About

I have spent the past decade building measurable high growth B2B and B2C products across industries and form factors. I design and architect for crisp scalable solutions, analyze behavioral patterns, and build repeatable behaviors.

Areas that excite me:

• Innovation and re-imagining legacy industries
• Behavioral and personalized high touch-point entertainment products
• Workflow and analytics tools
• User centric data and identity solutions
• Brand and Lifestyle

Experience

Gem

VP, Product (May 2016 - january 2018)

I joined Gem in May of 2016 as the company was pivoting from Bitcoin wallet security solutions and into the enterprise health sector. My first week on the job was in Nashville speaking to healthcare executives of the principles of a blockchain.  We started the blockchain for Health movement as a clear area of disruption and utility of the core principles of the technology. Those conversations often started with, "have you heard about blockchain"? No. "Have you heard about Bitcoin"? A lot has changed from those early meetings over the course of the last 18 months as Blockchain has now reached household name status.  As we solved problems rooted in the foundations of blockchain technology, our focus expanded beyond health into energy, supply chain, and automotive.

Client Engagements

Being at the forefront of the technology and leading the enterprise conversation, we were inundated by inbound calls and emails from Fortune 500 and 100 companies wanting to build a path to productizing new or existing offerings with blockchain as its foundation.  Some ranged from early innovators looking to disinter-mediate industries or those large players that would be disinter-mediated by this technology, others' just wanted to learn. We sat at the table with these companies to craft products and strategies around data permissioning and access control.  How do they think about shared identity and the need of a shared audit history or actions?  How would they incorporate shared infrastructure and trust with market partners? Do they care about what is valid versus the truth? 

We created MVP, Proof of Concept, and go to market solutions across industries and applications for a variety of customers. As a common thread, they all sought to solve problems around data and identity management with many focusing on consent and regulation. 

Philips

We built the first longitudinal health record on a blockchain network. The product offering standardized a medical treatment plan for outpatient care and associated identities (doctors, nurses, family members) to that resource to provide granular access control to the right people at the right time for the continuum of care for a patient. 

Capital One

We all have been to the doctor's office and received a bill in the mail 3 months later and forgot we had even been to the doctor. This is due to a compounding problem of inoperable medical claim formats, central counter parties providing clearinghouse services, and lack of status visibility between providers and payers.  By standardizing claim resources and distributing rules validation logic to a network, we were able to take this multi-week process down to less than 15 minutes, time enough for your doctor to request not only your copay but your patient responsibility while you were still in the medical office. This not only reduces time but also drastically increases payment conversion rates. 

Xpansiv

With Xpansiv, we created created a natural gas carbon offset asset token based on the production of sustainable natural gas. This was in coordination with the COP-22 United Nations Summit and Paris accord for the provenance and integrity of carbon assets and verification of underlying production data. 

Mercer

With Mercer, a division of Marsh & McLennan Companies we created a smart profile and update product that links an employee ID  between multiple applications. Mercer needed to link identities across 400+ internal and 1500+ external applications, with this in place any update to that employee cascaded to each application in real time. 

Tieto

Being one of the largest Healthcare IT providers in the Nordics, Tieto like many international companies are faced with the looming European GDPR (Global Data Protection Rights) legislation that goes into effect in May 2018. Centered around identity and consent, we built a European citizen focused solution to which any citizen can manage the consent relationship relationship of their health data between hospitals and research facilities. 

Aioi Nissay Dowa

With AIOI (a partially owned subsidiary of Toyota Motors) we created a dynamic usage based insurance product based on streaming mobile and onboard automotive telematics data. A huge issue exists in Japan with client retention during the winter months as auto or motorcycle policies are dropped based on lack of use. Here we are solving that issue by providing premiums based on use to circumvent customer churn. We created an insurance data sharing platform between telematics providers, automotive companies, insurance providers, and individual policyholders. Each participant of the network registers data against a global driver ID in a standard format which allows dynamic risk models to be created on top of the data streams and distributed logic of the network. 

GemOS

Powering the engagements mentioned above and providing access to our platform to developers, we  developed GemOS as an abstracted developer API which provided REST endpoints for developers to create distributed applications.  It was our focus to provide development teams a low risk, robust and scalable infrastructure to build fast to market applications with multiple deployment options. Taking what we learned our enterprise engagements we created a consumable GemOS product to provide developers the following value:

• Define - Leverage network or custom business objects to be registered and managed to a connected network. These resources are configured with behaviors that map to deployed smart contracts to govern granular access control, version control, and asset characteristics. 
• Register - A system of abstracted REST API endpoints that provide create, read, update, and delete functionality for the management and registration of resources on a connected network. Developers can create code clients in a number of languages to integrate directly into their CLI and workflow.
• Listen - Leveraging what we call "observers" and built on our data pipeline, this provided developers the means to create customized notifications and webhooks based on resource level events on a network. 

Additional Achievements:

Publications

• How Blockchain Technology can enhance EHR Operability – Sept 2016
• Medical Claims Processing: Blockchain Solutions – May 2017

Patents

• GemOS Operating System - U.S. Patent Application No.: 15/494,224

Additional Positions Held

• Director of Product - May 2016 – Dec 2016

StudyMode

VP, Product ( April 2014 - May 2016)

StudyMode is a user-generated content (UGC) platform for students, with a global user base of 65M users. Its network serves more than 2.5 billion pages per year to students all over the world. At StudyMode I ran product strategy, execution, and brand focus for the global leader for research documents and country leaders in France, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Spain, Peru, and Chile. I balanceed both business and creative duties leading cross functional teams across SEO, Social, Product, and Business Analysis, managing multiple direct reports in each and establishing short and long term business objectives and execution path for the organization at large. 

