, in the depth of winter. A morning where you see your own breath and I should have been snuggled under the duvet.  But here I was on an ice covered stretch of the River Thames in Weybridge. There were 8 rowers and me, the cox, lifting the boat into the water.  As I said “come forward, go” to the rowers, the boat and the oars broke a thin layer of ice on the Thames.

Little did I appreciate the trust that my crew had in me as I steered the boat that freezing morning. The thing is those rowers couldn’t see where they were going – all they see is the rower in front of them. Only me in the cox’s seat could see what’s ahead from the stern (back) of the boat. Eight rowers listening and responding to my instructions. I had total trust and faith from the crew that I would keep them safe and as it turned out, we had one of the most mesmerising and fulfilling training outings of the winter.

Now imagine me coxing an eight at Henley Royal Regatta during a hailstorm that was so dense that I literally could not see the far end of the boat. Like steering blind folded. This time my faith was placed in the bow man at the other end of the boat who shouted instructions to me so that I could steer in a straight line so the boat didn’t hit the wooden booms on either side of us.

Fast forward today, I haven’t rowed for 20 years, but I find this an amazing metaphor for my work, my career, my life and family.

Trust, faith, leadership, communication, community and new skills.  When I started rowing I thought I was learning a new sport, but in fact it set me on a journey to learn new skills as well as building friends for life.

Like many people I’ve had a fulfilling and varied career. School told me to be an accountant, but I took a trainee programmer role at Lloyds Bank, where I was taught the discipline and structure of business.  

As I look back at my career, there is a common theme. The companies have been in the “teenage” growth stage and, my role has been to drive the business commercially from “teenager” to an “adult” business.  If I take my recent journey, I was acquired at Hyperion by Oracle. Then at Pureapps, who were on a 2 year trajectory to sell, and as a Management Team we were sold to Accenture after only 9 months.

This build to be acquired, I relish and love and put my heart and energy into.  That said, it isn’t all about a hunger to achieve, it is also about having the business acumen to use my experience to accelerate a business.  Some might call it growth hacking, I call it years of experience.

taplio

The Battle

Lenwood M. Ross

Julie Harris

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