Terry Waters

Terry Waters is the CEO and a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the world’s leading human capital research firm focusing on people practices that drive high performance. i4cp, a M|C Capital portfolio business, connects chief people officers, business leaders, and their teams with peers in other leading organizations to help power productivity for millions of employees worldwide—and prepare organizations for what’s coming next.

Most recently, Terry ran his own leadership advisory and go-to-market consulting business – Waters Advisory Group. In this role, he advised CEOs, Boards, and leadership teams on customer-centric business growth strategies for professional services, membership programs, and subscription-based recurring revenue business models. His practice focuses on helping leaders enable profitable go-to-market initiatives (people, process, and technology) across product, marketing, sales, and customer success planning and execution that deliver on agreed growth goals for the business.

Prior to running Waters Advisory Group, Terry was the CEO and a member of the Board of Directors for Devada, a SFW Capital portfolio company. The business focused on building online professional knowledge-sharing communities where software developers and technology professionals could learn, share insights, and collaborate. He successfully sold Devada’s AnswerHub software business to IgniteTech in November 2022 and then Devada’s DZone media and marketing services business to TechnologyAdvice in May 2023.

Prior to Devada, Terry was the CEO and a member of the Board of Directors for Roubini Global Economics (RGE), a leading independent global macroeconomic research and analytics firm based in NYC, which he sold to Continuum Economics in 2016. From 2008–2014, he was CEO and a member of the Board of Directors for two PE-backed businesses, Highline Financial and Yankee Group, leading both to successful strategic exits, notably to Thomson Reuters and the 451 Group. In addition, during 2014, he was President of Evanta, a Leeds Equity portfolio company, where he led the development and growth of several new digital products that positioned the business for a successful sale to CEB in 2015.

Terry spent 18 years at Gartner, the global IT research, events, and advisory services firm, starting as an account executive when the company was only $10M in revenues and ending as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and a member of the Executive Operating Committee when the company had grown to $1.5B in revenues and $5B+ in market cap (NYSE: IT). Over two stints, he led a significant part of the U.S. sales organization, founded the highly successful EXP membership subscription business, built the global marketing team, and led a $150M division of the Gartner global research, advisory, and membership business. In between his two stints at Gartner, he was the COO of Screaming Media, an Internet content syndication and business services provider that he helped grow to $25M in revenues and a successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2000.

Terry started his career at Xerox after graduating from the College of the Holy Cross.