Career journey
I didn't start out trying to become a product executive. I started by fixing problems.
Support, then operations, then hardware, then requirements, then products. Every step taught me something about the work that product decisions depend on.
The path
(a) · 2006 → todayACTIVE Network
Technical Support
Tier 2 support straight out of college, diagnosing field issues with remote tooling.
ACTIVE Network
Client Operations
Kept supporting technical issues while taking on operational ownership for customers in the field.
ACTIVE Network
Fulfillment & Vendors
Inherited printer ribbons, thermal stock and materials knowing nothing about thermal printing, and learned the stock, the vendors, the quality issues and the process around them.
ACTIVE Network
Hardware Ownership
Owned the POS hardware ecosystem: touchscreens, printers, scanners, mag stripe readers, firmware, OS, drivers, configuration, testing, documentation and deployment standards. Managed Elo, Datamax, Metrologic and distribution partners. Helped deploy and support 20,000+ devices.
ACTIVE Network
POS Hardware
Owned the connected hardware ecosystem and helped deploy and support more than 20,000 devices across government contracts.
ACTIVE Network
Business Analysis
Hardware, shipping, call center support, training, fulfillment and agent management were all managed separately. I wanted software that managed them together, so I moved into defining it.
ACTIVE Network
Internal Product Creation
Helped define and design a multi tenant, web service enabled internal product that centralized fragmented operations. This was when Product clicked for me. I had lived the operational problems firsthand, helped define software to solve them, and realized I wanted to keep doing that.
ACTIVE Network
Customer Implementations
Business Analyst for hunting and fishing agencies across the US and Canada, then led a consulting team through configuration, discovery, requirements, gap identification, documentation, testing, training, data migration and adoption.
GS&F
GS&F
About 18 months building a stronger business analysis discipline at a marketing company, working on user stories, BRDs and FRDs, traceability, Jira workflows, sprint reporting, QA and UAT.
Sovereign Sportsman Solutions
Product Management
Returned to S3 and built the product and business analysis operating model for an Agile organization: repeatable scopes, budgets, resourcing, delivery tracking and contractual requirements.
Sovereign Sportsman Solutions
Product Leadership
Moved from defining the operating model into leading Product work across complex customer commitments and a growing platform.
PayIt
Director of Product
Built and led a Product organization supporting as many as nine teams across licensing, permitting, lotteries, harvest reporting, recreational vehicles, payments, reservations, mobile, enforcement, CRM, identity and POS.
Where I sit today
(b) · PlatformDirector of Product @ PayIt, leading a product organization that has supported as many as nine teams.
Still hands on with customers, strategy, requirements, planning, complex implementations, data and the product problems nobody else wants to pick up.
Platform areas
Current scale
(c) · PayIt / S3~1/yr
Major implementations since 2006, about 20 total
Ontario Phase 2 · Michigan · Arkansas · Louisiana · Minnesota · Ohio · Mississippi · Oregon
Up to 9
Product teams
98% to 99%
Recent committed delivery
PRODUCT BREADTH
Licensing · Permitting · Vehicles · Financials · Reservations · Mobile · Enforcement · CRM · Identity / SSO · POS · Lotteries · Harvest Reporting · Events