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Barbara Kline
Barbara Kline Quick Facts
Main Areas: Second Stage Start-up Consulting & SpeakingCareer Focus: Second Stage Start-up Business Coach, Consultant, Author, Speaker
Affiliation: Breakthru Center Founder & Executive Chair,
Barbara Kline is a serial entrepreneur with six startups to her credit. She launched and manages two successful businesses that will be complementary to the Breakthru Center – Breakthru Communications, a marketing and public relations consultancy, and Madeleine’s Place, a dba of Corrales Executive Offices.
Madeleine’s Place is a boutique event venue situated in the lush Rio Grande valley that provides venues for a variety of corporate and social events in the Albuquerque area. She is a respected business marketing columnist for Examiner.com which reaches 3 million viewers according to web traffic spy statistics.
She has both domestic and international management experience with Intel, where she was responsible for introducing the concept practice and execution of product marketing for the MDS development system brand in Europe, experience that served her well as she moved to other international consulting roles and her stint as Vice President of Global Marketing for the Dutch firm, BWise. Kline honed her business marketing skills under the tutelage of such Silicon Valley luminaries as Regis McKenna. Tying in with the potential income stream of info-products, Kline was co-founder and editor of NewsFaces, a media tracking company.
Since the early ‘80s she has served as a consultant to such major technology firms as Cadence, Intel, HP, Marvell Semiconductors, Novell, and S3. A respected industry leader and trade association organizer and advisor she has worked with such industry groups as NetWorld, SNIA and WITI. She is a member of the New Mexico Angels Investor group, the Association for Commerce and Industry, and is Communiations Director for the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) in northern New Mexico.
As principal of Breakthru Communications since 1989, she has specialized in strategic planning for corporate and product launches and company growth. She has consulted for several small service organizations involved in executive training and human resources. She was a content consultant and presentation coach for companies aspiring to present to San Francisco Bay Area Venture Capitalists at the 1:1 Visibility Conferences in San Francisco and Silicon Valley for two years, and has served an advisor for the Technology Venture Corp’s Equity Venture Capital Symposium and as an instructor for CCET since 2006.
Barbara maintains strong ties with Silicon Valley through regular visits and has offices in Palo Alto, Calif. and Albuquerque, New Mexico. To reach her: bkline@breakthrucom.com
Other Programs & Highlights
BRAKTHRU CENTER in Corrales New Mexico founded by Barbara Kline
Breakthru Center bounded by serial entrepenreneur, author, speaker and second stage start-up business coach Barbara Kline is located in Corrales New Mexico was founded in 2010 with the guiding vision to serve as a centralized resource for advanced entrepreneurial training and advisory services for up-scaling emerging companies from the start-up phase to sustainable ongoing enterprises.
Kline, founder and director of Breakthru Center explains that one of the key initiatives of Breakthru Center will be in guiding funded start-ups through their initial development phase and providing 21st Century systems to thrive not just survive despite economic fluctuations.
While many organizations today focus on the “start up”, entrepreneurs are, for the most part, left on their own once they get the company organized and the first infusions of capital in place.
Moving beyond the fledgling stage of getting the company organized and the first infusions of capital in place is a challenge for many founders. Continuing to nurture the four pillars of entrepreneurial success including passion, technical competence, leadership, and adequate funding is critical. However without the ability to develop policies, procedures and a management team, any business will flounder”, said Kline.
Kline has more than 40 years experience in helping companies, including six that she founded or co-founded, develop into growing concerns. Her inspiration in founding the Breakthru Center came from conversations she has had with angel investors, venture capitalists, and frustrated entrepreneurs in California and New Mexico. In today’s economic climate, small business is more important than ever as an economic vehicle in the United States, and yet, most entrepreneurs do not have access to the tools necessary to achieve sustainability.
Klline is in the process of establishing an interim board of advisors to facilitate the launch of the organization.
The Breakthru Center has virtual and physical components. The website and social media network will provide free and membership-driven spaces for people to learn from experts on the latest thinking on growing a business – as well as share their own experiences and ask for information. On the other hand, the organization will sponsor and partner to sponsor conferences and workshops throughout the West and Southwest aimed at providing useful information and ongoing support for businesses as they grow.
Women have a special set of needs for growing their businesses. “I Break Thru!” is an arm of the Breakthru Center that focuses specifically on women’s needs. While women today start more businesses than men, their businesses are likely to stay smaller and their ability to attract funding is also significantly lower – thus fueling a negative spiral where many lack the capital to grow a sustainable business and this very failure reinforces lenders’ and investors’ reluctance to invest in their businesses.
The Breakthru Center is a for-profit organization that will partner with other for-profit and non-profit groups to develop and disseminate important information on scaling business ideas from start up stage through sustainability. The Breakthru Center’s revenue model depends on sponsorships from organizations that have a stake in helping businesses grow (banks, colleges and universities, government and private economic development groups, business products, technology companies, etc), as well as memberships and product sales via the web and back-of- the-room sales at conferences.
