Oct 2023 – Present · 2 yrs 6 mos

• Steering Committee Member, AIAG Catena-X Hub North America (since 2025)
• Architected and led the first U.S.-based dataspace pilots for Catena-X, onboarding key stakeholders—including Ford Motor Company, Flex Automotive—enabling primary CO2 data chains
• Supported negotiation of MoUs with prospective U.S. Hub partners to broaden ecosystem adoption in North America
• Orchestrating high-impact executive events and technical showcases to accelerate Catena-X-powered business growth in automotive and related industries, including:
• 2025: Ford–Flex running first CX–certified PCF apps and calculations at PwC CES booth in Las Vegas
• 2024: Live demo of Ford–Flex migration to Cofinity-X production at IMDS–AIAG summit in Detroit
• 2024: R&D meeting with NAE President, Washington, DC; Robotics exchange at Stanford University
• 2024: Debuted Ford–Flex primary CO2 data chain using CX-cert. tech at IBM CES booth in Las Vegas
• 2023: Co-organized pre-launch leadership forum with Gaia-X, IDSA, Cofinity-X in Austin, TX

Aug 2021 – Aug 2024 · 3 yrs

• Served as Principal Investigator for Deutsche Telekom in a €250M German government–backed flagship project with 28 auto partners including BMW, Bosch, Mercedes, SAP, Volkswagen, and ZF
• Product Manager (PM, SAFe-certified); part of the core leadership team driving the Catena-X Agile Release Train, alongside 2 fellow PMs, Release Train Engineer (RTE), and 2 System Architects (SAs)
• Wrote Deutsche Telekom into initial 15-page proposal and final 1,700-page project plan
• Co-led development of the ecosystem software stack—based on decentralized Web3 technologies, IDSA standards and Gaia-X trust framework; open-sourced as Tractus-X under the Eclipse Foundation, enabling first industrial-grade deployments and adoption beyond Catena-X
• Drove end-to-end requirements engineering across 14 Product Owners (POs), ensuring architectural coherence, system interoperability, and stakeholder alignment in a large, complex Agile Release Train
• Directed test strategy and execution—covering integration, end-to-end system, and release readiness, ensuring software met consortium-wide quality and compliance gates
• Oversaw quarterly software releases at scale, managing delivery pipelines with 600+ Jira features and epics per increment under the SAFe methodology

Jun 2021 – Present · 4 yrs 10 mos · Berlin, Germany

• Served as Principal Investigator for Deutsche Telekom in this €250M German Federal Ministry–funded program spanning 6 projects and approx. 80 partners
• Consortial Lead, GX 4 Advanced Mobility Services (€25M budget, 19 partners incl. DLR, Continental, Software AG)
• Product Manager, “Dataspace Network,” GX 4 Artificial Intelligence (€20M budget, 14 partners incl. Capgemini, Continental, Conweaver)
• Led the design, development, deployment, and operation of a scalable dataspace software environment for a future mobility ecosystem, in collaboration with Fraunhofer ISST
• Implemented the first Dataspace-as-a-Service, standing up a minimum viable dataspace software system compliant with Gaia-X and Eclipse EDC standards for sovereign data sharing in mobility

May 2020 – Oct 2021 · 1 yr 5 mos · Berlin, Germany

• Served as Principal Investigator for Deutsche Telekom in this €20M German Federal Ministry-funded mobility project of the National Platform Future of Mobility (NPM) with 32 partners incl. Hamburger Hochbahn, Continental, Deutsche Bahn, SAP, and Sixt; winner of Germany’s 2022 RealLab Award
• Led the design and development of an intermodal travel planning app demonstrator, built on first-generation decentralized dataspace technology (Fraunhofer, IDSA)
• Managed end-to-end delivery in coordination with internal System Architects (SAs) and Product Owners (POs) and cross-sector partners, ensuring data interoperability and regulatory compliance
• Launched the app demo at the 2021 ITS World Congress Hamburg, with Federal Minister Andreas Scheuer and Hamburger Hochbahn CEO Henrik Falk among the first official users

