Potomac, Maryland, United States
Builder and operator with CFO depth and CEO perspective — brought in to build, scale, or stabilize data platform and infrastructure businesses by matching the operating model to what the stage and capital actually require. Builder and operator with CFO depth and CEO perspective — brought in to build, scale, or stabilize data platform and infrastructure businesses by matching the operating model to what the stage and capital actually require. Across capital-intensive, dual-use, and deep-tech businesses, I have: • Co-founded Aireon and built it from 3 to 60 people, securing approximately $1B in long-term take-or-pay contracts and raising $680M+ in equity and high-yield debt — with the company going on to sustain EBITDA margins above 40% • Led the repositioning of Kleos Space as CEO/CFO, from a distressed organization through a regulatory investigation, formal insolvency, to the sale to a large UK defense contractor — recovering materially more value than liquidation • Reduced projected CAPEX by approximately $500M at Spacelink by phasing capital deployment against risk-adjusted demand • Executed more than $4B in financings across CFO, banker, and corporate development roles — from CSFB high-yield through Aireon's $400M debt facility I typically enter through the CFO role and expand into operational ownership as the business requires — owning Finance, HR, IT, Legal, BIS, and Strategy. The throughline across roles is aligning product, commercial demand, and capital so the business is both buildable and financeable. What I look for in a next role: a Series B–D, 50–300 person data platform, infrastructure, deep-tech, or dual-use business where the board and CEO need a partner who can run operations end-to-end, hold the capital plan together, and recruit the leaders the next stage requires. Background: Columbia MBA (Finance & Strategy), CPA (Illinois), Columbia Engineering AI Professional Certification, Lean Six Sigma. Started in audit at Ernst & Young; capital markets training at Credit Suisse First Boston (high-yield). Open to COO and COO/CFO roles. ⸻ COO · CFO · COO/CFO · Chief Operating Officer · Chief Financial Officer · Operator · Strategic Advisor · Data Platform · SaaS · DaaS · Series B · Series C · Turnaround · OKR · Capital Strategy
Designing and building a supervised-learning, RAG-powered AI communication tool — fine-tuned to emulate owner voice and judgment — enabling delegation of high-touch customer correspondence to less experienced staff. Hands-on build covering retrieval architecture, fine-tuning, evaluation, and policy-governed response rules. Use case is operational: reduce owner time-on-correspondence at a multi-location services business while preserving voice and judgment quality. Concurrent with active search for COO and COO/CFO roles at Series B–D data platform, infrastructure, deep-tech, and dual-use businesses.
Fractional CFO and strategic advisor to the CEO and executive team at a seed-stage enterprise SaaS platform providing governed data access for employee and agentic workflows. Sat in the CFO seat for board reporting and financial strategy; spent the balance of the engagement advising on product positioning, GTM, and operating model. • Repositioned product and GTM strategy by implementing a cross-functional OKR framework that aligned product, sales, and engineering around validated strategic priorities and measurable milestones. • Imposed resource discipline by driving leadership-level trade-offs, focusing resources on core product validation, and extending runway by approximately 25%. • As capital conditions tightened, recommended a smaller operating model aligned to the company's stage — including eliminating my own role — preserving runway for core product validation.
Publicly traded RF intelligence data company serving government clients in the U.S., UK, and EU. EU-based with Australian public-market oversight; led a distributed ecosystem with vendors in the UK and Denmark and employees across the EU, UK, and US. • Inherited a distressed organization: creditors had lost confidence in prior leadership, a regulatory investigation was underway, and strategic vendors had disengaged • Assumed CEO role at the request of the Co-Founder — who recognized the turnaround required different leadership — and repositioned the strategy from owned spacecraft to leased capacity, reducing capital intensity by 70% • Restored operational coordination within 60 days by reestablishing trust with prime contractors and subcontractors whose relationships had deteriorated • Initiated and carried out a formal insolvency process — with full board approval — leading to a sale to large UK based defense contractor that recovered significantly more value for creditors than liquidation
Technology infrastructure company building a global space-based optical data relay network; supported an approximately 60-FTE organization. • Reframed the business and investment plan to align with realistic demand scenarios, restoring credibility with investors and stakeholders • Reduced projected CAPEX by approximately $500M by phasing capital deployment against risk-adjusted demand and capital availability • Increased execution reliability by establishing clear ownership and milestone accountability through OKRs, with adopting teams consistently delivering on 100% of commitments versus approximately 60% in non-adopting groups
Selective, referral-based engagements spanning capital raising, strategic product assessment, and operational improvement. • Advised a satellite communications company on equity financing readiness — positioning the business plan and investor materials for an institutional raise • Conducted a product-value assessment for a machine learning–based Anti-Money Laundering (AML) platform; identified competitive gaps and recommended a strategic pivot that realigned product development with market-validated demand • Applied Lean Six Sigma to build a customer-value prioritization framework for a service business, resulting in EBITDA margin expansion from 25% to 40% — a framework that proved its value when COVID forced exactly the hard choices it had already answered