SENIOR TECHNICAL LEADER AND BUSINESS STRATEGIST
Ph.D. with unique combination of technical, business and people skills. Equally comfortable discussing market segmentation and conjoint studies with marketing, budgets and IRRs with finance, contracts and regulatory issues with legal, issues and requirements with customers, or technical details with developers. Recognized for ability to lead with a clear, long-term vision, and pragmatic execution plans. Experienced in strategic analysis, product management, full-lifecycle development, and mission-critical operations. Analytical, market-driven, entrepreneurial style.
2000 - Present
SEVERAL BILLION DOLLAR TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY
TECHNOLOGY VICE PRESIDENT
Joined as a technology Vice President, responsible for evaluating next generation video, voice and data technologies, products and services. I soon became involved in current development efforts, also. Company's billion-dollar digital set top box development project faced scalability issues and patent-related constraints on a core application. Stepping in to address the issues, I:
* Reviewed a heavily-litigated third-party portfolio including over 100 patents, identifying unnecessary constraints. Convinced senior management that new counsel was required, and worked with the General Counsel to interview and select new outside counsel. Within several months, their work far surpassed the results of the prior year and a half. I have since served as focal point for all patent matters.
* Drove modification of the application to incorporate critical functionalities previously omitted, and restructured it for scalability, living within the established system framework. Upon launch, the application served more pages than all other applications combined, using a fraction of the servers.
After handoff of operations, I have continued to guide the production team in planning maintenance and upgrades, tuning system configuration, resolving issues with third-party software, and systems failure troubleshooting.
In my strategic technology role, I regularly work with corporate stakeholders and outside vendors to ensure that new products will satisfy Company's long-term strategic needs. For example, early in the set top box program, I collaborated with the VP, Affinity Programs to identify, and work into vendor's plan, a hardware modification necessary for the set top box smartcard readers to be compliant with the EMV standard. This modification allowed important flexibility in considering future electronic commerce business models.
I regularly conduct technical diligence for vendor selections and potential investments, and conduct or participate in subsequent licensing and partnership negotiations. Among the more significant, I:
* Conducted and supervised technical diligence for a public technology company, including evaluation of pending patent infringement lawsuits. Together with the Assistant General Counsel, I negotiated very favorable licensing and joint venture terms as part of a $17.5 million investment and license agreement. Later, I participated in the negotiation of a cross-license to settle one suit, and evaluation of an acquisition to settle the other.
* Conducted technical diligence for $15 million pre-IPO investment in a major toy manufacturer.
* Participated in selection, diligence, requirements specification and negotiation of several hundred million dollar equipment and services agreement with a major technology vendor.
In 2002, my title was changed to my current technology Vice President title, to reflect my expanded responsibilities, including:
* Participating in the development of a major new line of business, to which more than $300 million has already been committed. Responsible for evaluating technologies and vendors for the planned business, advising the Chairman and business team on viable technical options and strategies, and assisting in management of selected technology vendors. I participate in most aspects of the business development effort, including user interface design, operations planning, market research, and negotiations for content rights.
* Educating the Product Management group on technical issues and their business implications. For example, I developed a detailed utilization and cost model for video on demand (VOD), to make clear the actual financial characteristics of our VOD businesses, and to facilitate more accurate estimates of future capacity requirements. The analysis additionally provided a basis for understanding the business cases for device-based and network-based personal video recorder (PVR) services, being considered for the future.
* Representing Company within CableLabs standards efforts, and occasional public activities, such as addressing the sell-side analyst community at CableLabs' Financial Analyst Conference.
* Representing Company in negotiations between cable operators and consumer electronic manufacturers, to enable digital cable-ready televisions and devices.
1995 - 2000
IBM CORPORATION
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
During four years with the Networking Software Division, I progressed from developer, to team leader, to Group Technical Lead, to Chief Designer driving all aspects of a year-long development lifecycle involving more than 80 developers and testers. I represented my group in IETF, worked extensively with other products and divisions, and produced two patents (with two others still pending). I was recognized with a Blue Ribbon Award, an Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, and promotion to Senior Software Engineer (a level most never reach, at IBM.)
