Mary Ellen Seravalli is the VP and General Counsel of BroadSoft Inc, with prior in-house experience at The Mills Corp, ScoreBoard, ORBCOMM Global and Orbital Sciences. She managed the legal aspects of BroadSoft's IPO on a short timeline in 2010, and was part of the group that rang the opening bell on NASDAQ. Mary Ellen tells us the company recently transitioned from only providing its service through a perpetual software license, to one where it also gives service provider customers the option to use software-as-a-service, where BroadSoft hosts and manages the software on customers' behalf. BroadSoft has also acquired businesses in Finland, Bulgaria, England and Germany over the last several years. As BroadSoft continues to expand its SaaS offering geographically, the company will need to understand the regulatory and business environment, including data privacy rules, in many additional jurisdictions.

What you didn't know about Mary Ellen:

• When starting law school she never intended to practice as a lawyer; she planned to use her legal skills to work on public policy matters.

• She's an avid gardener.

• A huge Jimmy Fallon fan, she has a picture with him after they met a couple of years ago outside a restaurant in New York City.

• She has a model in her office of the L-1011 plane that acts as the first stage for Orbital's Pegasus rocket.