Patricia (“Trish”) Cotter believes in the promise and power of innovation when it comes to management, technology, business and education. Trish is known for an adept, creative leadership style that has resulted in closely aligned, loyal, motivated teams and positive outcomes throughout her career.

Trish is currently the Director of MIT delta v, the Institute’s educational accelerator program run out of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. At delta v, Trish mentors students through the accelerator process for their startup ventures. The delta v program provides a capstone educational opportunity for MIT student entrepreneurs that prepares them to hit “escape velocity” and launch into the real world. Trish also serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and the Associate Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center.

Trish completed her doctorate in work-based learning at the University of Pennsylvania Chief Learning Officer program. For her dissertation, Trish researched the development of higher education business analytics programs designed to meet growing industry demands and close the twenty-first century skills gap.

Previously, as an Executive Officer, Trish has brought two companies public (Netezza in 2007 and Visual Networks in 1998). Trish was a member of the executive team that integrated Netezza into IBM following IBM’s acquisition of Netezza for $1.8 billion in 2010, and was appointed President of Netezza LLC during the integration process.

While Executive Officer and Senior Vice President Worldwide Operations at Netezza, Trish scaled operation organizations to over 100 customers around the globe to achieve $250 million in annual revenue. Trish created an innovative, award-winning technical customer support framework and led the manufacturing and logistics divisions for Netezza’s New Products Manufacturing Group.

Prior to Netezza, Trish was at Visual Networks, a leading provider of application performance and network management solutions, where she was Vice President and Executive Officer with P&L responsibility. At Visual Networks, Trish launched initial manufacturing, test processing and supply chain management divisions, with annual revenue growing to $85 million before the company’s successful IPO.

Prior to Visual Networks, Trish held management and engineering positions at Stratus Computer, Sun Microsystems, Computervision and Honeywell.

Trish holds a BA from Boston College, an MBA from Northeastern University, a Masters in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, an AMP from Harvard Business School, and an Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Trish won a Gold Stevie Award for Mentor of the Year in a non-profit business in 2016. She was also named Emerging Executive of the Year (2009) by the Mass Technology Leadership Council and won a Stevie Award (2011) for Customer Service Executive of the Year. Trish received a Northface Scoreboard Award for World Class Excellence Customer Satisfaction as selected by voting customers from 2006 through 2011.