Technology radically transforms the way we live and work; good companies adapt and respond, great companies anticipate and execute. My passion is developing round-the-corner strategies that accelerate market leadership and put competitors on the back foot. *The paradox of technology is that it’s infinitely complex, but unless you can distill it down to simple business outcomes it’s tough to get people to buy the vision. Could we whiteboard routing and switching, SASE, multi-cloud networking, AI backends, or cloud-native application protection platforms? Sure. Would I rather brainstorm how these solutions can transform customers’ businesses and how to shape effective go-to-market strategies? Absolutely. *With over six years at Cisco and 15 years in IT I’ve seen some incredible innovation in the market. No one’s ever on top (or at the bottom) forever. Developing sound competitive strategy means never getting complacent and always being willing to up-level your thinking. How do you beat competitors that in one area or another might actually be better than you (a situation every vendor finds themselves in at some point)? That’s the art of competitive science. I’ve studied the portfolios of companies like Cisco, Arista, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Zscaler, Juniper, and Microsoft, and love the challenge of crafting competitive analysis that allows sellers to walk into their accounts with rock-solid confidence and engineers to steer the portfolio in the direction of profitability and market leadership. *Leadership would be easy if the only things required were good ideas, but leading in a complex, matrixed organization takes more. Strategic thinking and strong vision propel growth, but not in a vacuum. I’m skilled at navigating internal organizations, advocating for ideas, and coalescing the best of them. Leading a team is so satisfying because it means challenging others to bring their best and raising the bar on what’s possible when a team unites behind a common goal. *Much of what I’ve learned about communication and negotiation comes from raising twin girls. I’m adept at arguing for rational, sensible courses of action with a calm, positive attitude, even in the face of tremendous opposition.