Driving Revenue with Strategic Partners and Operational Excellence with Michele Shepard of Emburse 

Driving revenue growth in today’s business landscape requires a blend of strategic partnerships, operational excellence, and forward-thinking leadership. In this episode of Revenue Reinvention, Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse, shares her insights into what it takes to scale organizations effectively while fostering innovation and prioritizing the employee experience.  

With over 25 years of experience leading revenue growth for industry leaders, Michele’s approach combines practical strategies like “failing fast” and leveraging AI with a keen understanding of customer and employee needs. Whether you’re looking to optimize your go-to-market strategy, refine your approach to revenue lifecycle management, or explore the role of AI in driving business outcomes, Michele’s insights offer valuable guidance for navigating the challenges of modern revenue leadership. 

Listen now to hear: 

Michele on customer-centricity and human connection: “Building relationships matter—understanding not only the goals but the pain points of a particular company and going deeper into the persona, our ideal customer profile, and what's important to them… Building relationships is something that is going to require human intervention.” 

Michele on adaptability and continuous improvement: “ Failing fast means that when we've got it wrong, we're not going to continue down the path just to continue down the path. We're going to iterate, make adjustments, make improvements, and maybe even stop some of the things that we are doing so that we can prioritize the things that are actually going to make us successful.” 

Michele on strategic focus and targeted efforts:  “If you can do the hard stuff first, the rest comes a little bit easier. Where we've been super successful is focused on key verticals, whether it's legal, healthcare, professional services, or manufacturing—but we are finding if we go more broadly in our marketing and in our segmentation, we get less results.” 

Links and resources 

About Michele 

With over 25 years of experience, Michele Shepard, Chief Revenue Officer at Emburse, has led companies to record-setting revenue growth and scale with a passion for developing forward-thinking customer and employee engagement strategies across sales, marketing, and customer success. Michele previously served as the Chief Commercial Officer at Paya (now Nuvei Corporation), a prominent integrated payment solutions provider. Before Paya, she was the Chief Revenue Officer at Insurity and Vertafore, where she played a pivotal role in implementing go-to-market plans that accelerated market expansion, achieved operational improvement, and drove profitable growth. In addition to her corporate leadership roles, Michele has held several board and strategic advisory positions in the payments, fintech, and non-profit education and healthcare sectors, where she contributed to strategic planning and achieved notable results.