Resume
Twenty-five years, and all of it was preparation.
I've worked across nearly every part of the digital stack, from coding when the web was new to running a 200-plus person organization inside a Fortune 20, and each role taught me something I use now. AI was my last chapter at Verizon, and it's my focus now. To see what I'm building with it, see My Work.
Associate Vice President, Marketing Communications2023 - 2026Ran everything a Verizon customer sees before they buy, with a 200-plus person organization and about $100M behind it. I redesigned the pages people meet before they shop and the whole outbound portfolio, and rebuilt how that work got made, so it came out faster and better. The AI practice was the last chapter, and it was still gaining speed when I left.
Verizon is the largest telecommunications company in the United States, and a Fortune 20 company.
What I owned
The consumer-facing digital marketing surface: the homepage, marketing and landing pages, ecommerce content, and promotional activation across digital and CRM channels, which means email, SMS and RCS, and direct mail. At its peak the organization ran to 200-plus people and roughly $100M in operating and advertising budget, with nine direct reports, covering Content Delivery, CRM Marketing Communications, Transactional Communications and Demand Generation Analytics alongside the core Digital Merchandising function. I directed the digital execution of scores of product launches, refreshes, campaigns and promotions across the full consumer portfolio, and spent as much energy on the partnership with Creative, Technology and stakeholders across the enterprise as on the work itself.
The outcome
The consumer digital learn experience and the outbound communications portfolio essentially redesigned, against a data-driven framework for finding and ranking the opportunities, with measurable gains in engagement and business results. A step change in the quality and speed to market of content operations, through process and technology optimization, resource management and automation. The digital execution of scores of product launches, refreshes, campaigns and promotions delivered across the full consumer portfolio. A low-turnover, high-trust organization, and a partnership with Creative, Technology and stakeholders across the enterprise that was stronger when I left than when I arrived. And in the last stretch, a grassroots AI practice: I taught a cross-functional community of product, process, merchandising and engineering people to work with AI, built the shared infrastructure it ran on, and made the case to IT and budget leadership that got it formalized and scaled instead of shut down. It was still picking up speed when I left.
Senior Director, Digital Merchandising2019 - 2023Transformed the upper funnel of Verizon.com, the pages people meet long before they reach a product, working from a strong data-driven framework that drove significant business growth. At the same time I overhauled how content got made and published, to a best-in-class standard, which radically improved both quality and speed to market.
The same company, four years earlier and a level down.
What I owned
Digital merchandising for Verizon's consumer catalog: the product grid, the product detail pages, and the landing-page systems that turn site traffic into sales. The consumer merchandising and accessories roadmap, and the risk assessment on platform migration as the commerce stack underneath it changed. The work ran on Adobe Experience Manager for content, Adobe Target for testing, and Adobe Analytics for reading engagement and sales participation, and I came into it already knowing Verizon's products and systems from five years of serving them from the agency side.
The outcome
The data-driven framework for finding and prioritizing merchandising and content opportunities, measured in engagement and sales participation, which the broader organization adopted and kept using. Operational-excellence gains in the quality and speed to market of merchandising and content releases, through process and technology optimization. The pattern I set here is the one I kept: find the friction that keeps coming back, design a mechanism for it, and make the mechanism the standard rather than fixing the instance.
Vice President, Solutions2014 - 2019Five years on the agency side, leading the team that carried Verizon Wireless off its legacy ecommerce platform onto a modern one and redesigned the sales flows running on it, helped launch their first mobile website and first mobile app, and then delivered a full My Verizon redesign.
Moxie was a digital agency inside Publicis Groupe, one of the largest advertising companies in the world. In 2022, a few years after I left, Publicis merged it with three sister agencies into a single agency called Formerly Known As. Moxie's flagship client was Verizon Wireless.
What I owned
The team serving that client: digital strategists, product and program managers, technical consultants and analysts. The product and program work migrating Verizon Wireless off its legacy ecommerce platform and onto a modern third-party ecosystem - one of the larger commerce replatforms in the industry at the time. Alongside it, consulting across every aspect of their digital product offering, customer-facing and operational, which meant learning their products, their data and their technology landscape from the outside in.
The outcome
Verizon Wireless moved off its legacy ecommerce platform and onto a modern one, with the digital sales flows - the path a customer walks from picking a phone to owning it - replatformed and redesigned in the same effort. Verizon's first mobile website and first mobile app, launched. A full My Verizon redesign, one of the most-used self-service properties in US telecom, plus several service apps. And an Operational Excellence program that lifted content quality and speed to market.
Vice President, Product Development2011 - 2013Set product strategy for a market leader while the business was stabilized and its growth roadmap rebuilt. Redesigned the flagship site, reworked the auctions business, and defined and launched a new market-tracking product for art lenders, insurers and investors.
Artnet is the leading data source for the international art market, with auction records going back to 1983, and a marketplace for buying and selling art online.
What I owned
Product strategy and the development that followed from it, for a market leader in a small and specialised industry, at a point when the business itself was being stabilised and its growth roadmap rebuilt. Product, project and QA all reported in, which meant owning what got built, when it shipped, and whether it was right.
The outcome
Billing and accounting rebuilt across dozens of product types, with ROI-based portfolio management installed. The full redesign of multilingual Artnet.com and a rework of Artnet Auctions, driving significant conversion and revenue gains. And Artnet Analytics, a market-tracking tool for art lenders, insurers and investors, defined, designed and launched.
Vice President, Ecommerce Operations2009 - 2010Took two luxury ecommerce businesses through a recession and had them stable inside six months, with the wasteful spending cut, the team markedly more productive, and twice as many visitors buying.
