Linda Zecher

Following field experience as a geophysicist with Texas Instruments in Midland, Texas she joined Bank of America as the vice president of the Business Services division. During her tenure she moved the Services division from a mainframe HR and Payroll Service Bureau to PC based applications that were marketed to the bank's Service Bureau customers.

While at BofA she became introduced to a very young software company focused on people management. She saw enough value in the software that she joined the company, PeopleSoft, as its 9th employee.

Following PeopleSoft, Zecher joined Oracle as senior vice president in 1977 with responsibility for building Oracle's Application business in Public Sector, Higher Education, Healthcare, Telecommunications, Financial Services and the Utilities markets. She tendered her resignation in March 2002 to become CEO of Evolve Corporation.[3][4][5]

Evolve Corporation, an enterprise professional services automation software company, was a publicly traded company controlled by Private Equity firms. The company had gone through difficult times following the dot com boom. During a one-year time frame, she stabilized the company, sold the assets and took the liabilities through a bankruptcy.[6]

Zecher joined Microsoft in 2003 to lead the US Public Sector organization which focused on government, education and health customers. Within 3 years, she grew the revenue from just under $1B to $2B. The catalyst for growth was an extensive reorganization resulting in 40% more customer-facing employees. Accompanying the realignment was a focus on accountability and customer satisfaction.

Her success in the US Public Sector led to her being named corporate vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector organization.[7] The worldwide business unit had over 2,000 employees serving government, education and health customers in over 100 countries. Under her leadership the business experienced double digit growth each year rising to over $10B. She resigned from Microsoft in September 2011 when she was recruited to lead Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[8]

Zecher was named president, CEO and director of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), a global education and learning company in September 2011.[9] With origins dating back to 1832, the company is among the world's largest providers of Pre-K–12 education solutions and one of the longest-established publishing houses. Within six months of joining HMH, Zecher led the company through a pre-pack bankruptcy[10][11] resulting in a successful financial restructuring in which $3.1B of debt was eliminated and converted to equity. The company emerged 32 days later.[12] HMH deepened their market penetration by acquiring the culinary and reference portfolio of John Wiley & Sons that included Webster's New World Dictionary and CliffsNotes.[13]

Zecher engineered a successful IPO in 2013.[14] Several leading news organizations have interviewed her about her success, family focus, and leadership style.[15][16][17]

Using mobile applications for consumer markets and leveraging brand awareness of Curious George, Carmen Sandiego and The Polar Express[18] Zecher began to move HMH to an e-business. HMH launched Curious World in 2015[19][20] as interactive education subscription software curated by early education experts and aligned to eight key learning areas.

Zecher resigned from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in September 2016 after a wave of disappointing earnings announcements and greater than 50% decline in the stock price.[21][22][23]

Zecher Higgins launched a boutique consulting firm, The Barkley Group, in 2017. The firm focuses on digital transformation across industries, educational consumer interests, and business strategy