Founded in 2019 with the world’s most innovative GPS dog collar, Fi’s focus on best-in-class location tracking unleashed a new paradigm for understanding our dogs. Leveraging next-generation hardware and software, Fi’s platform helps dog parents keep them safe with live, always-on tracking and keep them healthy with activity monitoring. With its data-driven behavioral insights, like personalized exercise and sleep recommendations, Fi is ushering in a new future of dog parenting.

I work with CEOs, other C-level execs, and teams to help them grow themselves and their businesses. The name of the business illustrates my overall leadership philosophy. I believe "strong back, open heart" leadership is the key to building great organizations. The strong back is represented by fiscal discipline, strong process, and accountability. The soft, open-hearted front are values, purpose, connectedness, and compassion. Organizations and people are at their best when they manifest both in equal balance.

Passive House Accelerator's mission is to empower Architects & Builders to design and build better buildings, faster - while not warming our planet. I'm doing a passive house project with architect and Passive House Accelerator founder Michael Ingui and became so passionate about the passive house concept that I signed on as an advisor. I wrote about the wonder of passive houses on my blog (see link)

As a Cornell Tech Fellow, I helped faculty, administration, and students in a variety of ways including advising on curriculum and helping students sharpen their thinking and apply it to real-world challenges. I also co-taught a class called BigCo Studio about building things that matter at big companies.

At Reboot, I worked with CEOs, other C-level execs, and teams to help them grow themselves and their businesses. I have continued this work in my private practice, Strong Back Open Heart LLC. More on that transition at the link below.

Led the business from chaotic startup phase through IPO and first two years as a public company, growing revenue nearly 14x, operating profit almost 15x, and gross merchandise sales (GMS) 9x.Etsy made the Best Places to Work list every year from 2013 to 2016. (http://reviews.greatplacetowork.com/etsy)

Led engineering team for Etsy, including site operations and software engineering, through a period of intense growth and change.The Etsy engineering team blogs at http://codeascraft.etsy.com/

Drove strategy and manage product development on early stage ideas and products within Yahoo, leading a cross-functional team of engineers, designers, and product managers that incubated version 1.0 products, brought them to market, and handed them off to Yahoo’s operating business units for incorporation into core Yahoo! products when appropriate. The Advanced Products and Brickhouse teams shipped:Yahoo! Live (http://live.yahoo.com/), a live social video broadcasting platform for consumers with API for developers in which users can create their own web-based broadcast channels and interact with their audience via video, audio, and text. Reached over 1MM users in first month of operation.Fire Eagle (http://www.fireeagle.com/), a location platform for developers which allows Yahoo! users to share their location with sites and services online in a secure manner with granular control over privacy.

I ran the The Yahoo! Developer Network (http://developer.yahoo.com/), the central source for developers to leverage the Yahoo! platform in their own applications. The Yahoo! platform consists of web services and SDKs that allow developers to build software and services that leverage Yahoo's platform excellence, highly-scalable infrastructure, and leadership position in online social media.

Drove early open platform initiatives at Yahoo, advocating open platforms for third-party developers to drive business value and user engagement. Created and designed Yahoo! Hack Day program, an internal innovation program, and implemented it globally. The Hack Day concept has been copied by companies ranging from small startups to IBM. Won 2006 Yahoo! Superstar Award, the most prestigious employee award at Yahoo! given annually to twelve top performers at Yahoo! worldwide. Awarded 2006 Yahoo! Odyssey Award for contributions to international engineering.

Managed all aspects of technology, including infrastructure, networking, software development, web site production, Test Center, and help desk for InfoWorld.  Wrote CTO Connection for InfoWorld’s print magazine, web site, and a weekly e-mail newsletter. Evangelized emerging media technologies within InfoWorld and across IDG, including RSS, weblogs, and podcasting. Reported to the CEO.Advisory board member and co-chair of publishing track for IDG Syndicate conference (May 2005)

Managed infrastructure, networking, software development, site production, and desktop support . Created and managed long-term plans for all technology initiatives, including web publishing systems, content redistribution/syndication, and web serving capacity. Hired and managed systems administrators, software developers, support staff, and production staff. Transformed a weak IT organization into one known for its open source, Linux, and CMS expertise. Led one of the earliest Linux migrations, successfully migrating Salon’s infrastructure from Windows NT to Linux in April 1999.  Scaled Linux-based infrastructure from 10M monthly page views to 60M page views. Led the development of a custom CMS and personally sold a license for the system to Primedia (NYSE:PRM).  The system, now open source and known as Bricolage, was reviewed by eWeek Labs, which called it “one of the best content management systems eWeek Labs has seen, even eclipsing some of the best-known commercial products.”

Founded and managed the development team that built and launched the CNNSI.com web site, a joint venture between CNN and Sports Illustrated, working directly with the General Manager and Executive Producer. Managed the seven-person technical team (six software developers and one webmaster) that continued development of the site. Proposed capital budget, determined hardware and software needs, and managed ordering of hardware and software. Served as the principal technical contact for business deals with third parties, and managed relationships with partners (Intel, CNET, Pathfinder, Microsoft, Yahoo!). Provided the overall technical vision for CNN/SI Interactive including the design, testing, and implementation of workflow tools, content automation, content management, content distribution, and site design. Worked with infrastructure group to deal with capacity planning, bandwidth needs, and scaling servers for large events.

Created business proposals for CNN Interactive projects. Provided technical vision for the leveraging and distribution of CNN Interactive content on the web and in other electronic media. Designed, developed, maintained, and/or supervised the implementation of CNN Interactive software products and reported progress at regular intervals. Coordinated product rollout, including management of development teams. Developed software and worked with software vendors to integrate third-party products with in-house systems. Advised executive team at CNN Interactive on the technical feasibility of business initiatives. Worked with editorial and technical teams to create more efficient production processes and systems. Developed systems to leverage and manage wire content, with emphasis on sports material.