I am an entrepreneurial product manager, skilled at guiding products from high-level strategy down to tactical code-writing. I graduated from Cornell University with a BS in Computer Science and a minor in Mechanical Engineering. After working for several years as a Software Engineer, I moved to Austin to get my MBA at the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin where I pursued the combination of technology, business, and entrepreneurship. Since then I've been working with startups and large companies to create great products and accelerate growth. I'm passionate about startups, technology, and beer. If you're in Austin, I'd love to hear from you!
Director of Product Management
After GoDaddy acquired Main Street Hub, I played an instrumental role in integrating the back-end systems and customer experiences and became the product owner for all social products and services. I have led the introduction of new services, improved customer experience and outcomes, and built the roadmap for GoDaddy's Marketing Suite of products to become the leading all-in-one marketing solution for small businesses.
Senior Product Manager
At Main Street Hub, I served as owner of the customer experience. Through a revamped onboaring experience, improved operational tools, and refined user-facing applications, overall monthly location churn dropped by over 50%, from 9% to 4%.
Co-Founder & CTO
While a student at McCombs,
I worked with two of my classmates to start Local Libations, a craft beer logistics company.
What originally started with a simple value proposition of handling deliveries for self-distributing breweries,
grew to become a platform to help breweries, distributors, and retailers manage the complex tasks related to retail execution.
Local Libations raised over $500K, and established a strong customer base throughout the state of Texas.
At Local Libations, I led the development of new technology designed to manage a large and distributed shared workforce,
easily collect key data from hundreds of retail accounts simultaneously,
and provide access to valuable insights never before available to our customers.
The technology has created new revenue streams and market opportunities for Local Libations.
Product Manager in Infrastructure Analytics and Visualization
After getting my MBA, I started work at EA to gain Product Management experience with an established company and develop a good set of fundamental skills in the field. I was responsible for managing a portfolio of five web-based products developed by an international team of eight developers. I introduced the team to Agile/Scrum within my first few weeks, and successfully transitioned the team to 2-week sprints going forward. Other development teams around the office saw our success and used my team as an example of how to transition to Scrum. I regularly interviewed various stakeholders and internal users of our products, created mockups in Balsamiq and user stories in JIRA, made prototypes of visualizations using Excel, analyzed large sets of data to find a signal in the noise, and managed change throughout the organization to ensure the products we developed were absorbed into the culture. On top of all this, my technical skills did not go to waste. I frequently interviewed candidates for positions ranging from entry-level developer to technical director, I designed new APIs to be used company-wide, and worked closely with architects and engineers to guide the technical direction for our products.
Creator
Scavr is a web and mobile app for planning and running scavenger hunts.
The idea was hatched after planning the annual McCombs Scavenger Hunt and finding that I needed a better management system than messenger apps and spreadsheets.
Scavr launched in time for the McCombs Scavenger Hunt in May 2014 to great success:
we saved hours of time and effort in planning and reviewing submissions, and participants loved the easier user experience.
In the first few years, thousands of users planned and participated in scavenger hunts on the Scavr platform. In 2016, I shut Scavr down due to the closing of the hosting provider and my lack of time to maintain it.
Scavr was re-built from the ground up and re-launched in 2019.
GMAT: 770
GPA: 3.8
Awards:
Sord Scholar
Dean's Award for Academic Excellence
Beta Gamma Sigma
Master of Business Administration • May 2014
In 2014, I graduated from the McCombs School of Business with an MBA and a concentration in entrepreneurship and product management. I really loved going back to school, especially the opportunity to learn about and discuss topics that were extremely relevant to starting and running a business. McCombs has a great entrepeneurial community and a really welcoming culture overall, yet some of my most memorable experiences were outside the classroom. I have highlighted some of these activities below, including my experience leading teams during 3 Day Startup, the Texas Venture Labs program, and an MBA+ consulting project for WaterSmart Software.
