Executive Summary
Product strategy and operations leader who builds the planning architecture, governance, and executive narratives that make product organizations execute. 25+ years translating complex portfolios and competing priorities into clear product choices, aligned cross-functional execution, and accountable plans across businesses spanning $17B–$40B in revenue. Proven at both altitude and ground level: shapes multi-year portfolio strategy while simultaneously designing the cadences, decision frameworks, and metrics that embed decisions into daily operations.
Builder-operator by instinct: maintains a live backlog of systemic execution gaps and drives fixes that stick—ensuring operational and cultural changes are embedded, not just announced. Distinctive strength in executive storytelling: architects board- and executive leadership team-ready narratives structured as context → insight → implication → decision that move forums from status reporting to decision closure. Hands-on with modern AI tools—ChatGPT, Claude, Python/R, AWS, and emerging agent-based workflows—alongside advanced analytics to improve decision quality and scale reusable insight artifacts.
Professional Experience
Senior Director, Product Strategy & Operations — Personal Systems (2013–2016, 2019–Present)
- Owned end-to-end product strategy and planning for a $40B product portfolio; defined what to build and why, shaped investment choices, and structured execution priorities across Product, Engineering, GTM, and Finance.
- Applied TAM/SAM/SOM discipline and advanced modeling (Monte Carlo simulation, regression, BI dashboards) to convert market data into actionable portfolio plans; tracked recurring execution breakdowns and drove targeted process fixes to ensure decisions were embedded in operations.
- Applied modern AI tools—ChatGPT, Claude, Python/R, AWS, and emerging agent-based workflows—to accelerate strategic synthesis, pressure-test executive narratives, and build reusable prompt libraries, review scripts, and decision artifacts.
- Architected decision-ready narratives and pre-reads for board and executive leadership team forums; served as strategic communication partner to senior product leaders in high-stakes stakeholder communications; maintained KPI governance ensuring consistent leadership visibility.
Senior Director, Product Strategy & Operations — Print (2016 – 2019)
- Led strategy and planning for a $17B portfolio spanning hardware and supplies; served as the primary bridge across Product, Engineering, GTM, and Finance to align dependencies and drive execution.
- Led portfolio integration workstream for Samsung Printing acquisition (2017): applied NLP/sentiment analysis and advanced analytics via Python/R and AWS to rationalize the combined product portfolio across profitability, market coverage, and technology differentiators; navigated significant cross-cultural organizational change across Korean and U.S. teams to align and embed new operating norms.
- Built cross-functional alignment mechanisms—checkpoint reviews, owner maps, follow-up governance—that converted high-level integration strategy into embedded operational decisions.
Senior Director, Product Strategy & Operations — Personal Systems / Commercial (2013 – 2016)
- Drove long-range planning for the commercial segment; shaped multi-year investment strategy; designed planning cadences with explicit decision rights, pre-reads, dashboards, and checkpoint reviews across Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Finance.
- Built reusable executive narrative structures that shifted senior forums from context re-litigation to decision closure; established KPI governance ensuring consistent leadership visibility.
Senior Director, Customer & Market Insights — Asia Pacific (Singapore) (2012 – 2013)
- Built multi-country insights organization from the ground up, serving all product lines across Asia Pacific; expanded emerging-market research coverage and accelerated the speed from insight to business action.
- Launched China digital qualitative research platform, materially increasing customer interaction frequency for consumer and SMB segments and elevating insight impact on go-to-market and portfolio decisions.
- Extended demand modeling to quantify product attribute influence on consumer choice dynamics; expanded application scope for analytics-driven category and portfolio management.
Senior Director, Category Operations — Asia Pacific (Singapore) (2010 – 2012)
- Founded and scaled 25-person operations team (Singapore + India), designed from the ground up to manage NPI, forecasting governance, and regional portfolio planning.
- Led a team including Lean Six Sigma-trained specialists, directing their expertise across five process transformation domains—NPI, pricing/contra management, forecasting, business monitoring, and portfolio management; drove cultural adoption of new operating norms, not just process rollout.
- Delivered measurable portfolio discipline outcomes: ~3× increase in product configuration reuse across countries and ~40% reduction in new SKU proliferation while maintaining complete market coverage.
- Standardized pricing process and competitive-tracking analytics across countries; reduced legacy discounting variance and tightened alignment between pricing tactics and portfolio strategy.
Senior Director, Strategy & Planning — Notebook GBU (2007 – 2010)
- Developed business and technology strategies for global commercial and consumer notebook portfolios; evaluated investment opportunities across emerging markets, open-source, virtualization, and adjacent device categories. Promoted to Senior Director in 2008.
- Championed quantitative approaches to risk and uncertainty—introducing Monte Carlo simulation for scenario planning, acquisition valuation, globalization risk assessment, and market share modeling to give leadership a clearer view of probable outcomes before committing.
- Served as primary strategic advisor to SVP/GM; translated complex market and technology dynamics into clear investment choices and executive-ready decision artifacts.
Senior Manager, Strategic Marketing — Mobile Computing GBU (2000 – 2007)
- Global market lead on two industry-first product launches—notebooks with integrated wireless WAN and PCs with integrated Trusted Platform Modules (TPM)—establishing the hardware security foundation now standard across PCs, printers, and mobile devices worldwide.
- Led strategic technology planning team defining wireless WAN strategy and co-architecting HP ProtectTools security framework; promoted to team manager; co-inventor on multiple granted patents.
Earlier Career: Senior Product Marketing Manager, AltaVista/Compaq • Product Marketing Manager, Compaq • Software Marketing Manager, Compaq (1997–2000) • Regional Sales Manager, EnerSoft Corp. • Deputy Executive Officer, USAID, Budapest, Hungary (1994–1996)