
March 31, 2026 – Tech Sales Bob Kocis and The Emphatic Leader Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller
School for Startups Radio
Bob Kocis – President and Chief Operating Officer of Aptean and author of The President’s Club Mindset: Inside the Winning Strategies of Tech’s Most Successful Sales People
Everybody said curiosity was one of their key superpowers.
Bob Kocis is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Aptean and a seasoned global sales leader with more than three decades of experience in enterprise technology and revenue growth. He is the author of The President’s Club Mindset: Inside the Winning Strategies of Tech’s Most Successful Sales People, where he distills the principles and habits behind sustained elite sales performance. Kocis began his career in sales in the mid 1990s and steadily advanced into senior leadership roles, including leading global channel and emerging markets at PTC, serving as Vice President of Worldwide Sales at ANSYS, and acting as Chief Revenue Officer at Continuum. Over the course of his career, he has built and led high performing sales organizations across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, including time based in Shanghai managing regional operations. Known for his customer first approach and focus on execution, Kocis has developed a reputation for transforming sales teams into consistent top performers and aligning culture with long term growth. At Aptean, he is responsible for global business operations and customer success, helping guide the company’s continued expansion as a leading provider of industry specific enterprise software solutions.
Melissa Robinson-Winemiller – Keynote Speaker and Author of The Empathic Leader: How EQ via Empathy Transforms Leadership for Better Profit, Productivity, and Innovation
AI is not going to fix all of our problems, most especially communication.
Melissa Robinson-Winemiller is an international bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and leadership coach specializing in emotional intelligence and empathy driven leadership. She is the founder and CEO of EQ via Empathy, where she works with organizations and leaders around the world to make empathy a practical and actionable skill that drives performance, innovation, and culture. Her work focuses on helping leaders translate emotional intelligence into measurable business outcomes, challenging the traditional view of empathy as a soft skill and repositioning it as a core leadership capability. With more than 30 years of leadership and professional experience, Robinson-Winemiller brings a unique blend of real world insight and academic rigor to her work. After an early career in music, she shifted her focus to leadership and organizational development, earning advanced degrees including a doctorate in leadership with a focus on empathy in leadership. She is the author of The Empathic Leader, a book that outlines how leaders can use empathy to improve productivity, strengthen teams, and achieve better business results. Today, she continues to advise executives and teams globally, helping them build more human centered and effective organizations.