Mar 2019 – Present · 7 yrs 1 mo · Greater Seattle Area

• Career development expert now teaching specific classes to overcome career blockages.
• I retired from Amazon in September 2020 to allow me to focus on paying forward my good fortune to others. My focus is on helping people reach the next level in their careers. I work with clients at Amazon, Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Airbnb, Stripe, Uber, Salesforce, as well as customers in banking, consumer goods, and other industries.
• I teach lives course online, offer on-demand leadership development recorded courses, and write a newsletter that publishes candid career advice. I hold 70+ patents, have reviewed over 10,000 resumes and interviewed more than 2,500 people, led global teams of 800+, and helped advocate for and draft the Amazon Leadership Principle (LP) “Ownership”.
• My specialties include fine-tuning resumes and LinkedIn profiles to get results, as well as executive career development.

Jan 2004 – Mar 2005 · 1 yr 2 mos

• Responsible for hardware and software development, manufacturing, QA, IT, HR, Support, Installation, and Training. Lightspace makes interactive display surfaces using LEDs. See our web site at www.lightspacecorp.com

Jul 2001 – Dec 2003 · 2 yrs 5 mos

• Our business: ad insertion in streaming media
• Brought in to turnaround situation, after termination of previous VP.
• Quickly determined who was committed and wanted to stay (most) and who needed to go (some)
• Over the next 2.5 years, led the technology team through tough post-bubble years after 9/11, which hit the Internet advertising industry very hard.
• Won AOL as a customer, who would later acquire Lightningcast.

Jan 1998 – Jan 2001 · 3 yrs

• CoManage was in the carrier network management and provisioning space; our initial major customer was Rodgers (AT&T) Canada. The company was ultimately bought by another network management firm, which was in turn acquired by a third.
• I led all aspects of the technical support infrastructure, including QA, IT, documentation, training, professional services, customer support, pre-sales support, HR, Recruiting, and facilities.
• Sixth person at the company; first person post funding. Grew team from 0 to 30 and led overall growth of company from 6 to 150.
• Saw company through B and C rounds of funding and three expanded space build outs. Delivered initial product to customers in full production.

Jan 1998 – Jan 1998 · 0 mo

• Led QA and Build/Release management for Lycos in both its Boston HQ and Pittsburgh, PA acquired subsidiary, Wisewire Corporation.

Jan 1998 – Jan 1998 · 0 mo

• Briefly led QA, IT, and DBAs for 6 weeks, when the company was acquired by Lycos.

Jan 1994 – Jan 1998 · 4 yrs

• Proposed the idea of an internal interoperability lab for FORE Systems, to identify and eliminate problems between components in our product lines. Products included a homogeneous mix of devices from acquired companies as well as third party partnerships.
• Budgetted for new lab, designed physical space in new building. Hired and trained staff of about 10.

Jan 1993 – Jul 1994 · 1 yr 6 mos · Greater Pittsburgh Region

• Work as a part of the Vision and Autonomous Systems Center within the Robotics Institute to apply computer vision to industrial automation; negotiated system sale and deployment to Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) factory in Brilon, Germany. This was a blast - it was here that I learned that all you had to do to close some "sales" deals was ask the people if they wanted to do whatever it was you were proposing and were willing to pay. Coffee is for closers - OK, I'm happy to ask for the deal.