Jul 2024 – Present · 1 yr 9 mos

• Experienced technologist for more than 20 years. Concerned citizen. Responsible and proud Luddite (ask me why). Taking a break from corporate America to do my own thing. Available for 1:1 coaching upon request.

Oct 2023 – Jul 2024 · 9 mos

• Led a multidisciplinary team of full-time software engineers, a UX designer, a Learning Content Designer and a Product Manager as part of an internal startup with the aim of building a mobile financial literacy product for a teenage audience.
• Provided strategic support and vision as well as direct technical oversight, individual coaching, mentoring and training support for a team of up-skilling and re-skilling employees.
• My time was divided between 1:1's with direct reports, writing detailed tasks and milestones in Jira, diagraming application workflows in Lucid Charts, reviewing github pull requests from software developers and sharing technical advice, reviewing Figma wireframes and design concepts, working closely with a product manager to iterate, test and validate our strategy and meet goals, working with our Learning Design lead to shape, organize and scope our content strategy, self-directed technical and leadership up-skilling, engaging in team meetings, and reporting up to senior leadership.
• Successfully took a new team from onboarding, forming and storming in a startup environment to design & build phase 1 in 3 months. In those 3 months we self-organized to formulate our mission, vision, business plan, technical plan, content plan, initial design plan, individual training plans, vendor partner shortlist, project timeline and quarterly roadmaps. We received high praise from our highest paying subscribers when we showcased the product vision at our annual member event.

Nov 2020 – Jun 2024 · 3 yrs 7 mos

• Sought-after Career Coach with a reputation for being empathetic, honest, and knowledgeable about the internal politics and dynamics of the company and how to thrive or grow in your role. Individually coached and supported coworkers from across the company in multiple disciplines: tech, design, investing analysis, customer service, legal services, and investing operations.

Feb 2020 – Oct 2023 · 3 yrs 8 mos

• Served as the Steward of Team Happiness, Engagement and Positive Outcomes. I employed a human-first approach to management that prioritized psychological safety, building camaraderie, frequently reevaluating our team norms, consistent, weekly 1:1 meetings and fostering a culture of learning, experimentation and collaboration.
• Hired, onboarded and managed 5 full-time direct reports across design and full-stack software development, plus 6 contractors on temporary assignments.
• Coached, mentored and provided technical and managerial oversight. Responsible for salary and bonus allocation, tracking team alignment and efficiency, and individual performance and growth.
• Consistent track record of achieving high RPE, high employee engagement and morale - statistically at times much higher than the company average engagement score for Tech as measured by Culture Amp surveys.
• Consistently received very positive feedback from direct reports through anonymous surveying, gaining a reputation at the company for being a top manager.
• Organized team outings, fun virtual events, team brainstorming meetings and coding hackathons.
• Liaised with Marketing Managers, Product Managers, Project Managers, Business Owners and Data Leaders to keep my team informed and aligned with goals across our global business.
• Helped establish a pattern of team alumni's who would go on to do even greater things at the company in other roles.

Dec 2015 – Feb 2020 · 4 yrs 2 mos

• Hired, onboarded and managed a team of full-stack software developers & 1 designer, building & maintaining a suite of investment services products that leveraged cloud hosting, international payment gateways and a heavily customized WordPress CMS to enable the editorial, product & marketing needs of our business across 5 countries.
• Roughly 40/60 split between coaching & management and individual contributions to the codebase as well as a significant impact as a devops engineer in helping to streamline our processes and accelerate the whole team.
• Designed and coded up an internal tool to display realtime sales from commerce transactions in 5 countries using meteorJS, React and mongoDB. The tool was highly regarded and enjoyed by many business and marketing stakeholders. I often received praise for building something useful and fun. It featured sound fx and fun congratulatory animations whenever certain sales goals were met, so it served as both information and motivation.
• Architected a streamlined developer environment for the software dev team using Vagrant, Virtualbox Puppet and Ansible, as well as API requests and database migrations. Later, worked with another devops engineer to convert this system over to docker containers and workflows.

Jul 2011 – Dec 2015 · 4 yrs 5 mos

• Senior developer building out the International suite of websites including Fool Australia, Fool Canada, Fool Singapore, Fool Germany & Fool UK on a WordPress + Vindicia ecommerce stack utilizing custom plugins, themes and libraries written in-house. Responsible for WordPress & PHP5 expertise, Vagrant & Ansible devops, Jenkins continuous integration workflow & slack jokes.

Mar 2009 – Jun 2011 · 2 yrs 3 mos

• Collaborate with .NET developers, business reps, Scrum Masters and User Experience Designer's in an agile scrum environment to develop and maintain the family of Motley Fool websites and premium services. Focus primarily on writing W3C Standard's compliant XHTML, CSS and Javascript (Prototype Framework). Lots of exposure and interaction with OOP code written in C# for ASP.NET 3.5, some work with older WebForms controls and MVP pattern. Recent highlights include working on the CAPS community intelligence platform and being the Front-end Developer for a mobile web initiative to bring premium content to Iphone and Android devices, along the way learning ASP.NET MVC

Dec 2004 – Dec 2008 · 4 yrs · Detroit Metropolitan Area · On-site

• Web Standards (W3C) programming (XHTML/CSS), JSP, PHP, JavaScript, WordPress customization and plugin development, Flash video plugin customization, site maintenance and Interface Design (Photoshop) for clients including GM, Chevrolet, U.S Navy, USPS, Farmer's Insurance and for Campbell-Ewald.com. All code handwritten in Bbedit. Occasionally involved in campaign strategy discussions for U.S Navy. Responsible for training sessions on WordPress usage for non-technical teams. Writing documentation on programming techniques, maintenance procedures and best practices. Wrote articles on marketing, advertising, digital strategy and social media as part of an in-house collaborative blog called 'The next engine'.

Sep 2003 – Mar 2004 · 6 mos · Toledo, Ohio Metropolitan Area · On-site

• Web Standards programming (XHTML/CSS), temporary contract (on-site)

Nov 2002 – Jan 2010 · 7 yrs 2 mos · Remote

• Freelance for hire since 2002. Specializing in Web Development, Graphic Design and IA. Small to medium sized websites developed on Apache/PHP5, often using WordPress as a lightweight CMS. Wireframes, user-flow diagrams & sitemaps drawn in Omnigraffle. Have built, designed & architected websites for photographic studios, law firms, insurance providers, software companies, retail industry, cd manufacturers, online education providers and the travel industry.