About Me

I am an engineer, technologist, and overall problem-solver who specializes in product management and solution architecture.

Specialties:

  • Product management
  • Solution architecture
  • Software & web development
  • Agile software development methodology
  • Customers relationships
  • Business strategy
  • Contract administration and negotiation
  • Partnership development
  • Digital marketing, including online/email marketing campaigns and social marketing
  • Online community strategy and implementation
  • Event strategy, including conferences and trade-shows

Personally, I have a deep technology background that spans software development (C/C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Javascript, Node, Cordova, Angular, Android), web development (HTML/CSS/Javascript, Drupal expert, Bootstrap), IT, and a twelve year chip design & verification engineering tenure in the semiconductor industry. I have no problem getting my hands dirty in software and hardware to evaluate technology first-hand.

Director of Product at Integritas

I bring order to chaos via sound product management guidance for our clients. Because Integritas is focused on building successful products, my role involves partnering with our clients to think through the software to be developed, the product-feature roadmap, and their overall business strategy from monetization to marketing. Oftentimes my guidance is to build less and test more.

Internally, I provide technical and process oversight across all projects.

Product Management, Community and Partnerships at Sapling Learning

Product manager and business owner for digital textbook business at Sapling Learning:

  • Engaged with customers and drove product strategy, including feature roadmap to increase sales and usage of digital texts

  • Developed user stories for our internal development team

  • Negotiated and administrated our publisher contracts

  • Designed and executed marketing experiments

  • Trained inside and outside sales teams

  • Visited customers on-site as necessary to help close business

Devised strategy for online communities to engage existing users and prospective customers, and by creating partnerships to grow our market reach.

  • Developed strategy, created website, marketed and successfully launched the Flipped Chemistry community for chemistry educators. Grew membership to hundreds of a difficult-to-reach chemistry professors demographic within months of launch.

  • Plan, establish, and manage all external partnerships to expand our market reach with Sapling Learning’s products and accelerate online community growth.

  • Develop marketing collateral for marketing website, email communication, and conference promotion.

  • Worked cross-functionally to explore new product offerings and perform marketing experiments.

Building Community in Austin

In 2007 I founded Door64 to serve the high-tech sector in Austin, Texas through targeted initiatives and events. Over six years I grew the Door64 community to 30,000 members, and produced over 100 events from networking happy hours, job fairs, conferences, and other targeted engagements tied to specific career or educational results that directly benefit the Austin-area technology community. Countless technology professionals found jobs, employers found their critical tech hires, companies found new business leads, and new employers arrived and grew in Austin through this unique and focused approach to community engagement.

Software Development

I kicked off my life-long love of programming in the early 1980’s when my parents gave me a Commodore VIC-20 for my eighth birthday. I taught myself BASIC, was programming in assembly language by sixth grade, and by high school I moved on to Pascal. Today, I am fluent in:

  • C/C++
  • Java
  • PHP
  • Perl
  • JavaScript
  • Assembly (PowerPC, 68K, etc.)
  • Verilog, VHDL (hardware design)
  • And lots more I’m forgetting…

Web Development

I have been a Drupal developer since 2007, and I’m a big fan of the platform. I am especially adept at understanding the problem, creating an 80% solution using existing Drupal modules, and developing the other custom 20% as needed. Some of my work: Sapling Learning, Flipped Chemistry.

For the sake of making a list…

  • HTML & CSS
  • Drupal (everything, including setup & administration, custom module development, custom theme creation)
  • Bootstrap
  • Node
  • Angular, Ionic
  • Cordova
  • Linux (began in mid-1990’s around kernel 1.3)
  • Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Linode (i.e. setting up new web servers from scratch)

Semiconductors

I worked twelve years in the semiconductor industry both as a Product Engineer and a Design Verification Engineer, focusing on embedded PowerPC-based SoC’s. I specialized in verification methodology and test bench design, infrastructure, and development. Don’t get me started: I’m prone to pontificating about the complexity and advances in semiconductor technology, and will cure anyone of taking microchips for granted.

And more…

Teaching is intertwined in me, and honestly it comes naturally. I gave tutorials at my local Commodore computer club in middle school, teaching adults four times my age. Today, I tutor kids in math and science, and hopefully can impart to them my enthusiasm for those subjects.

I love the outdoors (as long as it’s not August in Texas): hiking deep in the woods away from everything, or mountain biking on Town Lake. Sometimes I’ll catch a Bob Schneider show or the Scabs, or I’ll listen to my favorite bands like the Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, or OAR. I own a guitar and tinker occasionally, but I’m far from good. And last but not least, I absolutely love playing with my kids as much as I can.

Education

Articles