Monika Mueller has over 23 years of experience, bringing innovative solutions to her clients. Monika has focused on business and technology management at entrepreneurial, Fortune 500, and consulting companies.
She has a depth of experience in management consulting, information management, process optimization, and customer relationship management. Monika has served in leadership roles at Ernst & Young, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, OnStar, and Daugherty Business Solutions.
At her prior employer, Monika held P&L responsibility for the Atlanta Business Office, which included Sales Solutioning, Delivery, Recruiting and Operations for a team of over 200 consultants. During her 4 year tenure, the company doubled in size and created a team-based culture winning 12 awards and increased employee morale to its highest levels.
While at the Big 4, Monika was a Senior Leader helping to drive growth and innovation with exciting technology and telecom clients including Sprint, Global One, AstroLink, OnStar and many others Monika received her B.B.A. in Management from Cleveland State University and her Masters in Business Administration from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
Monika sits on the Board of Women in Technology, the CIS Advisory Board and the Professional Services for the Technology Association of Georgia. Monika enjoys spending time with her two children in the outdoors, traveling and jogging.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from Fintech South 2025 at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio now. Here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from Fintech South 2025. So excited to be talking to my next guest, Monika Mueller with Softensity. Welcome.
Monika Mueller: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Softensity. How are you serving folks?
Monika Mueller: We are a 27 year old management consulting organization, and over those 27 years, we’ve grown to about 25 geographical locations, about 3000 very smart consultants across the globe. And what we really do is bring data and software solutions to life for organizations, and use technology to help them solve their business problems.
Lee Kantor: Is there a niche when it comes down to your ideal client, or is it kind of industry agnostic.
Monika Mueller: Um, any companies that are having issues, I don’t know if you know any of them.
Lee Kantor: Issues?
Monika Mueller: No. Pain points? Challenges? Um, no. Our strengths are truly in sort of the fintech manufacturing, automotive space.
Lee Kantor: So, um, why was it important for you to be here at Fintech South? Is it Atlanta? One of the markets you’re in?
Monika Mueller: We are headquartered in Atlanta, so we are all about supporting the local communities, the local nonprofits, the local organizations. We have been a premier member of Tag for many years. I’m on the board of Tag myself a very passionate about this organization, and this is one of the premier events in Atlanta, bringing together not only thought leaders, but people that need to hear the thought leadership. And so it’s a great consolidation of our community in one space with the purpose of learning.
Lee Kantor: So how does soft density kind of recommend it’s people, uh, attack a conference like fintech. So.
Monika Mueller: Oh, by preparing for it, by really taking the opportunity to to understand the speakers, the presenters, the panels, the topics from our unique vantage point of working with a variety of customers. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what challenges our clients are dealing with, and we come to places like fintech and other conferences to help learn what is cutting edge as well, so we can bring that back to our clients. So we’re looking and planning and have chosen speakers that we want to be making sure we’re listening to. Right. We’re also on some panels ourselves. So it’s a really great opportunity for our team to be here.
Lee Kantor: So what are you seeing from a technology or trend standpoint that you’d like to share with our audience?
Monika Mueller: Well, I mean, I could say AI, but you probably have heard that all day. I never heard of I never heard of that. I think it’s spelled AI.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’ll write that down.
Monika Mueller: I would say that, um, the uniqueness of this particular session here, there’s a lot of talk around compliance, you know, cybersecurity and how does AI enable that. And one of the the unique perspectives that we have is that the cybersecurity compliance, all of that can not only be Enabled by AI, but AI in itself is a threat when it comes to those things. But from an organizational perspective, we really want our clients to start thinking about, um, compliance and security as a product, not something to to have to check a box on to something that we can actually use to differentiate clients, services, products in the marketplace by weaving compliance and security into a positive experience for customers. So that’s one of the the positions that we have is that we should look at this from a perspective of product, to enhance loyalty of customers to an organization and not have it be the four legged word that it’s become in terms of compliance requirements in an oracle.
Lee Kantor: So is a soft density customer typically coming to you because something bad happened? Or are they coming to you because they want to proactively grow?
Monika Mueller: I would say it’s probably a blend, right? A lot of organizations are are have a lot of smart people leading them and managing the day to day operations of them, and they’ve got roadmaps that we can come in and help them enable, right, with expertise that we have. And we’re not experts in everything, but where we are, we can help to provide sort of that proactive view of how solutions can be implemented, um, in the quickest fashion while, you know, meeting their vision, managing budgets, etc.. But then of course, there are situations that happen, right, where clients are experiencing imminent issues currently and they need extra capability and extra set of hands, uh, you know, group of people that have been there and done that to help them manage through situations that they’re in as well. So I would say it’s a blend of the both.
Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?
Monika Mueller: Um, I think continuing to bring awareness to topics like this, right, in terms of making sure that we’re getting knowledge out to as many people in our communities that will listen to it so they can benefit from it. They can take the knowledge at conferences that you guys do such a good job broadcasting, right. Bringing together leaders in this a community so that we can take that back not only to service clients organizations, but for those companies to service their clients. So continue to shine a light on the thought leadership. I think you guys do a great job.
Lee Kantor: Now, what about the kind of talent situation we have here in the metro Atlanta area? Where do you see opportunities when it comes to growing that talent base?
Monika Mueller: I think Atlanta has become a hub of talent attraction. Like I think we really rival, you know, San Francisco and all the the West Coast vibe where, you know, we’re a friendlier place to live. We’re a less expensive place to live. And we have an amazing infrastructure, not only professionally. We have, you know, a huge consolidation of fortune 1000 companies here, but we have the educational infrastructure with the Georgia Tech, Georgia State, other universities that really, um, that we can grab talent from. But families moving here can send their kids to. Right. So we’ve got I feel the whole package in terms of attracting talent, really great talent into the Atlanta marketplace. And I see that I see more people coming into Atlanta because I experienced the traffic every day. And if you guys have any issues with that, but I would like them to pace, uh, infrastructure, city infrastructure growth with the massive movement and migration to Atlanta. That would be nice.
Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, uh, where should they go? What’s the website? What’s the best way to connect with you or somebody on the.
Monika Mueller: Team’s o t e n t y or anybody can reach out to me and LinkedIn. Monika with a k. I don’t know why my parents did that. Made my life complicated. Uh, the last name is Mueller. M u e l l e r.
Lee Kantor: Well, Monika, thank you so much for sharing your story, doing important work and we appreciate you.
Monika Mueller: I appreciate you too as well. Thank you so much.
