Women in Biometrics: Meet the winners Teresa Wu
10 November, 2016
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Government
Teresa Wu, now director of Strategic Marketing and Government Relations at MorphoTrak, has spent her entire 15-year professional career in the biometrics industry.
She started out as a marketing intern with Sagem Security – now known as Safran Identity and Security — working in the company’s biometric access control and secure payment terminal business unit. Throughout her career, Wu has been actively engaged in her field, and working to expand her responsibilities and expertise in marketing, business strategy, product management, and government relations.
During the last 15 years, the biometrics market has changed, particularly with regard to the shift in marketing practices. When Wu started at Sagem, the company was mainly focused on engineering, and marketing was mainly tactical. “It was an emerging field,” Wu says. “I did a lot of work, studying how to communicate and figuring out where we should spend our time. From the start, I became very passionate about the technology because I realized how biometrics can help make the world a safer place.”
In those early days, most marketing outreach was accomplished through traditional business-to-business channels, Wu says. Now, more is demanded of the marketing team. Not only does effective and compelling communication with partners and industry need to remain, but MorphoTrak also needs to communicate with those who are using the products.
“We started having this push/pull approach and having to communicate at different levels such as social media,” Wu explains. “As the field of biometrics is going mainstream, industry best practices and interaction with policy makers have also grown in importance. Public perception, technology adoption, and technology education go hand in hand.”
As of late, Wu has been praised for her work with government relations. “Besides having an in-depth technical knowledge of biometric technologies and markets in which they are deployed, she also has the unique ability to convert complex information and issues into understandable explanations and arguments. This skill is fundamental when helping government officials and staff to readily understand the issues regardless of their pre-existing level of technical understanding,” says one nominator.
Wu says her proudest accomplishment is changing the engineering focus mindset to be more user-oriented. Wu introduced a series of focus groups and collaboration projects with customers and industry influencers to collect the voice of customers and articulate best practices.
Her active involvement with various industry and professional practitioner associations reflects her commitment to engage with industry partners, end-users and other stakeholders. “It is very rewarding to see how my analysis and insight helped to shape future roadmaps and thus affect our ability to better meet our customers’ needs,” says Wu. “I feel very fortunate and privileged to have worked with some of the most brilliant pioneers and scientific minds in the industry. Not only did I learn from the insights and vision, but I have the opportunity to further expand and grow,” she adds.
