Climbing the Spiral: Laurie Oswald on Women in Leadership, AI, and 100-Year Companies

Chief Commercial Officer Laurie Oswald joins host Ruth Redding on Winners Circle to talk about leading commercial transformation at two century old companies, C and D Technologies and Trojan Battery Company, while championing women in leadership and global diversity.​Laurie shares how she oversees sales, marketing, product, customer service and inside sales across both businesses, powering critical infrastructure like data centers, telecom networks and utilities on the C and D side, and motive applications like golf carts and aerial work platforms on the Trojan side. She explains how these companies are modernizing with new battery chemistries, a globalized portfolio and digital initiatives including Trojans first B2B ecommerce platform and AI powered analytics to improve customer experience and responsiveness.​The conversation dives into:How C and D and Trojan are preparing for the next 100 years of market leadership while serving booming segments like data centers and motive power.​The role of batteries in ensuring uptime for AI driven data centers and other critical infrastructure amid rising expectations and high profile outages.​Using AI in commercial teams for analytics, CRM upgrades, partner portals and sales enablement, while keeping the human factor firmly in the loop.​Laurie also opens up about her own journey, from funding college through service in the U S Air National Guard to 20 plus years in critical and digital infrastructure, then stepping into a global commercial leadership role that spans very different markets and product sets. She talks about learning a new industry as CCO, relying on a strong team and transferring technology and insight between stationary power and motive power businesses.​A major theme of this episode is the global mindset. Laurie describes how moving into a global role early in her career shaped her approach to building diverse leadership teams, standardizing tools and processes worldwide and respecting regional requirements like environmental conditions for battery performance. She argues that diverse, global teams are more creative, more thorough and better at solving complex problems.​For women in tech and aspiring leaders, Laurie offers three pieces of advice:Embrace your authentic value, including empathy, instead of trying to be one of the guys.​Take your seat at the table and use your voice, especially when you are the only woman in the room.​Build and leverage your network, championing other women and colleagues as you climb the spiral together instead of competing for a single seat at the top.​She closes by reflecting on where her drive comes from, a competitive spirit, a deep desire to contribute and a commitment to building strong, collaborative and diverse teams. Roughly half of her current leadership team are women. For Laurie, true leadership means helping people grow into their next role while driving business transformation in an era defined by AI, changing markets and constant disruption.​If you care about women in leadership, commercial transformation, AI in sales and the future of critical infrastructure, this Winners Circle conversation is for you.