Jun 2018 – Present · 7 yrs 10 mos · Berlin, Germany; and San Francisco, CA

• Business lead of Telekom’s primary dataspace unit, the Data Intelligence Hub (DIH), developing innovative Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products with a unique value proposition: secure, cross-organizational data sharing that preserves data sovereignty—ensuring data providers retain full control over their data rights
• Responsible for market-driven, customer-centric business solution development, leveraging the role of Principal Investigator in large, hundred-million-euro consortia—often backed by national governments and the EU Commission—and involving dozens of multinationals and leading R&D institutions
• Key initiatives include RoX/ Manufacturing-X, Catena-X, Gaia-X 4 Future Mobility, RealLab Hamburg

Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 · 3 yrs

• Delivered decision dashboards powered by analytics and AI to shift to data-driven product development in automotive; integrated presentation layer (Tableau, MS Power BI) onto analytics engines (SAS, R, MS Azure ML) and data management (ETL, ERM, SQL):
• Automotive: In-car dashboards to help automakers pinpoint improvements of JD Power Initial Quality Study (IQS) and Vehicle Dependability Study (VDS) scores.
• Mobility: Management dashboards to help operators of electrified mobility services with (a) network and hub utilization optimization, (b) customer segmentation and recommendations, (c) pricing and churn reduction, (d) vehicle uptime and predictive maintenance.

Jan 1996 – Jan 2018 · 22 yrs

• Practice Management & New Business Development:
• Acquired own Fortune Global 100 clients (framework contracts) in automotive (Daimler, Renault-Nissan), media & communications (Deutsche Telekom, Sony).
• Orchestrated million-$ projects with (a) subcontractors, (b) fleets of test vehicles (from Tesla to Twizy), (c) real customer samples, and (d) different technology platforms.
• Managed as a General Contractor between field operations and HQs, across functions from Marketing to Engineering, and continents (US, China, Germany).
• Consulting:
• Pioneered in-car behavioral measurements for first “customer avatars” to modernize traditional demographics and survey-based optimization of customer journeys and user experience (UX) satisfaction:
• Improved (a) new vehicle interiors (“World’s Best Car”), (b) on-board systems (telematics, HVAC, controls), (c) services (flex lease, usage-based insurance, remote diagnostics), and (d) return on marketing investments (RoMI).
• Contributed to: 150-400% higher feature RoI, 20% faster development and trade-off resolution, accelerated service speeds of 25-100%.
• Developed and supported implementation of business cases for online startups of Fortune Global 100 clients:
• “Facebook”-type social network and Direct-To-Consumer service for Sony Europe.
• “Amazon” e-tailing with 1-to-1 marketing for Metro AG in Germany.

Jan 2013 – Present · 13 yrs 3 mos · Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

• Founder and Director of Drucker Customer Lab, https://research.cgu.edu/drucker-customer-lab/
• Master classes: "Data Analytics", "Smart Products/ IoT"
• 40+ refereed academic papers and book chapters, a book on computational business simulations, and a wargaming simulation software using AI

Jan 2004 – Jan 2013 · 9 yrs

• Affiliated with the USC Institute for Communication Technology Management (CTM), a hub for digital tech research, executive education, and industry collaboration
• Contributed through scientific research and, via my firm Pacific Coast Research Inc., by acquiring and delivering funded collaboration projects, including partnership with Intel

Jan 1999 – Jan 2004 · 5 yrs

• Co-founded and responsible for the Special Interest Group on "Agent-based Systems" of the Association of Information Systems/AIS (Wirtschaftsinformatik)
• Taught "IS Strategy" (MBA, Ph.D.), "IS Analysis & Design" and "Networks and E-Commerce" (both undergraduate)
• Created the first analytics course on “Designing E-Business Models” at U.S. business school
• Advised and co-advised Ph.D. projects in Information Systems, including … ICIS global top winner/ “world’s best Ph.D.” … and runner-up/ No. 2

Jan 2001 – Aug 2001 · 7 mos

• Taught “Designing E-Business Models”; co-advised successfully completed local Ph.D. project

Jan 1993 – Jan 1996 · 3 yrs · Frankfurt, Germany; Manhattan, NYC; Palo Alto, CA

• “Information Superhighway” projects in New York City; 1995 transfer to “Center for Strategic Technology” in Palo Alto on Page Mill road
• Mobile online services, e-publishing platforms, "content versus pipes" wargaming simulations