her first year there she was the number one sales person male managers pitched the venture to interested par-
for the company, she said, and repeated her performance ties behind closed doors.
the second year. She later joined University Computing Eventually Curle and Hammer convinced MCC to
Company in Dallas and in nine months was promoted to sell the license for the technology to them and in 1991
district manager, responsible for the company’s new re- the two spun out their own company, Evolutionary
gion from New Jersey to the Caribbean, which she built Technologies International (ETI), with money they
into number one in the division. had obtained through corporate sponsorships with
· This job offered a revelation about her personality. other companies like Bellcore, Eastman Kodak and
“What I figured out about myself was that I liked building Honeywell. Curle was instrumental in ETI’s 100 per-
things. An environment that was already built and needed cent annual growth rate with $35 million in revenue,
to be maintained or that wasn’t broken and needed to be worldwide operations, and 230 employees. As a result,
turned around was not interesting to me," Curle said. INC Magazine named ETI as one of the top 20 fastest
Her natural ability in the sales and marketing arena growing private companies two years in a row in 1996
was a catalyst to her pursuing even more challenging and 1997.
goals with other software companies in Texas, Georgia — Curle left ETI in 1999, although she still is a large _
she became a company vice president for Information shareholder. She joined Journee Software, a business-  
Science at 30 years old — and later in California, where process—management software firm in Austin, as its 1
she was hired by the San Francisco company, Tesseract CEO and helped to turn around that company by se-
Corporation, to be its worldwide vice president of sales curing $11.5 million in funding. She later founded and
and marketing. was the managing director of CEO Partnerships, a
"My area of strength is sales and marketing. That’s group of ex-CEOs who take interim positions as ex- ? 
what I do really well," said Curle. “I know how to figure ecutive ‘loaners’ working alongside another company’s i
out why a person needs to buy something, what their pain executive staff in return for money and stock in that
is, and how to make a value proposition for them." company. This arrangement helps organizations dimin- j 
She helped to take Tesseract from half a million dollars ish pitfalls while working toward corporate goals
to $23 million in three years, she said, and then the com- It was through CEO Partnerships that Curle be-
pany was sold to Prudential Insurance. came interim CEO of the 3D company, Zebra Imaging.
Next she worked with another start-up, Foothill Re- Within a month Zebra’s board of directors wanted t
search, which failed. Curle in charge permanently and she became president  
"I learned as much from that failed startup as I had and CEO in January 2002. I 
from the previous successes. I learned you have to look at Curle said Zebra currently has 16 patents on its
all aspects of a company before you go in. You also have technology with 19 pending; and five international pat-
to know what your strengths and
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_ Zebra’s unassuming exterior is in sharp contrast; to its visual surprises housed inside.
i KENTUCKY Arumni 15