Jeff Dirks Email & Phone Number

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Monterrey, Mexico

Rso -- Monterrey, Mexico

Arlington, Virginia

26-week immersion course in preparation for Monterrey, Mexico.

Greater Seattle Area

Guide companies working on the intersection of educational content and technology. Current project:• Broker the sale of a technology and product line that enables creation and management of standards-conformant lessons using familiar tools

Madrid Area, Spain

Develop lecture series for Master in Digital Journalism, IE University, Madrid focused on information literacy. Series presented in Fall, 2012.

Globally develop partnerships with the education publishing industry to align products and practices with the Education Product Group (EdPG) strategy. Negotiate agreements to accelerate EdPG product development.Identify, negotiate, and bring to contract strategic alliances and other partnership agreements to further Microsoft's objectives in the education industry.Engage at executive level with potential partner companies to secure agreements to development on our platform. I have given numerous Executive Briefing Center presentations; met with CEOs in the U.S., Europe, and Asia; and hosted multi-day deep dives into strategy and technology.Collaborate with product development teams to include in Microsoft products the "must-haves" to support the partner ecosystem and to ensure the full breadth of product values are communicated outward.Develop for product management our partner-specific value proposition for core EdPG projects.Secure technology licenses as identified by development team.

Managed content development for the 66 million word Encarta corpus (including encyclopedia, dictionary, world atlas, thesaurus, quotes, almanac, style guide, and education-specific features); business development manager for external relationships and development accelerators.Managed a $14.2 million content development budget, including the operations of localization teams in Dublin and Tokyo and content development teams in the US; and The Netherlands. This position covered all content licensing deals for the Encarta product line.Formed external partnerships to create market attention and fulfill product value promises.Negotiated and closed deals allowing use of third-party code and applications in Microsoft reference products.

Directed operations for in-country editorial teams creating the content for the international editions of Encarta reference products in the UK; and The Netherlands. Communicated to Microsoft subsidiaries product plans for retail, volume license, and online products with stakeholders in Consumer, Public Sector, and MSN. Represented to product development the expectations and unique sensitivities of each market to ensure global success.

Managed special projects for the Microsoft Reference group in addition to oversight of the editorial services teams. Contributions included developing a "continuous publishing" model in which editorial work was accomplished on a steady flow rather in cycles tied to product releases; development of a math assistance service for high school based on step-by-step solutions to all problems in the top 33 US textbooks.

Managed centralized editorial services teams developing content for Microsoft Encarta, Bookshelf, and Atlas. Teams represented editorial research, statistics, indexing, copyediting, quality assurance, and content coordination.

Formed and managed team dedicated to gathering global economic, demographic, and geographic statistical data for use throughout Microsoft reference products. Contributions include devising a tagging method to enable remote updating of all content while ensuring contextual validity; and forming relationship with the World Bank to allow early access to and use of global tracking statistics.EMPLOYMENT PRIOR TO MICROSOFTContract Editorial Microsoft: Statistical editor and lead, article development editor, copyeditor, and proofreader on consumer CD productsAsymetrix: Copyeditor for user assistance documentationNewspaper Publishing

Immersion in all aspects of the newspaper business (including general business management, advertising sales, editorial operations, and production) giving me a solid understanding of the publishing industry as well as broadly applicable skills in business and people management. Assigned, edited, and packaged all news content to form desirable product exceeding community expectations (all three of my newspapers were judged best in regional competitions)Managed employees including reporters and photographers, advertising sales, and production (pre-press, press, and distribution)Maintained budget and profit goals of newspaper operationsWrote accurate and compelling news stories, interpretive features, and analysis of complex issuesRepresented newspapers to the public in workshops, forums, and public events

Education record

Bachelors Degree, Political Science; Journalism, Economics, And History