Profile

I have been fortunate to work on projects related to my passions. I'm currently very interested in User Experience, Open Source communities, (I'm nearly obsessed with Drupal), cartography, e-learning & augmented reality. I'm a successful entrepreneur, seasoned traveler & lifelong student. A "hack-of-all-trades", I am well versed with all the major, (plus a surprising number of minor) digital tools. I thrive on solving complicated challenges with elegant solutions & collaboration, on time & on budget.

Experience

PRODUCT MANAGER, SIGNATURE SERVICES & INNOVATION / GOGO LLC / Itasca, IL / September 2011 - Present

Gogo Inflight Internet, available on over 4000 commercial flights, aboard over 1400 aircraft a day.

• Champion the User Experience! Vet & develop proof of concept features. Learn & refine with metrics & testing
• Built proof of concept, now managing development of Gogo Flight Tracker, (deals with the unique realities of inflight Internet)
• Work with Business Aviation and the new Global Sales group as needed, (half sales engineer, half product manager)
• Work across teams, company wide, to identify, vet and ultimately champion innovation
• Helping with development of Business Aviation group’s Android app
• Support Biz Dev teams and promos as needed

Manager Web Productions – PRODUCT TEAM / Aircell / Itasca, IL / October 2009 – September 2011

• Manage internal & remote developers, designers & information architects
• Helped built and get up to speed the internal creative department built in 2011
• Provide support & direction, as needed, to the Gogo Vision inflight video project
• Created the Gogo Mile High Badge with foursquare.com (concept / development / testing / marketing / metrics)
• Work with business development teams, recent partnerships with Google, eBay, AMEX, T-Mobile, Honda, FedEx, Facebook, etc.
• Champion of contextually relevant ad targeting, (show ad if flight matched profile – e.g only for flights to Vegas on a Friday evening) 
• R&D for social & location based services (Read: find partners & services that grow the core business)
• Help managed development of Gogo iOS & Blackberry apps

Airline Content Manager – PRODUCT TEAM / Aircell / Itasca, IL / April 2008 - October 2009

• Responsible for all content on aircell.com, gogoinflight.com, & all airborne portals.
• Manage external & in-house web development projects.
• Run Business User Acceptance Testing, (BUAT), Alpha & Beta testing for all airborne portals (laptop & mobile).
• Produce "build to spec", high fidelity wire frames, comps & final assets for off shore development teams.
• Produce creative as needed, (HTML, Photoshop, Flash, Video, etc).
• Worked & QA’d Internationalization of the Gogo Portal for Air Canada service.

Director, Online Productions / Cognistar.com / Southboro MA / July 1999 - July 2004

Sixth employee at startup. Became a leading provider of online continuing legal education with annual revenues over $2 MM.

• One of four person team that developed prototype & versions 1.0 - 3.5 of Courseware & Learning Management System.
• Instrumental in securing over $12 million in venture funding with functional prototypes, marketing collateral & strategy.
• Designed process to capture, edit & encode all related media for courses.  Then built a team & studio to scale.
• Produced over 95 rich media courses, managing teams creating digital video, flash & HTML based courseware 
• On site manager nationwide for SME taping, including: top legal experts, Federal, Elected & Judicial officials.

Online Producer / SkyMall.com / New York / October 1998 - July 1999

Successfully pitched Connected DVD concept to SkyMall Board of Directors. Hired to produce DVD to be included in SkyMall catalog to offer rich media products & services to online browser who are otherwise limited by connection speeds.

• Developed Broadband, D-TV & Connected DVD strategy & educational collateral on key concepts for VC road show.
• Produced proof of concept web browser based 3D e-commerce demo for connected DVD. 

Interactive specialist / life fitness / Franklin Park, IL / October 1994 - January 1996

Worked for the Director of New Product Development during the entire life of the Exertainment system; an interactive fitness product for the SNES, made in partnership with Nintendo. I was involved in every major aspect of the product, including: research, development, production, marketing & customer support, for both North America & Europe.

• Ran QA for 3 Exertainment / Super Nintendo (16 bit) titles; Speed Racer, Tetris, Mountain Bike Rally
• Worked on prototyping, test marketing & refining modifications to the commercial version
• Worked the Life Fitness booth @ several major shows in North America & Europe

Skateboard shop owner / F. A. Skates / Arlington Heights, IL / October 1985 - June 1988

Education

• Autodesk University, 3D Studio Max Certificate – May 1998
• Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ - BA Liberal Arts /Architectural Theory, May 1993
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL - Student-at-large, August 1987 - June 1989