Software Company CTO

EXECUTIVE PROFILE

CTO * Software Technology, Product, Market Strategy * Invention/Patenting * Investment/M&A Due Diligence * Patent Portfolio Management * Software Engineering Management * User Experience/Usability/Information Architecture & Visualization

* Outstanding track record of driving software company growth via creative R&D-driven invention, innovative product creation/evolution and aggressive M&A activity.

* History of invention and product innovation around areas of natural language processing, human factors-based visualization and interface design, knowledge management and information overload relief based on cognitive and analytic principles.

* Skill set includes visionary product, technology & market strategy creation; intellectual property creation & management; M&A and VC-style investment; business development; post-acquisition integration; management of distributed & cross-functional teams; application of customer-centered design to improve sales; extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge.

CAREER HISTORY

RiverGlass Inc.

CTO, 2004-2009

* As Chief Technology Officer (CTO headed the software development organization for this rapidly growing venture-backed startup in the text analytics space, including ground-breaking direct meaning access for natural language processing using Ontological Semantics. RiverGlass, Inc. was a leading provider of advanced, intelligent web information collection and analysis solutions. The company commenced operations in late 2004. RiverGlass provided application solutions to government agencies and commands in defense, intelligence, law enforcement and major corporations. RiverGlass was a private company with principal offices in West Chicago, Illinois and Champaign, Illinois.

* Developed company’s product strategy for initial markets (homeland security, intelligence analysis, knowledge management, emergency management, financial services), conceived initial applications, built development team from scratch to 24 people

* Created inventions leading to five patent applications

* Grew company revenue from $50k to $3M in 18 months

* Lead company’s move to Web 2.0 technologies for pure web delivery of application functionality (AJAX, GWT).

* Led company efforts as subcontractor to SAIC and major supplier of technology for the Emergency Management Framework application, deployed at NORTHCOM, meeting needs for situational awareness for emergency management operations. Co-stakeholders in project included FAA, DoD, DHS, National Guard Bureau.

* Wrote RFP responses and conducted oral presentations to clients for competitive wins at Michigan State Police Intelligence Fusion Center, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Intelligence Fusion Center, Alabama State Police Intelligence Fusion Center, among others.

* Current U.S. Top Secret Security Clearance.

Trading Technologies International, Inc.

CTO and Executive Vice-President, 2003-2004

* Improved software quality by 53% in one year for Trading Technologies (TT), a $35 million private software company that makes the market leading front-end screen for futures traders.

* Grew product revenues by over 40% in one year.

* Developed two new products for new futures exchanges in the most successful product launches in company history.

* Created nine inventions, which have led to three patents and another six patent applications.

* Improved morale while raising productivity and quality of software engineering group.

* Introduced new quality process and practices, grew staff capabilities and size by over 50%.

* Educated staff on the Usability Engineering Lifecycle while introducing user-centered design.

* Initiated company participation in the FIX financial industry standards body.

* Established new R&D process for productizing patents and other innovations, and brought first product from this process to market.

divine, inc.

CTO and Co-Founder, 1999-2002.

Co-founded divine, a $600 million international company with over 20,000 customers that offers professional services, software services, and managed services to the “extended enterprise,” leveraging expertise in collaboration, interaction and knowledge management to support the enterprise value chain of suppliers, partners, and customers. divine was named the fastest growing company by Network World in its annual guide to the top public companies in the network industry, and appears in Computerworld’s Emerging Companies to Watch 2002 and KM World’s Top 100 Companies That Matter.

* Established the technology direction & strategy for divine, concentrating on collaboration, content, content management, and customer interaction products and services for markets such as financial services/insurance, high-technology/telecom, manufacturing, energy/utilities, biotech/pharmaceutical, and automotive/transportation. Pursued a dual J2EE and .NET technology strategy via XML and Web Services.

* Worked hands-on with multiple product management and software engineering teams on software product & market strategy, focusing on user experience and usability to create software products that are easy to demo, trial, and sell, that are simple and inexpensive to support, and that provide obvious and immediate ROI to customers. Conceived and brought to market new collaboration, multimedia and knowledge management products. Provided management oversight for company-wide user experience, product integration, quality, and common services efforts, and initiated internationalization and localization efforts to serve European and Asian markets. Accelerated use of divine’s Indian subsidiary for software engineering activities across the organization.

* Conceived and brought to market new collaboration, multimedia and knowledge management products.

* Provided management oversight for company-wide user experience, product integration, quality, and common services efforts.

* Initiated internationalization and localization efforts to serve European and Asian markets.

* Accelerated use of Divine's off-shore subsidiary in India for software engineering.

* Headed the team that performed technical and business due diligence for divine’s merger and acquisition activities, which included the acquisition of more than 20 companies in 15 months. In divine, inc.’s initial incarnation as divine interVentures (a synergistic combination of venture capital and incubator), led the technical and business due diligence team through more than 50 investments, and provided ongoing advisory supervision to portfolio companies on business and technology issues.

