Vanguard Award for Revenue Leadership

2026 Winner

Lauren Palmer

Vice President, Sales · Interlink

Building a market, not simply selling into one.

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The winning work

Building a market, not simply selling into one.

180%

Regional revenue growth

110%

2025 target attainment

Growth in regional client base

Lauren Palmer helped build Interlink's commercial position in a new market and transformed an emerging territory into a significant source of growth. Her approach combined deep agency relationships, disciplined account development and a focus on building repeatable commercial momentum rather than chasing one-time wins.

Between 2024 and 2026, regional revenue increased 180%. Interlink finished 2025 at 110% of target, and the regional client portfolio grew fivefold. The scale of the results matters. So does the way they were produced. Palmer's work demonstrated how strong commercial leadership can create a market, deepen strategic customer relationships and build a revenue base capable of compounding over time.

Lauren Palmer on LinkedIn

The Category · Vanguard Award for Revenue Leadership

Growth does not happen by accident.

Revenue leadership is about much more than closing more business. The strongest commercial leaders change how growth is created. They improve customer economics. They rethink pricing and packaging. They expand recurring revenue. They build stronger go-to-market systems. They find new sources of value and create the operating discipline required to sustain them.

The Vanguard Award for Revenue Leadership recognizes executives whose decisions materially strengthened revenue, profitability, customer value or the commercial model itself.

2026 Finalists

The Finalists

3 executives

Finalist

Tara Gotch

Executive Vice President, Commercial | Comscore

Transforming a revenue organization while expanding its commercial reach.

15Client wins, renewals and expansions
$100M+Projected annual revenue oversight
30+Professionals led

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Tara Gotch helped lead a two-year transformation of Comscore's local sales and client-success organization while taking on broader responsibility across the company's revenue operation. By April 2026, Comscore had announced 15 significant client wins, renewals and expansions. Gotch's annual revenue oversight was projected to exceed $100 million, spanning national television, local stations, independent agencies and client success.

Her work stood out because it combined direct commercial accountability with organizational transformation. This was not simply about carrying a larger number. It was about improving how the organization serves customers, manages revenue and develops the teams responsible for growth.

Tara Gotch on LinkedIn

Finalist

Indiya Okam

Group Vice President of Sales, US | RX Global

Increasing customer value and strengthening the economics of exhibitor relationships.

33%Increase in Average Customer Value
$21K → $28KLike-for-like ACV improvement
36% → 44%First-time exhibitor rebook rate

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Indiya Okam focused on one of the most important questions in an exhibitions business: how do you create more value from each customer while making that relationship more likely to continue? Across RX Global's U.S. exhibitions portfolio, Average Customer Value increased from approximately $21,000 in FY2024 to $28,000 in 2025, a 33% increase on a like-for-like basis.

At the same time, the first-time exhibitor rebook rate improved from approximately 36% to 44%, representing a 21% relative increase. Together, the results demonstrate stronger monetization and stronger customer retention, two measures that matter far more than simply selling more inventory into a single event cycle.

Indiya Okam on LinkedIn

Finalist

Lucy Stratton

Chief Executive Officer | Agency EA

Growing the top line while improving the economics underneath it.

$41.9MH1 2026 top-line revenue
17%FY2026 EBITDA margin
+26.5%Revenue productivity per employee

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Lucy Stratton led a broad commercial and operating transformation at Agency EA that materially changed both the scale and efficiency of the business. For the first half of 2026, Agency EA reported $41.9 million in top-line revenue, an increase of $25.3 million over H1 2025.

At the same time, EBITDA margin expanded from 10% to 17%, and revenue productivity per employee improved by 26.5%. The combination is what made the work notable. Growth alone can be purchased. Stratton's results show growth accompanied by greater operating leverage, stronger margins and increased productivity.

Lucy Stratton on LinkedIn

2026 Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions

The Revenue Leadership field also produced two nominations the judges believed deserved additional recognition.

Honorable Mention

Barbara Myers

CEO | IMN Solutions

Rebuilding a company into something larger, more diversified and more resilient.

82%Revenue growth
31%Revenue from diversified services
6 → ~50Workforce rebuilt and expanded

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Barbara Myers led IMN Solutions through a post-pandemic transformation without outside investment. Revenue increased 82%, from approximately $5.6 million in FY2019 to $10.2 million trailing twelve months through June 2026. More importantly, the company's revenue model changed.

New and expanded service lines grew from effectively zero to approximately 31% of total revenue, contributing more than $3.2 million while the legacy core business continued to grow. The transformation was self-funded. After the pandemic forced the company to reduce its workforce to approximately six employees, IMN rebuilt to roughly 50 while adding new divisions, capabilities, systems and leaders. This was not simply a recovery story. It was a redesign of the business.

Barbara Myers on LinkedIn

Honorable Mention

Jenna Snyder

General Manager, Media | EMARKETER

Turning live events into a meaningful new pillar of the revenue model.

15% to 20%Expected share of 2026 revenue from live events
New strategic pillarEvents embedded in EMARKETER's 2027 growth strategy

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Jenna Snyder helped transform EMARKETER's product mix by building live events into a repeatable, scalable and high-margin business. In 2026, live events are expected to represent approximately 15% to 20% of company revenue, making them a meaningful contributor to the business rather than an ancillary brand activity.

The strategic impact extends beyond event revenue itself. EMARKETER's events create opportunities for clients to engage directly with its experts and leadership, discover new capabilities and deepen their relationships with the company. They also give account teams greater insight into customer priorities, supporting expansion and longer-term strategic partnerships. Snyder's work helped establish events as a core pillar of EMARKETER's strategy heading into 2027.

Jenna Snyder on LinkedIn

The 2026 Vanguard Awards