Trish Mills (Gray) Email and Phone Number

Currently advising a variety of social impact startups and nonprofits in strategies such as business model, fundraising, technology disruption and innovation, operations streamlining, marketing, and org expansion/management.Highlights:- Consulting for the #1 open source project on Github- Advising women-owned seed-funded startups through the StageNext fund- Strategic advisor for a pre-seed startup building a wellness app for senior citizens- Mentoring a bio-engineering company in Tanzania through the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship- Member of advisory board for Datoire Foundation, a local nonprofit focused on the arts and education for underserved communities- Mentoring a civic tech startup that is expanding offerings for local and state governments across the U.S.

Built an organization from scratch that is crucial to the bottom line of Pinterest: the Cloud Foundations and Efficiency org is now three top-heavy teams that lead critical functions across capacity engineering, cloud efficiency, infrastructure governance, fault-tolerant cloud architecture, cloud provisioning, OS imaging and configuration, data science and data analytics. Highlights:- Built a new global team managing hundreds of millions per year in AWS infrastructure, delivering over $100M/year in cost savings.- Spearheaded innovative solutions with AWS and Pinterest’s Chief Architect, such as patent-pending disaster recovery tools.- Reduced engineering cycle time from 25 to 7.8 days through Agile process optimizations, boosting productivity and engagement.- Advised executive leadership and presented progress to the CEO, CFO, and board, securing high-profile recognition.- Led Pinterest brand elevation and mentored engineering teams across multiple levels.

Headed up two major engineering initiatives for Pinterest: Enabling quality self-service tools for Small and Medium sized businesses, and forging a new path for Creators to build and promote amazing content.Highlights:- Led the acquihire of Brigade's engineering team and integrated them into high-impact projects.- Drove 92% YoY growth in spenders and $42M in additional revenue by optimizing acquisition and monetization strategies.

Building a top-notch, mission-driven engineering organization at Brigade was a highlight of my career. These amazing engineers could have joined any hyper-growth startup, but they chose to put their skills and passions into building tools for a better country. It was truly my honor to lead them.Highlights:- Directed 60% of the series A startup Brigade, improving transparency and alignment around company goals.- Influenced company strategy as part of corporate leadership team.- Spearheaded creation of a centralized civic data repository, distilling petabytes of civic data into voter tools that spanned local to national representation.- Implemented Agile processes and QA automation, enhancing predictability and reducing regressions.- Successfully led the company through acquisition and acquihire.

Leading a startup within the Expedia organization, I built the new User Generated Content group from a few SF engineers to a global division, pioneering cloud and AI-based innovative strategies.Highlights:- Led global engineering teams to deliver user-generated content features, driving 46% YoY growth.- Scaled UGC architecture to handle 200M daily customers and owned the roadmap for 40M reviews.- Spearheaded cloud-based disaster recovery initiatives using a multi-regional strategy.

In this role I expanded the successful O'Reilly School of Technology to adopt a robust marketing and operations strategy, while still leading all engineering, product and curriculum development and certifying full California accreditation as an educational institution.Highlights:- Built and led on-site and remote software development teams, driving growth to 5,000+ enrollments across 14 countries.- Directed product development and marketing initiatives, including the launch of a new website, e-commerce system, and back-end infrastructure.- Introduced Agile processes into operations, reducing churn and increasing efficiency.- Hosted O'Reilly’s Career Education webcast.

Selling my online learning company to an offline publishing organization meant that I had to build out a new business model and technical strategy as though it were a wholly owned subsidiary. The result was an O'Reilly branded online school, run like a tech bootcamp before the term "bootcamp" was even part of the lexicon. And even though I had a new title of "Sr. Software Development Manager", I was still in charge of this organization as though it was still my own. I'm proud that the technology behind this school is still in use today.Highlights:- Built and led on-site and remote teams in software engineering, instruction, and curriculum development.- Implemented SEO, social media and website traffic tracking capabilities, dramatically improving organic and paid search results.- Built new website, enrollment system, and back-end e-commerce. - Owned OST’s SaaS-based learning system and administrative interface. - Authored 4-course PHP/SQL Programming Certificate series, including courses on relational theory and social media design patterns. - Hosted “Ask Trish” column on IT professional development.

I founded this startup as a UIUC undergraduate in my living room, with one co-founder and a dream to transform education in the internet age. Little did I know that all the blood, sweat and tears that went into this venture would not only survive the internet boom and bust of the early 2000s, but would also result in building one of the first online IDEs, a pre-cloud server distribution system, and an online IT and software bootcamp model before its time. - Co-founded and scaled a SaaS learning platform, leading corporate strategy, product development and engineering until its acquisition by O’Reilly Media.- Engineered all full-stack web development and database engineering for UserActive’s online integrated development environment (IDE), administrative back-end, e-commerce and distributed account system.- Bootstrapped to become one of I-Street Magazine’s “50 top Emerging Technology Companies of 2001”. - Winner of the SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Midwest region.