New Team Members Extend Virtanza Sales & Marketing Reach
Bernice Burns joined the Virtanza team as full-time Director of Employer Sales on Jan. 2, while Shixian Xie came on board as Marketing Intern in December.
Burns has more than 30 years of experience leading successful national and local sales across Fortune 500 companies including the Gannett and Dow Jones companies. She is an instructor at The Ohio State Fisher College of Business, teaching Virtanza’s Sales Readiness Course every half-semester. As a leader at Dow Jones & Company, parent company of The Wall Street Journal, Burns led the Western regional sales team and the digital team for Careerjournal.com, the recruitment arm of WSJ.com. She also led a team to maximize revenue as Vice President of Advertising for the Los Angeles Business Journal.
Burns has worked with worked Virtanza part-time for the last six years, She says her full-time role growing Viranza’s employer base is a perfect extension of her sales career. “Having worked in recruitment sales and as a hiring sales manager, Virtanza’s mission to help great companies find great salespeople really resonates with me,” Burns says. “Far from being just a recruitment company, Virtanza is helping students of all walks of life gain the real-world skills that will qualify them for fulfilling and lucrative sales careers. At the same time, we’re helping companies meet their ever-increasing need for qualified sales candidates.”
Burns holds a BA in English from Connecticut College and an MBA from UCLA’s John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management.
A NEW PROGRAM AMBASSADOR
“Joining Virtanza now is made sweeter by the addition of Shixian Xie, one of my first Professional Sales Readiness students at Ohio State,” Burns adds.
Shixian Xie’s focus in her new role as Marketing Intern is to create awareness and accelerate enrollments for Virtanza’s Sales Readiness courses at OSU and for other new university programs. Several new programs kick off this spring, including courses at Clark State Community College in Ohio and Central Michigan University.
“Creating awareness of Virtanza and its classes helps students on their way to pursue their goal, whether that’s about becoming a sales professional or figuring out what they really want to do in the future,” Xie says.
Xie is a graduate of the Sales Readiness Course at OSU, where she was a standout student and has been a passionate ambassador for Virtanza’s sales programs. She will graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from The Fisher College of Business at OSU, specializing in marketing.
She brings strong drive and positive energy to her mission at Virtanza. In late December, Xie was awarded 2020 Pace Setter, an honor given to the top 1% of Fisher undergraduates based on academic achievement, leadership, and service. She earned the Dean’s Promise Award Scholarship and is a member of the OSU Undergraduate Student Government, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and is a 4th year representative of the undergraduate Business Council. She is on the University Level Advisory Committee for General Education.
“With its placement solution, Virtanza is actually solving a social need by connecting students intending to work in sales and companies that treasure professional sales candidates,” Xie says. “At the same time. it’s a sales education program that provides great opportunities for students to explore B2B sales accurately and comprehensively.”
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About Virtanza
Virtanza offers practical, effective sales programs and bridges the gap between under-skilled adult learners and employers.
Led by industry veteran Debbie Holzkamp to respond to the urgent need for sales education and job placement, Virtanza is equipped to transform the professional sales candidate market with its unique education curricula and placement solution.