Kathy van de Laar is founder of EarlyBridge. EarlyBridge (formerly Van de Laar / Pothoven) advises and implements strategies to improve customer contact in all channels, thereby boosting business performance. Van de Laar has been working in direct customer contact and CRM in the United States and Europe for more than 20 years. 

Her experience includes driving change in marketing, sales and service organizations for companies such as ABN AMRO Bank, AT&T, BT Cellnet, the Dutch National Railway, FedEx, IBM, Merck Medco Pharmaceuticals, OHRA Insurance and Philips. 

Kathy helps companies to create customer-centric strategies and concepts and translate them into practical implementations that get results. Her focus is on bringing companies closer to their customers to deliver sustainable business results. 

Her work has been recognized with the Customer Strategy Award Europe 2008 from the Global Customer Experience Management organisation, the Dutch National Contact Center Gold Award in 2005 and as runner-up in the Gartner CRM Excellence Awards EMEA in 2008.