Elizabeth Fox
Elizabeth Fox started her career at Xerox as an engineer soon after finishing college. Her first assignment was designing high speed transport systems, moving paper at 135 pages per minute, which she notes was a big deal at the time.
“Believe it or not, I can still walk into client data centers and see my sub-systems running,” she says. “My favorite part of product design was visiting the field sales teams and their customers to understand their requirements.”
Those expert communication skills soon took Fox on a different path. It wasn’t too long before she transitioned to marketing on a full time basis, charged with the expansion of managed print services through their indirect partners. She has been credited with being a staunch advocate for solutions in the industry and for helping dealers position and sell those offerings. Today she spends a lot of her time connecting people to help identify new opportunities and implement creative solutions.
“Because Xerox is a global company, a web conference can include a solution architect from Italy and a project manager from Guatemala working together with a channel partner in Chicago to implement a managed print solution for a customer who has offices throughout the world,” she explains. “Luckily, English is the international language of business!”
Fox says that she was surprised and honored to be recognized by her peers as a Difference Maker.
“There is a lot of talent and leadership in the imaging industry,” she said. “It was very humbling to be included.”
Fox contends that she has been extremely fortunate to have been mentored and supported by so many Xerox colleagues, customers and partners throughout her career. She recalls her father saying to her as a child, “Lizzie, you can be anything you want to be,” and she says that he was implying that it was up to her to choose her path and make it happen.
“I’m blessed with this crazy belief that we can conquer any challenge if we just get to work on it,” she says.
The SMB segment of managed print services is expanding nine percent year over year, and Fox says her plans this year include helping their partners outpace that and overachieve with double-digit revenue growth. Asked about the state of the industry, she believes there is too much pessimism.
“As Mark Twain said, ‘the reports of our death are greatly exaggerated,’” she states. “The office technology industry has great fundamentals – technology expertise, customer-first service values, creative and savvy entrepreneurs. Our business model may evolve, but there will also be business opportunity for leaders with those three ingredients.”
Asked what she likes the most about her job, Fox says the best thing is making a difference for one of their Xerox channel partners – solving problems, helping win deals or inspiring them to find success with new workflow apps.
“A heartfelt ‘thank you’ puts a smile on my face for the whole day,” she says.
