Cathrine (Cathy) Jooste is a business leader with nearly 30 years of experience in consultative and technology-enabled services. She excels at scaling companies, optimizing operations, and driving digital transformation.
As the founder of Nuvidea Solutions, Cathy brings clarity and effectiveness to revenue generation strategies in an era of intelligent automation. She helps clients maximize cross-sell potential, streamline sales operations, and empower businesses to focus efforts on the right clients, offerings and markets. Her ability to blend analytical precision with strategic vision makes her a catalyst for transformation and value creation in today’s modern business environment.
Cathy previously served as President of Global Services at Computer Generated Solutions (CGS Inc) and as Chief Commercial Officer at Atento, where she spearheaded record-breaking growth and accelerated business modernization initiatives across both organizations. She has held executive leadership positions at DXC Technologies, Cognizant, Avanade and Accenture.
Cathy’s most meaningful role is at home in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she nurtures the brilliance of her teenage twin boys — future innovators with a deep passion for technology and environmental stewardship. Maybe with a slight Mothers bias? She’s a dedicated volunteer with the FIRST Robotics organization, championing hands-on learning and innovation in young minds.
Why are you passionate about helping leaders of IT services firms?
Helping leaders of IT services firms is deeply personal to me because I understand the immense challenges they face in balancing innovation, operational efficiency, and sustainable growth. After nearly three decades in the field, I’ve seen firsthand how rapidly evolving technologies force leaders to adapt, innovate and make bold, future-shaping decisions. I thrive on helping leaders cut through the noise, focus on what truly matters, and unlock their full potential.
Throughout your career, you’ve helped organizations scale and transform their customer experience strategies. What key lessons from that journey do you hope to pass along to the next generation of founders and leaders?
I am but a student in this journey, and the best advice that I can pass on is that which I have learned from those who came before me:
- “The make up of a successful leader is only 20% vision and genius. The other 80% is stick-to-it-ness.” This advice has been a necessary reminder for me that it is not all fun, strategic planning and big moves. Sometimes it is a lot of number crunching, data analysis or just plain meetings to get through… and the moments of brilliance emerge after all the elbow grease has been expended.
- “Go make mistakes, make many mistakes, just don’t make the same mistake twice”. This is a helpful reminder that you can only truly achieve greatness if you take risks. Facilitating an environment where your leaders are not afraid of owning their mistakes, is the mark of an evolved organization. Learning from those mistakes to achieve better every time is the mark of progress.
- “Don’t lead from a perch, lead from within” – Ben Jooste, Proprietor of Co-Art Gallery and Picture Framing (aka my Father.) As a teenage immigrant in the USA, I was asked to oversee a couple of employees in our mom and pop family business as we completed our daily or weekly work items. I very quickly learned the value of servant leadership and earning the respect of those you work with. This lesson is always close to me, and I never ask my team to do things that I am not willing to do also.
Customer experience and outsourcing are evolving rapidly with technologies like AI. What do you believe are the biggest opportunities — and risks — for tech-enabled services firms in the next 3–5 years?
The next 3–5 years will be a defining era for tech-enabled services firms as AI continues to reshape customer experience and outsourcing. The top 3 opportunities I see for these firms are 1) using AI to deliver truly personalized interactions at scale that resonate and build loyalty; 2) letting AI handle the repetitive stuff to free up teams to focus on high-value, human centric work; and 3) using AI to create new services and revenue streams that go beyond traditional models.
On the flip side, the top 3 risks for firms in my view are 1) automating so much the lose the human touch and the trust required in these relationships; 2) hurting their brand and end up in legal trouble by ignoring data privacy and ethical concerns; and 3) becoming irrelevant by not keeping pace or upskilling their teams. AI is reshaping roles fast, and a lot of companies aren’t paying attention to the talent gaps.
What’s one piece of unconventional advice you often share with leaders that has had a big impact on their growth?
Slow down to speed up. In fast-moving industries like ours, leaders often feel pressure to move quickly, react instantly and push forward at all costs. But the most transformative leaders pause, assess and align their teams before charging ahead.
Taking time to clarify priorities, listen deeply, and make strategic choices doesn’t slow progress – it accelerates it. Rushed decisions can lead to inefficiencies, misalignment, and wasted energy. But when leaders invest in thoughtful planning, purposeful execution, and adaptive course corrections, they create a foundation for sustainable, repeatable success.