* Initiated divine’s patent portfolio management program, with a three-pronged focus on licensing, litigation, and new patent creation. Guided licensing and litigation strategy for portfolio of over 60 US and foreign patents. Reviewed all invention disclosures, deciding when to apply for patents. Educated engineering staff on patent and invention issues, conducted regular reviews to identify patent opportunities.

* Led business development activities with partners such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Computer Associates, and Compaq. Overseer role for monitoring/participation in standards bodies/industry consortia, e.g., OASIS, IETF, W3C.

PLATINUM technology, inc.

Technical Officer (CTO), 1995-1999.

As technology strategist for PLATINUM technology, inc., a $1 billion provider of information technology management software and services, set technology & product development direction across all six business units, on platforms ranging from OS/390 to Windows to multiple UNIX variants.

During tenure in this position the company grew from a $15 million company focused on database management tools for mainframes to the eighth-largest software company in the world with revenues over $900 million, providing multi-platform solutions in systems management and security, internet tools & content management, application development, data warehousing, database management, information visualization and 3D tools, and professional services.

* Led the acquisition and assimilation of 70 companies and technologies into the organization, and the integration of products within and across business units.

* Initiated the company’s patent program.

* Oversaw software engineering organizations in all business units, performed detailed technical and architectural reviews of product plans, architectures, and designs in all business units, on all platforms.

* Established the usability engineering process for PLATINUM's 39 development locations in four countries (US, UK, Australia, Israel).

* Promulgated SEI CMM to improve quality.

* Initiated alliances/partnerships with companies such as IBM, Sybase, Oracle, Sun, Microsoft, and Tivoli.

* Responsible for monitoring/participation in standards bodies, e.g., OMG, IETF, ISO, Web3D Consortium, X/Open, W3C.

Other activities included:

* Conceived the company’s Internet strategy.

* Wrote several articles for PLATINUM Sysjournal (customer-oriented technical publication) for publication under name of senior management.

* Conceived of and served as member of the editorial board for a successor customer publication (PLATINUM Edge), for which I ghosted several CEO editorials.

* Involved in numerous consultations with industry analysts and trade press; pre-sales presentations with customers.

Senior Developer, 1991-1994.

* Conceived, developed, and brought to market multiple new products for relational database administration, data compression, high-speed database utilities, writing them in assembler on MVS (OS/390) for use with DB2. This included the one product within PLATINUM with the highest quality metrics.

* Persuaded management to expand corporate mission to include products for other RDBMSes on other platforms, and led the initial product efforts on UNIX and Windows platforms, and for other relational databases (Oracle, Sybase SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Informix); acquired three companies in 1994 in support of this mission.

* Conceived several other new products in areas of DB2 log analysis; data replication and transport (to/from DB2 on MVS and multiple other RDBMSes on multiple platforms, over multiple communications transports); index analysis; licensed some of this technology to Sybase for use in conjunction with their cross-platform extensions to Sybase Replication technology.

* Established new procedures within PLATINUM for improved patch management.

* Created sophisticated system using complex conditional assembly language to support intensive speed optimization and quality improvement for performance-critical products developed using assembler.

* Created multiple components to facilitate cross-language (C and assembler) development of reentrant, multi-tasking, and cross-memory applications.

* Acted as sole representative from PLATINUM on IBM’s SystemView Council (alliance of systems and database management vendors).

EDUCATION

Dartmouth College

Bachelor of Arts, Mathematics (with Computer Science emphasis), Physics

Illinois Institute of Technology

Master of Science, Computer Science

SPECIAL SKILLS

Public Speaking

Best Speaker Award at XML Leadership Conference, Best Speaker Award at Microbanker Conference, other presentations at Enterprise Search Summit, ISS World, Uniforum, GUIDE, Informix User Conference, various other conferences, on a variety of topics including search, semantics, XML, the Internet and electronic commerce, database management, and systems management.

INVENTIONS

U.S. Patents

7,218,325 Graphical display with integrated recent period zoom and historical period context data

7,348,981 Graphical display with integrated recent period zoom and historical period context data

7,546,550 System and Method for Displaying a Constant Time Selection Context Menu Interface

U.S. Patent Applications

System and Method for Display Management Based on User Attention Inputs;

System and Method for Assisted Awareness

Method of Search Strategy Visualization and Interaction

Method of Partitioning a Search Query to Gather Results Beyond a Search Limit;

System and Method for Computing and Displaying Effective Bid and Ask Information

System and Method for Modifying Trading Strategies Based on Message Usage

System and Method for Prioritized Automated Trading

System and Method for Providing a Path of Communication in an Electronic Trading Environment

System and Method for Repositioning of Market Information on Trading Screens

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

ACL (The Association for Computational Linguistics)

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery); former officer of Chicago ACM Chapter; co-founder of Chicago Chapter of ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction).

ASIST (American Society for Information Science and Technology)

HFES (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society)

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) Computer Society

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