Randi Sumner

Randi Sumner has over thirty years of experience shepherding membership and non-profit organizations in a wide variety of industries towards success. She has worked with non-profit organizations ranging from those with almost no staff and minimal budget to those with approximately 1,000 employees and half a billion in revenue. Sumner has led numerous strategic business development initiatives at IEEE servicing over 430,000 members of both IEEE and it’s more than 50 Technical Communities since 2007.

Throughout her career, Sumner has successfully envisioned and initiated new, uncharted, and profit-driven “bootstrap startup” projects within a wide variety of mission-driven associations. The impact of her role in several projects helped to transform business models as well as drive energy into stagnant membership or revenue concerns.

Currently, she holds the position of Senior Director, Strategy & Entrepreneurship for the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society where she spearheaded the launch of IEEE’s Entrepreneurship initiative. This first-of-its-kind IEEE initiative inspires a global community for technology founders, engineers working in startups, as well as the vendors and funders helping to scale these businesses. Her efforts have brought the IEEE’s global resources to engineering-driven entrepreneurs while inspiring new resources, event innovations, virtual communities, an IEEEtv video channel dedicated to startups, and the creation of the Powered by IEEE Program.

Sumner brings to her leadership perspective, the knowledge and wisdom acquired as the Chief Staff Executive of the New Jersey Society of Association Executives, an organization that serviced Non-Profit Professionals in New Jersey before it’s 2010 merger with another regional group into the Mid-Atlantic Society of Association Executives. Before that, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the New Jersey Apartment Association. During that tenure, the association doubled in both staff and budget. She has also served as a Strategic Planning Facilitator with Tecker Consultants, In addition to her executive skills, she has been a business development consultant, career and presentation coach, as well as a professional speaker.

Sumner is a Certified Association Executive (CAE) and a cum laude graduate with an honors thesis on non-verbal communication from Brandeis University.