Ashford.com and The Watchery were two luxury ecommerce sites, both Internet Retailer Top 500. Watches and jewelry, sold online, in 2009, in a recession.
What I owned
A full cross-functional team across both sites, working directly with the division president on merchandising and digital marketing. In practice that meant every surface that touched a sale: the homepage, product detail, reviews, search merchandising, checkout and SEO - two Internet Retailer Top 500 businesses selling luxury watches and jewelry online in 2009, which was the worst possible year to be selling either.
The outcome
Stabilized in six months: more than $1M in wasteful spend cut, productivity improved 60 percent, and site conversion doubled. Homepage, product detail, reviews, search merchandising, checkout and SEO initiatives delivered along the way.
Director, Ecommerce Site Operations2006 - 2008Ran the web side of a television shopping business, about a third of the whole company, and grew it by roughly 15 percent in under two years. Also moved an established televised show off another network and onto JTV, across every function in the company, on a five-week deadline.
Jewelry Television is a live television shopping channel with an ecommerce business attached.
What I owned
Web development, design, project management and content for JTV.com - the ecommerce business attached to a live television shopping channel, which means the site had to react to whatever was on air. A department budget of my own, and a hand in the division budget several times larger above it. I also sat on the senior leadership steering committee setting direction for the ecommerce division, so I was helping decide where the business went as well as building it, and I ran the business intelligence and product management groups myself for six months to get them stable.
The outcome
Site revenue grown by roughly 15 percent in under two years, on a business that was about a third of the company. A formal product-development lifecycle and portfolio management stood up across 30-plus projects. An established Watch Show moved off another network and onto JTV in five weeks, spanning legal, merchandise, IT, broadcast, care training and marketing. The retail promotion process roughly doubled in productivity. And the Learning Library, a content product that worked three ways at once - search traffic, real value to the reader, and a place to merchandise in context.
Director, E-Commerce & Technology2008 - 2009Built the website and ran all the digital operations for a television production company's startup line of animated children's books, and consulted across the company's broader digital portfolio.
RIVR Media is a television production company. Moving Picture Books was its startup division, making animated children's books.
What I owned
The Moving Picture Books website and every piece of the digital operation behind it. Alongside that, technology direction for RIVR Media Interactive's projects, and consulting for the other RIVR divisions across their broader digital portfolio.
The outcome
The Moving Picture Books site built and launched, with the digital operations under it running day to day.
Senior Project Manager2005 - 2006Ran the enterprise projects the company's revenue and its search traffic depended on: replacing the publishing system, rebuilding ad serving, and getting the whole site onto one domain.
WebMD is a consumer health information company, with around thirty sites and products in its network.
What I owned
Senior project management on WebMD's largest infrastructure work. Replacing the content management and publishing system alone meant over fifty people, thousands of tasks, a multi-million dollar budget, and a dependency map you couldn't read without understanding both the technology and the business.
The outcome
The content management and publishing system replaced. The ad serving system and architecture rebuilt across all thirty-odd properties - the system most of the company's revenue ran through. WebMD's first blog product launched. And every piece of content moved from my.webmd.com to www.webmd.com, which is what put the search rankings and the brand back in one place.
Founder / COO2004 - 2005Co-founded a recruiting-technology startup and built most of it myself - the product, the systems architecture, the principal code - while carrying business development alongside it.
JobThread was a recruiting-technology startup.
What I owned
The business model, product design, user interface, systems and network architecture, lead generation, technology staffing and vendor management, and the principal coding. Technical direction for every JobThread product, and the ongoing work of planning for traffic growth and making the thing scale.
The outcome
White-label and co-branded products built for partners including The New York Times and A.C. Lion, a New York staffing firm - the product design, the primary coding and the systems architecture all mine. I also led the technical integration with a major media partner, the one the company's next round of funding was staked on.
Senior Web Developer / Team Lead1999 - 2004Five years at a major job-search platform, coding first and then leading. When Yahoo! bought us, I was a key player in the technical work that carried the product across.
HotJobs was a leading job-search platform, acquired by Yahoo! while I was there.
What I owned
Projects spanning every HotJobs product - the jobseeker, member and admin sites, agency products, partner and co-branded products, advertising systems, content management and syndication, and user authentication. Inside them I did product development, project management, team management, systems architecture, primary development and training, and worked with nearly every department in the company.
The outcome
The integration of HotJobs into Yahoo!: I did the initial analysis, helped our technical organization size up Yahoo!'s platform, and worked across the projects that moved the entire jobseeker application onto it. I helped grow the team too - college recruiting, hiring, training, mentoring. Alongside the job I arranged the donation of twenty-five computers from Yahoo! to the Red Hook Community Justice Center, wired the lab myself, and taught web design there once a week for six months, to kids who could use it instead of a minimum wage job.
BestWebDirector, Web Development1996 - 1999Started in outside marketing and left as Director of Web Development, building some of the web's first commercial applications along the way.
BestWeb was an early internet service provider, where I built some of the web's first commercial applications.
What I owned
Development and project management for every client project and the main BestWeb site, which served about fifty thousand customers. Clients included Porsche North America and D'Agostino's. I made the on-site pitches, and managed the designers and developers who built the work.
The outcome
Web-based email, account management tools, content management and payment processing, all built at a time when none of it came off a shelf - including a customized version of Internet Explorer that shipped as the software our internet customers installed. Before any of that I ran phone and email support, supervised about ten reps, wrote the support documentation and trained every new hire.