Profile
Senior executive with 25+ years of global leadership experience in technology, operations, and creative content development for companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Johnson Controls and General Electric. Skilled in stimulating innovation and developing talent, while empowering accountability and performance in large global organizations. Repeatedly selected to lead organizational turnaround efforts, overachieving goals while building sustainable and collaborative team environments. Broad experience in mergers and acquisitions, and vendor technology assessments with latest resulting in a $25MM acquisition. Demonstrated ability to adapt to new technology and business domains with exceptional results.
Experience
2013 to Present:
Amazon.com
March 2013 to Present: Director, Global Imaging & Creative Services
Led the Amazon Product Imaging and Creative Services organization with 1,200 employees and 2,000 Contractors/Freelancers, operating across 45 facilities in 13 countries with 6 future facilities under development. Team produced both high-volume content (product images, graphics, customer service videos, ux designs & widgets) and custom content (product and service branding, end-to-end media campaigns, editorial photography, launch videos, web site design and social media content), supported by software development, device manufacturing, and operations teams. Served internal businesses partners on an ‘at will’ basis, with business teams able to seek out and use other agencies to achieve their goals, if desired.
• Grew opex budget from $46M to $175M, locations from 17 to 45, and employees from 452 to 1200. Additionally, managed in excess of $25M in capex each year, grew attributed revenue $100M
• Grew annual production of unique products imaged from 1.2M to 4.3M, graphics from 40k to 240k, videos from 25 to 2500, and unique brand/campaigns/ux designs from zero to 250
• Decreased costs, on a per unit basis, 40%, while reducing quality defects from 2.4% to .63%
o Developed an automated image pipeline for QA and retouch algorithms, achieving full automation (zero human touch) for 68% and 26% of the images, respectively
o Introduced 3 new automated photography devices, decreasing costs and improving quality
o Introduced reflective media (green screen technology) to improve quality and reduce costs
o Grew low cost country in-sourcing usage 312% for high-volume manual processes
• Acquired ShoeFitr to jump start 3D imaging and improve customer purchasing experience.
• Grew a small $1MM web graphics team into a $50MM full service global creative advertising agency within 2.5 years
• Established Creative Off-set time, allowing creative talent to experiment, build a portfolio and gain feedback from an expert panel. Introduced to grow creative team member’s capabilities, while providing input into the annual review process and promotion readiness
• Developed revolutionary, inexpensive state-of-the-art light box to radically improve product imagery for small global merchants while using a simple cell phone camera
• Built two world class fashion and editorial studios (Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 40k sq. ft. and Shoreditch, London, 46k sq. ft.) and a state of the art audio/video studio (Seattle, 15k sq. ft.)
2006 to 2013:
Microsoft
2012 to March 2013: Online Services Capacity, Hardware & Data Center Leader
Responsible for setting strategy, selection, procurement, implementation, utilization & decommissioning of serving capacity globally for Microsoft Online Services, encompassing more than 1M servers spread across a global footprint of Data Centers. Responsible for selecting and coupling new server hardware to infrastructure automation software (autopilot), as well as developing automation capabilities & tools to drive improved utilization.
• Negotiated commitments to purchase >150,000 servers, Deployed >100,000 servers, decommissioned >45,000
• Instantiated servers and services in 2 new data centers
• Improved utilization by >5% across all environments
2010 to 2012:
Infrastructure Development/Service Engineering Leader (Bing Maps/Mobile, MSN)
Global Team of 175 across 7 sites in 4 countries; Requested to lead organization, after a large scale Microsoft-wide re-organization, to drive drastically improved team performance and reduced costs. Responsible for live-site architecture, availability, performance, monitoring, automation tools as well as cogs/opex/capex budgets (> $100M). In 18 months:
• Reduced annual costs by >30%
• Improved end user availability by .06% to 99.96%
• Eliminated 50 full time positions and 10s of thousands of servers while usage increased 20%.
• Drove creation of server role and user scenario based CTS model (Cost to Serve) & Capacity calculators to drive improved development, business development and capacity planning
2008 to 2010:
Principal Software Architect, Virtual Earth (Bing Maps) & MSN Core Platforms
Responsible for creating and driving implementation of a new distributed delivery architecture. Drove transition to internal global Cache Delivery Network (CDN) & Globally Distributed Compute nodes (>17) using virtualization on a new automated operations platform. Improved End User performance and created ‘always on’ Business Continuity Plan. Reduced year-over-year Capex/Opex costs by >20%.
