Edmond, Oklahoma, United States
Vice President Product Development, CTO | I lead organizations to create products that grow revenue and earnings in Packaging, Engineering, Filtration, Materials, Chemicals, Formulations, Film, Hardware, Embedded Software, IOT, Roll to Roll Coating, Non-wovens, Plastics, Fibers. [email protected] Most recently as SVP Product Development and Chief Technology Officer at Ergotron, I: ♦ Improved schedule predictability 50% ♦ Created cross-functional teams for market verticals enabling focus and transition to Business Units ♦ Proposed and implemented investment in new model shop to reduce time to time to market by 25% and cost by 10% with rapid prototyping capability As Global Director of R&D at Donaldson, I: ♦ Grew the fuel filtration business by $50M with new product technology ♦ Established best in class patented technology and new products to grow the water separation and air filtration markets by 15% using Agile/Scrum As Director of R&D at Kodak, I: ♦ Created photo-printing kiosk platform and grew revenue to more than $500M in five years ♦ Reduced cost of consumables by 75% over same time period saving more than $20M per year with new technology and manufacturing process There are three things I am known as: 1. PRODUCT AND TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT INNOVATOR WHO ELEVATES CUSTOMER SUCCESS BY: ♦ Integrating a customer focused point of view and feedback insights with design thinking to create products with a competitive edge 2. ENGAGED AND ENGAGING LEADER WHO DRIVES EXCEPTIONAL BUSINESS RESULTS BY: ♦ Building Teams and creating a vision that inspires employee ownership and commitment 3. COLLABORATIVE BUSINESS STRATEGIST WHO ACCELERATES SUSTAINABLE AND PROFITABLE GROWTH BY: ♦ Creating and relentlessly communicating a vision that people embrace and bring to life ♦ Developing solid relationships built on trust and respect that enable alignment of goals and strategies across functions and engagement that drives results I help Public and Private Equity businesses turn R&D dollars into revenue and earnings by translating strategic vision into actionable product and technology roadmap plans. As a technical professional with a strong business sense, I understand where to invest to help my teams generate the best new product concepts and how to follow the right clues in research and development to generate the most valuable intellectual property. As a collaborative leader, I incorporate a collaborative style with my team members and promote their development by modeling behaviors to help them excel. This builds strong ownership and better leaders.
Tronox is the world’s largest vertically integrated producer of Titanium Dioxide, supplying coatings, ink, paper and plastics companies with pigment to make their products whiter, brighter and more colorful. I Lead a 35-member team to interface with all functions internally, manage current products, develop new products and bring them to market globally, represent the Voice of Customer for coatings, inks and plastics within Tronox and provide key support for Product Stewardship. In a short time I established credibility globally as leader of product development. I created and executed a plan for succession of key leaders in the organization and strengthened the competency of the team. I continue to address numerous regulatory issues to reduce spending and gain approvals especially in the area of Food Contact. I led the effort to establish standardization of processes globally for analysis of feedstocks. I lead multiple activities to Increase collaboration with regular presentations delivered to the global community. My Team has commercialized new products into the coatings, inks and plastics markets.
Ergotron uses human-centered design to build kinetic work environments that help people thrive. As CTO, I was instrumental in conceiving and implementing a number of initiatives that produced measurable results for the company such as: I developed the strategy to create cross-functional teams for Health Care, Office Furniture and Education verticals to break down silos and build support for the most competitive products. In doing so, I directed the right conversations within the business to align resources to the product and technology roadmaps. As a result, these teams became the basis for creating three corresponding business units and dramatically changed our approach to the market, resulting in a direct to distributor model for strategically selected office products. I championed the development of an on-site model shop to address the cost and speed of prototyping, resulting in 25% reduction in time from concept to prototype and a 10% reduction in cost of prototypes. I facilitated the move toward an agile/scrum methodology of product development and improved the product development process with an emphasis on rapid prototyping and customer feedback to ensure development of the right products. I championed the transition to IoT and the connectivity of our flagship medical cart which provides the capability to proactively manage the fleet of carts from an uptime perspective with an end to end solution for the customer. I was instrumental in leading a change in the culture to build a sense of urgency, ownership and commitment by focusing on the product development process, effective risk management, and planning.
Donaldson Company is a filtration company and one of the largest global providers of unique filtration technologies and high-quality filters and parts. In my role as the R&D Global Director, I implemented the agile (scrum) methodology with my team to develop an innovative filtration treatment to enable best in class fuel-water separation, as required by our customers. This resulted in securing several patents to protect the new technology as well as yielding a multi-million dollar increase in revenues for the company.
Growing liquid filtration was a key initiative at Donaldson. I worked to enable differentiation of Donaldson fuel and hydraulic filtration by supporting and developing methods for real world testing. My team showed that standard testing did not represent performance on equipment in the field. Our efforts showed 10X better performance than competitors in real world testing. The results were marketed to drive more than 20% increase in market share. Our technology reduced warranty costs for a key customer by 75%. I was a strong proponent for developing closer relationships with customers like Caterpillar and John Deere. My group supported numerous technology demonstration days at customer sites that built a stronger relationship with our customers engineers and management. They viewed our knowledge of filtration as the best in the industry and fought to have our technology implemented in their applications.