About
Originally from New York and a graduate of Tufts University and Johns Hopkins University (MS in Business and Technology), I spent the early part of my career working at large consulting firms (Accenture, Grant Thornton) and eventually made my way across the country until I landed in San Francisco and joined my first startup during the original 'dot-com' days.
The combination of my consulting background and the diverse set of roles I have played for a number of startups has allowed me to remain technical (writing code in Python/Django, PHP, JavaScript/jQuery and designing and managing large-scale databases with MySQL and Oracle) while being comfortable working with C-Level executives or speaking to large global audiences (including speaking in front of over 1,000 people at a number of VMware events). My consulting background has helped me grow a distributed network of technical talent for projects that have more complexity and require additional resources.
Current Projects
I am currently juggling a few projects while taking on consulting assignments as interesting / impactful projects come across my radar. Here are some of them:
Fashion4Freedom 
Fashion4Freedom is a social enterprise that seeks to balance fashion manufacturing with social responsibility and development. F4F is a design house that tailors production around a mission of ethical manufacturing.
| Title | Board of Directors, Acting CTO, Acting COO |
|---|---|
| Roles |
|
| Technologies | PHP, MySQL, WordPress, HTML 5, CSS, jQuery, jQuery UI Tools |
appSmitten
Mobile app recommendation platform and newsletter.
The appSmitten editorial team hand selects the best iPhone, iPad and Android apps and sends out daily and weekly newsletters to a growing list of subscribers.
| Title | Chief Architect (contract) |
|---|---|
| Roles |
|
| Technologies | PHP, MySQL, WordPress (including custom plugin development), HTML 5, CSS, jQuery, jQuery UI Tools, Facebook API, MailChimp API |
Lean Startup Projects
Beginning in 2010, I've had the great fortune of working with a number of super smart people on some very cool startup ideas. In some cases, we followed the Lean Startup methodologies and were able to prototype and test our models very quickly to avoid building out entire projects. In one case, we built out a project and launched it in the market only to find that while we were able to gain traction, we were not able to get to scale with a reasonable amount of cost. Here are some of these projects and a brief description of the idea and current status:
| Name | Description | Status | Screenshots |
|---|---|---|---|
| everywinery |
Global Search Engine for Wineries. Role: Chief Architect. Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Python/Django, MySQL, HTML 5, CSS, jQuery, prototype, scriptaculous. |
Part-Time | |
| HashTheVote |
Political Voting via Twitter. Role: CEO, Chief Architect. Technologies: AWS, Python/Django, Twitter Feed API, MySQL, HTML 5, CSS3, jQuery, prototype, scriptaculous. |
Terminated | |
| Perkvine |
The Frequent "Flyer" Program for Dining. Role: CEO, Chief Architect, Sales and Marketing. Technologies: PHP, MySQL, Drupal, HTML 5, CSS, jQuery, jQuery UI Tools, jQuery Mobile |
Terminated |
Consulting
Leveraging my years of pre and post sales management and my previous experience in building back-office integration to Salesforce.com, I am working with one client to provide business process re-engineering advice to help organize and build a repeatable and scalable sales process. I am working with a few other clients on various website and social media integration projects. One of those projects is a site that I recently built for a person running for City Council in Tulsa Oklahoma: Ken Brune for Tulsa City Council District 4 (PHP + Smarty). Another project is for a startup contract cGMP manufacturing company that specializes in the use of disposable technologies called Pristine Bioproduction (Python on Google App Engine).
I am available for technical projects including website design, database management, and hands-on programming. Here are some of the technologies that I "speak" fluently:
- HTML 5, jQuery, Prototype, Script.aculo.us
- Python, Django, Google App Engine
- PHP, Smarty, MySQL, Symfony, Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla
- Photoshop
- ASP.NET, C#, MS SQL Server
- Java, JSP, J2EE, JBoss, Weblogic, Oracle DB
Older Projects
As I mentioned above, I have had the privilege of working at a number of amazing companies and have been able to play a diverse set of roles. Here are some of the other companies I have worked for:
- GoingOn Networks — VP of Operations. Member of the senior management team responsible for all aspects of product and services quality, delivery and support.
- earthfaves AG — VP of US Operations (contract). Strategic and technical advisor to the founders. Assisted with the formulation of the go-to-market strategy for the earthfaves recommendation platform.
- PacketTrap Networks — VP of Operations. Responsible for internal and external systems and processes relating to sales and marketing. PacketTrap was purchased by Quest Software [NASDAQ: QSFT] in 2010.
- VMware — Evangelist for the Virtual Appliance initiative and helped recruit over 500 community and ISV build virtual appliances to the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace. [NYSE: VMW]
- Cast Iron Systems — Director of Advanced Solutions. Worked with all of Cast Iron's most important customers (British American Tobacco, Toyota, Motorola, etc) in locations all around the globe. Built the original Salesforce.com integration to the Cast Iron Integration Appliance. Cast Iron Systems was sold to IBM in 2010.
- Zaplet — Senior Solution Architect. Road warrior working with all of Zaplet's big customers in both pre and post sales technical consulting roles.
- Grant Thornton / Hitachi Consulting — Manager in the NetSolutions Practice. Managed a staff of 15 consultants across 20 client projects around the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Naviant Technology Solutions — Senior Systems Architect for an intranet based 1:1 marketing application that provided detailed analytics for over 2 million customers that was used by financial advisors at The Royal Trust of Canada.
- Accenture — Senior member of a technical team responsible for building two, large-scale Multimedia Goal-Based Business Simulations for GE Capital.
- VIPS — Founding member of the R&D Group tasked with architecting a client-server approach to handling offline data analysis of complex mainframe data (used for audit and compliance).
Social Impact
I am firmly committed to social impact and have donated my time and energy for a number of projects with non-profits like Habitat for Humanity, Hidden Villa, Variety's Children's Charity and Playworks. I am particularly interested in working with children and frequently volunteer to work directly with underprivileged and special needs children.
Fashion4Freedom
In October 2011, I met LanVy Nguyen just after her TED-X Talk and was immediately infected by her passion and dedication to ending labor abuses in the fashion industry. Since then, I've volunteered to manage all of the technology for Fashion4Freedom (public website, blog, e-commerce site, database and reporting tools to measure the effectiveness of the social programs that F4F runs, etc.).
In January 2012, I traveled to Vietnam and joined LanVy for a number of planning and coordination sessions with various villages involved in the Village Sourcing network. Check out some of the pictures from that trip.
CORE International
In 2010, I joined forces with a number of friends to start C.O.R.E. International (Creating Opportunities through Rural Education). CORE recently received it's 501(c)(3) status and is gathering a number of educational projects that will be available on our site for people to sponsor. I am modeling the new version of http://coreinternational.org after DonorsChoose.org and KickStarter.com. We plan to allow schools and organizations around the world to propose projects that members of our site can sponsor.