2006 to 2008:
Sr. Director, Business Strategy, Process & Operations – Microsoft IT
Chief of Staff for IT VP, responsible for Rhythm of the Business, Headcount, Budget, Scorecards & Transformation initiatives:
• Revenue Attribution Accuracy Initiative – Driving business process, application developent and system integration to improve customer Revenue Attribution Data Quality
o Developed application to clean core customer data and appropriately land revenue
o Created Data Quality Scorecard Metric, improving quality by 70% in 13 months, ahead of plan
o Returned more than 1hr of selling time per week to each of ~20K Field Sellers
• Led Single Customer Database Initiative (MIO) through first wave of Enterprise System integrations
• Business Excellence & Six Sigma – Transforming to a data driven culture by increasing certified Green Belts by more than 150% and doubling Black Belts. Created pipeline of 85 CM impacting projects
Microsoft IT Investment Portfolio Leader – Expanded, matured and standardized MSIT Investment Prioritization Process across 3 Investment Portfolios worth in excess of $400M with 17 Executive Leadership Teams
2006:
Stryker Medical
Primary Subject Matter Expert for Software Merger & Acquisition engagement, provided:
• Product architecture, technology and intellectual property (IP) assessments
• Strategic organizational fit/gap analysis and Evaluations of key management and technical resources
2003 to 2006:
Johnson Controls (JCI) – Global Automotive Group
2004 to 2006:
Global Manager, Product Development & Launch Systems Development
Chosen to re-form organization to invigorate flagging multi-year PLM initiative. Team of 100+. Led custom Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) application development and support, based on Matrix One software platform for 10,000+ unique daily users. Functionality included: PDM, Real time Engineering Collaboration and Markup, Document Management, Program Quotation and Pricing, BoM Management, Release to MFG, and Global File Replication.
• Increased platform usage/adoption 83% by improving performance (75%) and usability (80%)
• Decreased labor costs 28%
• Multiple integrations: SAP, CAD, MFG/pro, and Custom applications.
• Responsible for vendor relationships: HP, Matrix One, Oracle, IBM, TCS
2003 to 2004:
Manager, Global IT Architecture Services
Hired to create Global Architecture team to support globalization of business model, system simplification, and reduce cost structure. Team of 30+ responsible for providing enterprise architecture vision, re-usable solution building blocks, technical & performance standards and processes, as well as final signoff on all IT projects. Provided new development and 24/7 support for core enterprise applications (EAI, SSO, Web & J2EE application services). Created SOX compliance program, BI architecture team (to drive extensive Data Warehouse expansion), led SAP architectural assessment and support team, and conducted multiple supply chain vendor capability assessments. Responsible for vendor relationships (HP, Netegrity, IBM, TCS).
1999 to 2003:
General Electric (GE) – Industrial Systems
2003: North America Manufacturing Systems Manager
Team of 70+ Responsible for new development, adoption, quality assurance, and 24/7 production support for multiple ERP systems: Primary focus on consolidation to two strategic custom applications; a AS400 based Mapics/J2EE/RPG Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for 48 plants; and a Cobol/Mainframe based ‘Order, Ship, Bill’ System, processing $4B in transactions annually. Additionally, led Plant level IT support for 60 locations in North America.
2001 to 2003:
Global Engineering IT Systems & Workflow Development Center of Excellence Leader
Team of 100+ initially tasked with driving dramatically accelerated delivery timelines for delayed program, then expanded PLM modules beyond engineering, improving performance/scalability and migrating engineering team into IT organization. Led custom development, quality assurance, 24/7 production support & adoption for a fully integrated & globally replicated PLM & Document Management application for 7,500+ unique daily users across 10 design centers and 100+ manufacturing sites (driving paperless shop floor initiative). Multiple integrations: Mainframe, SAP, CAD, Mapics, Siebel, and Custom applications. Co-developed Program, Supplier, Laboratory, and Document Mgmt modules with leading PLM vendor.
