Kara Rudy Featured in The Excellence Review: Building Growth Systems for the IT Channel

Kara Rudy, Founder + CEO of MarketDesign Consulting Inc. (MDCo), which builds growth engines for IT companies, is featured in The Excellence Review. The feature traces how nearly two decades inside the IT channel shaped MDCo's consulting model, which helps IT companies replace scattered activity with a system that grows on purpose. Read the full feature in The Excellence Review.

Who is Kara Rudy?

Kara Rudy is the Founder + CEO of MarketDesign Consulting, Inc., a consulting-led growth partner for IT companies. Her career started in web design at an engineering firm and moved through individual contributor, manager, and C-suite roles in the IT reseller and channel world.

After a 2018 corporate restructuring, Kara launched MarketDesign on her own. The firm joined the Compugen Group of Companies in 2024. The feature also covers her roots in sport: she grew up in a basketball family in Syracuse, New York, played in high school and college, and still coaches youth sports today.

Why did Kara Rudy start MarketDesign Consulting?

Kara built MDCo around a pattern she kept seeing across the IT industry. Solution providers often have strong technical capabilities, yet struggle to explain what they do, why it matters, and what business results it delivers. MDCo was designed to close that gap.

That work draws on lived experience. Kara has held many of the roles MDCo now advises, including CEO, seller, and line-of-business leader. MDCo's tech growth consultants have carried the number inside MSPs, VARs, and solution providers, from the revenue office to the C-suite.

How does MDCo help IT companies grow?

MDCo builds growth engines: connected systems that align a company's people, process, and platform with its purpose, plan, and pipeline. Leaders get revenue they can forecast and a brand buyers find first.

MDCo diagnoses growth the way engineers do. Its proprietary 6 Ps of Progress framework pinpoints which of six areas is holding growth back:

• The what: people, process, and platform
• The how: purpose, plan, and pipeline

Each client's P.A.T.H. Forward then turns that diagnosis into confirmed growth goals and measurable results. As the feature describes, the work increasingly runs as focused sprints built around one defined objective and measurable touchpoints. Every engagement starts from the client's own data instead of generic industry benchmarks.

What leadership lessons does Kara share?

The profile highlights three habits that shape how Kara leads:

• Delegation with intent. Kara uses the EOS principle, Delegate + Elevate, to keep each person focused on their highest-value work while giving others room to lead.
• One person in every room. Holding three simultaneous roles across the Compugen Group of Companies taught her that authenticity is what keeps her consistent from meeting to meeting.
• Optimism as a discipline. When change hits, she asks herself, "What if it all works out?"

Her advice to women aspiring to lead: build self-awareness, ask for your place in the room, ask for support early, and let ambition flex with the seasons of life.

What does Kara Rudy expect for the IT channel?

Kara sees margin pressure, differentiation, and AI reshaping the IT channel. Companies that win will sharpen their focus, strengthen their most profitable capabilities and treat AI as a practical part of daily operations. For MDCo, that means helping mid-market IT services companies build stronger growth systems through offerings including Found First, MDCompass, V.O.I.C.E., and managed HubSpot services.

Start the Conversation

Want to see where your company stands on the 6 Ps of Progress? Every MDCo engagement starts with free consulting, no catch. Worst case, you leave with three new ideas, and we make a new friend. Book a conversation with MDCo.

Read Kara's full profile in The Excellence Review.

Growth on Purpose: About MarketDesign Co.

MarketDesign Consulting Inc. (MDCo) is the consulting-led growth partner for IT companies, including MSPs, VARs, solution providers, SaaS companies, and private equity-backed technology firms. MDCo understands the business of tech as well as the mechanics of marketing it, and it specializes in one thing: turning IT companies into market leaders without losing the human connection that got them there.

Growth is a system, and MDCo builds it. Its growth engines connect people, process, and platform to a clear purpose, plan, and pipeline. MDCo diagnoses growth the way engineers do: its proprietary 6 Ps of Progress pinpoints where growth stalls, and each client's P.A.T.H. Forward turns that diagnosis into confirmed growth goals and measurable results.

Leaders who work with MDCo get revenue they can forecast, a brand buyers find first, and consistent, measurable results over one-time wins. MDCo's tech growth consultants have spent two decades inside the IT channel, carrying the number from the revenue office to the C-suite and living the same sales cycles, margin pressure, and vendor relationships their clients navigate today. Techies at heart, they build growth that fuels something bigger: impact for clients, communities, and the people on the other side of every deal.

MDCo is a HubSpot Platinum Partner headquartered in Syracuse, New York. Learn more at www.marketdesignco.com.