Product Manager
During the summer between my first and second year as an MBA student I started an internship as the first Product Manager at Vobi, a seed-stage startup with $1.5 million in funding. I worked closely with the CEO, CTO, and Creative Director to define the company's first product. I helped the team go from tech demo to working product by developing user stories, writing PRDs and feature specs, creating a QA process, and more. In addition to my contributions to building out the product, I wrote marketing materials, built a pricing model, and helped demo the product to potential customers.
Associate • Spring 2013, Principal • Fall 2013
TVL is an accelerator fellowship that connects local startup companies with talented and entrepreneurial graduate students from the MBA, Law, Engineering, Pharmacy, and Natural Sciences programs at UT. There is both a consulting project and classroom component, which consists of lectures from of UT's best business professors and guest speakers that have established success in the austin startup community. For my first consulting project, I did a market validation study for Infinite IO and helped them define their target market and messaging strategy. In my second semester with TVL, I led a cross-functional team to accomplish two semester-long consulting projects solving important problems for Vobi and Ten4 Ads.
Vice President
As a VP for the Entrepreneur Society I helped cultivate the Entrepreneurship community in the McCombs graduate programs. I was a driving force in planning the famous Pitch Party and ES Connections, the annual startup-focused job fair. In addition, I was selected by McCombs Career Services to be a peer advisor for Entrepreneurship, helping first year students navigate a career in startups - whether launching their own venture or joining an existing startup.
Team Leader • WaterSmart Software Project
WaterSmart Software is a technology startup that helps water utilities make it easier for their customers to save water and save money. WaterSmart selected our team and asked us to develop a go-to-market strategy for expansion into Texas. We interviewed key stakeholders (including the Lower Colorado River Authority and Texas Water Development Board), spoke with potential customers throughout the state of Texas, and analyzed secondary research data. I worked with the team to compile our results into recommendations which we presented to the company's executives and board of directors. The team adopted our recommendations and now has a strong presence in Texas.
Creator
In 2012, while browsing the internet, I had a thought: What does a typical, random, Internet comment look like? Could this give us a glimpse into humanity at its worst? This thought led me to create Random Youtube Comment, mostly as a side project to explore the reality of creating a production website on my own. It has since gone on to much success and a cult following having been discovered and featured in numerous Reddit threads, being featured on a YouTube video with over 1 million views, and Mashable's list of 10 homepages that teach you something new every time you open a tab nabbing an impressive #6 spot ahead of internet juggernauts like National Geographic's Photo of the Day and Daily Kitten.
Principal Software Engineer
At Aspex, I got the chance to continue expanding my software development skills, but this position offered me the greatest opportunity in the form of personal development and leadership growth. I worked closely with the CEO on a project to build an internal time-tracking system with plans to turn it into a revenue generating product by licensing it to other companies in our niche. I also gained experience in managing a development team, building and supporting a client relationship, and writing business proposals.
Software Engineer
After graduating from Cornell I started as a Software Engineer at Hillcrest Labs, a consumer electronics startup. Hillcrest is best known for its motion sensing technology. I worked on a number of exciting consumer-facing technologies while at Hillcrest, including:
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science• May 2007
During my 4 years in Ithaca, I learned a ton, developed friendships that lasted throughout my life, and learned what it meant to be a well-rounded adult in the "real world." I earned a degree in Computer Science (while minoring in Mechanical Engineering), where I focused on computer graphics, gaming, and robotics. I sought out the Game Design program at Cornell, and over two semesters, created two unique video games: Chameleon Catastrophe, and Flight of the Munchkins. I completed the selective Engineering Co-op Program, where I worked for one semester and one summer as an intern at Autodesk. I joined the Cornell chapter of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, where I made connections that have lasted throughout my life. One of those connections was to join CUAir, an engineering project team that builds and flies UAVs. I was selected to become the Team Leader in 2005-2006, and led the team to win 3rd place for our design and technical paper in the annual AUVSI SUAS competition. As a senior in the fraternity, I also helped lead the creation of the Springfest Charity Music Festival.
Interested in working with me or just want to grab coffee (or a beer)? I'd love to hear from you!