• Developed and Negotiated a ‘for profit’ multi-million dollar business partnership with PLM vendor and created development organization to implement software development agreement
• Representative on GE-wide Technology Commercialization (IP) and Engineering Systems Councils
• Awarded GE IT Excellence Award in 2003 by Gary Reiner (GE CIO) for PLM development project
2000 to 2001:
Global Enterprise IT Architecture Leader
Team of 20. Drove the Global IT Technical Strategy and creation of a Standard Technology Stack, which included implementing an n-tiered, J2EE / oracle based shared environment for all new application development (custom & ootb). Led Architecture, Security, Web & Application Services, Systems Monitoring, EAI and mid-range system administration teams. Conducted Functional and Technical reviews on all IT projects. Responsible for vendor assessment, selection, relationship management (Satyam, IBM, BMC, GXS, Mercury, Netegrity, Netscape, Sun, Empirix, Siebel).
• Led GE-Honeywell Unix & Web Services M&A Integration Team for 8 months, until EU rejected merger
• Led efforts to create Data Management Function and hired first Data Architect and Team Manager
1999 to 2000:
eBusiness Application Architect
Led start-up Commercial & Technical Development Teams to design, develop and implement award winning customer/distributor self-service B2B web site with order management, product catalog, product configuration & pricing systems. Led company’s intranet revitalization efforts. Implemented standard web development processes and java architecture & tool suite. Conducted vendor assessment, selection and negotiated agreements for: IBM WebSphere, Saqqara (a web-based product catalog), and On-Link (now Siebel, a web-based product configurator and up-selling tool)
1995 to 1999:
USMC IT Program Leader / Officer Recruiter
Recruiter, Regional Recruiting Manager and IT Program Manager
Evaluated as #1 of 11 regional managers and Awarded Navy Commendation Medal for exceeding personal & territory recruiting, selection, and retention goals four consecutive years. (U.S.M.C. Officer Candidates must possess a college degree and graduate from OCS to qualify for a Commission; Programs have a rigorous selection process, no obligation requirement, and program participation may last > 4 years)
Conceived, Developed & Implemented web-based application to automate the process of recruiting, associated administration and reporting, increasing each satellite office’s recruiting productivity by reducing administrative time by 75% and increasing hit rates for new candidates.
• Implemented system across 11 regional and 30 satellites offices, while actively recruiting and managing a recruiting region
• Collaborated with extended team to develop MarineOfficer.com in 1996, the first officer specific website created to market directly to college students/grads and provide automated workflow to appropriate programs and recruiters
1988 to 1995:
USMC Attack Helicopter Pilot (AH-1W SuperCobra)
Aviation Group Operations Manager – Cited for “efficient & effective management of scarce resources” during helicopter operations under combat conditions for a 1200 person / 54 helicopter aviation task force.
Intelligence Department Manager – Drove mission preparation and intelligence accuracy by digitizing threat briefings, standardizing processes and establishing a cross-functional training program for a 400 person / 27 helicopter squadron.
Aviation Maintenance Division Manager – Led aviation ordnance & maintenance teams during live operations. Designed and implemented automated solution to manage and utilize globally disbursed aviation ammunition assets.
Education & Training
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY – Cognitive Science
(Natural Language Understanding)
Microsoft Manager of Managers Leadership Excellence Course – 2008
Stat-A-Matrix Lead Auditor Certification – 2006
University of Kentucky Lean MFG Fast Course Coach – 2006
Six Sigma Master Black Belt – 2006
Center for Creative Leadership (La Jolla, Ca): Looking Glass Experience – 2006
GE Crotonville:
Change Acceleration Process (CAP) Coaches Workshop – 2003
Advanced Information Managers Course (AIMC) – 2001
Multi-Program Management Course – 2000
GE Six Sigma:
Black Belt Training – 2003
DFSS & DMAIC: Green Belt – 2001
Koala-T: Advanced Project Management – 1999
Achieve Global: Professional Selling Skills (for Executive Recruiters) – 1995
Naval Flight School, Pensacola, FL (Fixed Wing & Helicopter) – 1988-1991
US Marine Corps Officer Leadership Training (TBS, OCS, NROTC Scholarship) – 1984-89
Distance/Marathon Runner – last race: Disney World Dopey Challenge (48.6 mile)
