Title: Product Marketing Manager
Company: Matrox Video
Location: Montreal
Overtime: A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she grew up in Montreal and embraces the area’s multi-cultural offerings. You can find Catherine trying new recipes, watching musicals, playing video games, or admiring her salt and pepper shaker and rubber duck collections.
Why You Need to Know Her: Always in style, she loves finding new ways of combining her engineering background with market knowledge to present innovative solutions for her clients' complex control room environments.
A doctor or Mulan. If you had asked a young Catherine Koutsaris what her career ambitions were, you would have likely been told one of those two options. Instead, it turns out she’s building a career in Pro AV utilizing her engineering skills.
Koutsaris earned her degree in mechanical engineering at McGill University in Montreal, but she wasn’t that kid who was taking apart the toaster to see how it worked. She had many interests, including law, but decided that a degree in mechanical engineering would open the most doors for her.
“I chose to be an engineer so that I didn’t have to be an engineer for long,” she offered. “Critical thinking, problem solving—you can apply that to succeed in any industry.”
Engineer or not, Koutsaris loves technology. “I hate the limiting mindset of ‘we’ve always done it this way,’” she said. “It bothers me. There’s always room for improvement and technology allows for that. Quality of life improves because we can use technology to make everyday things better.”
Today, Koutsaris has combined her love of technology with the commercial side of engineering. At Matrox, that training has certainly been an asset. Koutsaris began the current leg of her career journey last month, when she was promoted to product marketing manager. She’s excited for the new role, which will let her tell the story of the entire Matrox portfolio, not just one product, and how the products work well together.
Like so many others, Koutsaris found herself in Pro AV by accident. She was working in the aerospace industry working on software for flight simulators. “I loved it. I thought I was going to be an aerospace queen,” she recalled.
Then came COVID-19. And a layoff. She learned Matrox was hiring and submitted her resume. Koutsaris started with the company as a testing engineer in 2020 and was promoted to product manager the next year. “I ended up loving it,” she said. “It launched a totally new career path for me.”
Even though she’s not working strictly as an engineer, she works with engineers all the time. In her product manager role, she played the middleman between the engineering team, sales team, marketing team, and trade show team—always keeping the needs of the customer top of mind. Plus, she gave product demos and talked directly with customers to better understand their workflows so she could recommend solutions. “It’s a very diverse set of tasks,” she added. “That’s why I love it. No two days are alike.” In fact, her efforts were acknowledged last month during an awards ceremony at the 2025 NAB Show.
Koutsaris is also active in encouraging women to consider careers in technology and specifically the Pro AV industry. At the end of the day, she said it’s about representation and trying to make everyone feel included.
“When I was in engineering, we were such a small group of women. I never really saw role models that were like me,” she explained. “As my career path evolved and as I got more involved in committees and networking events, I’ve enjoyed meeting brilliant, bold and inspiring women from all walks of life – proving that your own uniqueness is often the key to your own success.”
Koutsaris shared one piece of advice for professionals who are starting their own Pro AV journeys: “Do not take advice from someone who isn’t where you want to be.” She said people have been quick to offer her advice over the years, but she doesn’t feel compelled to take it. “Being discerning is crucial,” she added. “Trust your choices and intuition.”
