GENERAL MANAGER AND PREMIER BUSINESS LEADER
I have a proven track record of creating shareholder value by building and evolving iron-clad relationships across an organization and the partner value chain.
PERSONAL PROFILE
I am a highly passionate leader with a reputation of identifying strategic opportunities, aligning disparate resources and executing to reach key objectives. My personal core competency is driving change initiatives by developing relationships across business and technical communities, with a demonstrated ability to create partnerships that produce “win-win” results. I have extensive knowledge of all aspects of the development and product lifecycle process, across both business and technical domains, for both handset and client-server platforms. I am a highly effective manager with proven leadership results across a variety of business units, organizational cultures and market conditions.
SKILLS AND AREAS OF EXPERTISE
* General Management
* Relationship Management
* Sales Enablement
* Business Development
* Operations Management
* Change Management
* Product Development
* Strategic Planning
* Network / IT Foundation
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Sprint Nextel Corporation, 1999-Present Overland Park, Kansas
Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), a Fortune 100 company with revenues over $45 Billion, offers a wide range of wireless and wireline communication and data services. In 2005, I was selected as the first internal candidate to join Sprint’s highly selective executive development program (Staff Associate program), an intense three-year rotation program intended to build officer bench strength.
Director – Mobile Broadband (October 2007 – Current)
After graduating from the Staff Associate program, I was asked to take responsibility for the Mobile Broadband and In-building Solutions lines-of-business, equating to ~$4B P&L with a staff of 22 associates. To continue the growth of the Mobile Broadband portfolio, I’ve focused the organization on four priorities: (1) augment the product line to mitigate commoditization inherent with an ‘access only’ perception while transforming the sales force toward selling stickier ‘solutions’, (2) rebuild an ailing product line positioned to offer wireline displacement while driving a larger wireless/wireline convergence strategy, (3) capitalize on the 4G investment by building a 3G/4G dual mode service, (4) and develop and execute plans to address margin concerns related to the ‘unlimited’ aspect of our product offering.
For the In-building Solutions portfolio, the emphasis has been toward operationalizing and launching AIRAVE (the first commercially available femtocell) while developing ‘cut-the-cord’ and business-grade offerings.
Director – Product Operations (February 2006 – December 2007)
In my last Staff Associate rotation, I was asked to fix the Demand Forecasting aspect of our device and accessory supply chain ($6.1B expense or 17% of Sprint’s OpEx). To improve communication and accountability, I established a Sales, Marketing and Finance demand and supply forum resulting in forecast accuracy improvements from 32% to 70%, and reduced inventory obsolescence risk from $118M to $35M.
I was then asked to absorb a displaced director staff of 54 to complete the collapse of 18 warehouses to 2 while consolidating systems to an Oracle supply chain solution. This effort resulted in $256M of OpEx savings and a 28% reduction in inventory.
In parallel, numerous customer impacting order fulfillment issues required that I self-appoint my team to be responsible for the ownership and evolution of Sprint’s Order Fulfillment and Service Establishment customer touch-point. The transformation was dramatic; orders fulfilled post SLA improved from 23% to .08% and service activation success increased from 70% to 97%. We also implemented numerous other experience improvements, such as a better packing slip, customer notification emails, a centralized order tracking system, etc.
Director – Product User Experience Design (September 2005 – February 2006)
In my second Staff Associate rotation, I led a team of 18 design and development associates to consolidate legacy Sprint and Nextel handset User Interface roadmaps into one Digital User Experience target state encompassing handset and desktop user interface mediums. The overall philosophy was to shift the emphasis from application or product functionality toward an integrated experience focused on customer benefits across our information, entertainment, messaging and personalization product categories. The resulting user interface was realized on Sprint’s response to the iPhone, the Instinct.
In parallel, my team operationalized the User Interface of all product evolution efforts across numerous software vendors and nine device Original Equipment Manufactures (OEMs).
Senior Manager—Corporate Strategy (February 2005 – September 2005)
In my first Staff Associate rotation, I led the development of a unified wireless operating system and middleware platform strategy. Once implemented, this strategy improved development cycle time from 18 months to 6, and established the baseline for our handset user experience competitive differentiator.
Senior Product Manager—Consumer Product Management (July 2004 – February 2005)
In mid 2004, I successfully lobbied to create a new team to extend our retail products to domestic and international MVNO partners. Based on input from those partners, I developed product roadmap extensions to existing product lines. Partners engaged to identify and implement new business opportunities included: AT&T, Bell Mobility, Contigo, Hutchison Telecom (3), Iusacell, KDDI, KTF, Mobile ESPN, NTT DoCoMo, Qwest Mobile, SK Telecom, Telecom New Zealand, Telstra and Virgin Mobile.
Product Manager—Consumer Product Management (May 2003 – July 2004)
After delaying the launch of ReadLink for over a year (Sprint’s VoIP-based CDMA PTT product), I was invited to join the Product organization to become the General Manager. After driving alignment across a cross-functional team on the target customer, pricing and product positioning, I was able to make the necessary decisions on launch-gating items and bring the product to market six months later. To address product performance concerns, I produced a first-of-its-kind nationwide field testing and operational readiness exercise; resulting in a successful market launch and a ‘green’ status on 86% of Tier 1 metrics within three months. I also created a patent to bridge PTT and Location-based Services titled a ‘Method and System for Location-Based Group Conference Invitation’ (Patent #7,031,700).
Program Manager—Network Services (November 2001 – May 2003)
Sprint’s organically grown product-line specific trouble ticketing systems / processes were counter to the new ‘simplify the business’ mantra. I was recruited to develop and implement a strategy to collapse 12 disparate Service Assurance ticketing systems while also addressing the associated operating processes. Result: Implemented GE’s Work-Out methodology to quickly remove unnecessary bureaucracy (still in use today), reduced operating expenses of $54M and improved ticket resolution time by 38%.
Various Development Management Positions—Information Technology (January 1999 – November 2001)
Recruited to Sprint to lead the analysis and design team for a new enterprise application integration application suite to automate order fulfillment across 13 order entry, order fulfillment and service establishment systems. This effort led to starting a separate team to redesign the way Sprint approached user needs analysis and software design (resulting in a 130% reduction in scope changes). The approach won an industry award. Lastly, I introduced an Extreme Development methodology at Sprint, resulting in the rapid collapse of 22 order management tools to 3 in 6 months.
IKON Technology Services, 1994-1999 Columbia, South Carolina / Overland Park, Kansas
IKON Technology Services is a subsidiary of IKON Office Solutions (NYSE: IKN), the world’s largest independent channel for copier, printer and MFP technologies, delivers integrated document management solutions and systems, enabling customers worldwide to improve document workflow and increase efficiency.
Various Positions
I held various positions with rapidly increasing scope of responsibility held over a five-year tenure in IKON’s internal IT support and customer software divisions.
• Led a total IT and operations re-engineering effort, resulting in more efficient processes (e.g., a decrease in month-end processing from 13 days to 3) while managing IT operations for 11 corporate sites.
• Designed, developed and deployed workflow applications to address service industry needs; one system became the first web-based real-estate application deployed in the US.
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
Rockhurst College Kansas City, MO
Master of Business Administration (MBA), December 2001: Graduated Magna Cum Laude.
University of South Carolina Columbia, SC
Bachelor of Science – Management Information Systems, May 1996: Graduated with honors. |
