Charlene was a mentor to me at Forrester and helped me understand how social computing works and why it mattered to businesses. One of the best lessons I ever received was from my first blog post ever on Charlene’s blog, where I was flamed broiled by commenters much like a Burger King Whopper. We also had a fun briefing with Mark Zuckerberg in spring 2006, where he was happy to tell us about Facebook’s plan to expand membership beyond .edu email addresses. And I’m sure there’s a video out there somewhere of when we performed a Backstreet Boys/Madonna medley with Shar VanBoskirk at the Forrester Global Kickoff meeting.
Charlene separated from Forrester in 2008 and founded Altimeter Group. She has also authored two best selling books, Groundswell and Open Leadership. In addition to being one of the smartest people I’ve met, Charlene is also one of the most generous and kind.
Given that she has almost 90,000 followers on Twitter, it’s likely you follow her already. But if not, Charlene is on Twitter as @charleneli.