1999 - 2000 SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER (TIVOLI SYSTEMS subsidiary)
In my fifth year, I became a Senior Product Manager in a new Tivoli Systems business unit that had "acquired" my development group. In that role, I worked with the Directors of Product Management, Marketing, Sales and Development, to reposition our product within a new portfolio of products, targeting the service provider market.
1998 - 1999 CHIEF DESIGNER, SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER
In early 1998, the CommServer/390 Director of Development asked me to help rehabilitate a project that had failed to ship, after a year and a half of development. I designed and led implementation of security for an initial release of the product that the VP of Development required to "capture mindshare," and demonstrate that new management could deliver results. After four months, I rolled off to lead the second release. As Chief Designer, I:
* Led the organization in transforming the product from a single-server applet management solution to a cross-platform, standards-based, scalable, multi-server, Java application management system. Resulting product provided enterprise-class infrastructure for development of Java applets, applications, servlets, and EJBs, and was positioned as a personalization and portal component for IBM's then-nascent WebSphere.
* Integrated with IBM's WebSphere, DB2 and LDAP directory server products, working with those and other groups to standardize a directory schema for interoperation across IBM products.
* Drove a development and test team of more than 80 people, through full lifecycle development. Together with the Chief Programmer, undertook day-to-day responsibilities for managing development, and delivered the product on Windows, AIX, Solaris and OS/390, in ten languages, on schedule, seven months after the first release. Delivered a subset as a component for personalization in IBM's Host on Demand.
1996 - 1997 TEAM LEADER, GROUP TECHNICAL LEAD
In 1996, I was asked to work on OS/390 server support for the IBM Network Station (network computer). This AS/400 product reflected its original conception as a dumb terminal replacement with each device tethered to the server from which it booted. AS/400's multi-platform strategy was independent development for each additional server platform (OS/390, AIX and Windows NT). Serving as primary liaison to AS/400, I pushed for roaming user support, and a common codebase across all server platforms. Both were rejected by AS/400, but were embraced by the teams responsible for all other platforms. Leading the OS/390 development team, I:
* Led development of a portable codebase, fully packaged as an OS/390 product, and supplied as common source code to the AIX and Windows teams. Fully incorporated in the AS/400 second release.
* Defined a platform-independent remote authentication and configuration protocol to support user roaming. Led development of a common authentication client, and a portable authentication daemon. Later adopted by both AS/400 and other network computer vendors, including Sun, as an interoperable standard.
In 1997, I was made the CommServer/390 Group Technical Lead for network computing, dynamic IP, and email.
1995 - 1996 ADVISORY SOFTWARE ENGINEER
Upon joining IBM, I quickly established myself as a high-performing individual developer and team leader, working on a portable SNA/APPN network stack. I also developed an eye for improving processes and logistics. For example, I led a small team that restructured our entire codebase, reducing compilation time by an order of magnitude, enabling builds and automated regression to complete nightly, and making intraday builds possible.
1994 - 1995
LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY, Los Alamos, New Mexico
TECHNICAL STAFF MEMBER
Joined the Distributed Computing Environments Group as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, working primarily on the Sunrise project - prototyping infrastructure to link, and provide seamless remote access to, geographically-distributed data and computing facilities. Designed and implemented the security architecture for this CORBA system, developing an extensible, polymorphic, object-oriented C++ cryptography library, a Kerberos-like, public-key authentication system, and a reusable technique for securing CORBA method calls. Promoted to Technical Staff Member, upon first eligibility.
PH.D. COMPUTER SCIENCE, 1993
M.S. SYSTEMS AND INFORMATION SCIENCE, 1990
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
Specialized in parallel and distributed computing, working under the direction of a world-renowned Distinguished Professor. I achieved the rare distinction of having my thesis published in its entirety, as a book - in the prestigious Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
B.S. ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING (with distinction), 1988
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Essentials Of Marketing, May 2003.
Essentials Of Management, December 2002/January 2003
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
PERSONAL
Age 35
Married, with children |