Core Metric Optimization

StudyMode's core business model is based on organic SEO traffic that provides a variability to the business where it's hyper critical to optimize key performance metrics relative to the volume of inbound traffic. Here I drove success in growing value metrics for user acquisition (71%), user generated content growth (400%), and growth in premium subscription purchase rate (350%). Growth has resulted in over 115k global subscribers and 130M pieces of unique content.

Growth Leadership

• Launched 3 new product verticals domestically to pair with the existing StudyMode premium research business for company diversification and focus on user value.
• Monetized company's largest international properties across 7 localized currencies and countries with transition from free to paid client engagements leading to additional 15% of bottom line org revenue. 
• Expanded mobile footprint from 4 to 12 applications between IOS and Android, driving domestic and international brand growth. 
• Launched StudyMode Drive allowing students to connect with their school or university to share course- specific content and answers which connects students with experts in more than 20+ academic subjects, both free engagement based products for portfolio diversification and growth channels. 
• Heavy focus on UGC acquisition as well as building a technology stack for content curation, analysis, and stragetic promotion. 
• Scaled product organization from sole owner to team of 6 for coverage across multiple competencies and company needs.

Additional Positions Held

• Director of Product - December 2014 - May 2015
• Senior Product Manager - April 2014 - December 2014

Baseline (New York Times)

Senior Product Manager (March 2009 - March 2014)

Baseline is the world’s preeminent provider of film and television data. Formerly owned by the New York Times and now part of the Gracenote / Tribune Media umbrella, they provide competitive intelligence to entertainment, media, finance and marketing professionals as well as syndicated data services.

Growth Leadership

• Owner of day-to-day management of all Studio System flagship properties for both web and mobile form factors in addition to B2C products inHollywood, Baseline Research, and internal proprietary tools. 
• Led business relationship and creative product for strategic alliance with NBCUniversal powering the full content lifecycle for over 20 of their core and subsidiary Networks and leading to Baseline’s 50M sale to Gracenote. 
• Launched from concept to delivery the first mobile application in Baseline’s 30 year history as a flagship platform extension. 
• Owned product and business launch and re-imagining of legacy entertainment news site Studio System News allowing for 10x growth. 
• Led syndication platform creation catering to data needs of partners and over 75 million unique visitors each month. 
• Architected companies internal nerve system for 360 degree user management resulting in organizational streamlining, contract management, customer service case management, and more. 

Additional Positions Held: 

• Technical Product Manager, Studio System (08/2012 – 06/2013) 
• Product Manager, Mobile / Internal Tools (10/2011 – 08/2012) 
• Product Manager, inHollywood.com (05/2011 – 10/2011) 
• Salesforce.com Advanced Administrator / Sales Associate & Coordinator (03/2009 – 05/2011)

Kaboodle.com

Product Manager (September 2011 - june 2012)

I joined the Kaboodle team following the sale of the property to StyleSpot. Kaboodle had been acquired by Hearst Media in 2007 and was the internet's first and largest social website for shoppers. It was the trusted brand in the days pre-pinterest and the default applet on every shoppers browser to share, discover, and buy products from retailers. 

Upon that acquisition we managed the relocation of the team to Los Angeles where we gave the brand a complete functional and design refresh. This was driven hand in hand with their engaged and elite community members to focus the utility of the site away from a collection of boards and into a personalized and tailored shopping suggestion engine.

Crash.tv

Producer / Director of Business Development (October 2007 - March 2009)

Online TV network focused on corporate product placement and original content creation. Crash TV was the flagship website destination for the Uber network. 

Highlights 

• Created original online media, grass roots marketing, and branding for corporate brands, franchises, and highly trafficked social network individuals (including MySpace and Facebook). 
• Co-Produced original broadcast quality webisodes for online distribution. 
• Produced music video content for UK based label, All Around The World for worldwide distribution.

Content House

Producer / Manager (September 2004 - October 2008)

Literary and intellectual property management and production company based in Century City, CA

Highlights 
Facilitated original concept creation and literature based editorial development of intellectual property for sale to film studios, individual producers, third party production companies, and literary agencies. 

• Maintained a successful application of editing principles under tight deadlines. 
• Consistently meet client needs from a roster of over forty New York Times bestselling authors, comic book publishers, screenwriters, and animation/special effect studios through day-to-day management. 
• Created an effective database system to manage the cataloging of intellectual property, and client needs and progress.

Affiliations

Runabout Goods

Advisor / board member (january 2017-present)

Runabout creates modern interpretations of classic daily wear and progressive adventure goods. We believe in well made wearable and durable goods utilizing a progressive styling approach that can withstand the test of time. My position with the brand includes strategic partnerships, investment, and customer acquisition via wholesale channels. 

Product Managers Association of Los Angeles (PMA.LA)

Board of Directors (December 2015 - Present)

Education

Scrum Alliance

Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

License 165945

Salesforce

Certified Advanced Adminstrator

License 398289

University of Washington

BA, Comparative Literature / Cinema Studies (1999 - 2003)

BA - Comparative Literature, 
BA - Cinema Studies

Deans List - 6 Quarters

Lahainaluna High School

High School Diploma (1995-1999)

Summa Cum Laude

Testimonials

Jeff is an absolute wizard at all areas of product (development, management and growth). We hired Jeff as a late round candidate and he blew the doors off the competition. Jeff writes absolutely beautiful specs, designs and even codes when necessary - he really is the whole package and we were lucky to have him join the team. 
It's been a real pleasure seeing his evolution from a product owner to a true product leader in the organization. He was able to jump in and quickly take over product specs, provided leadership/mentoring to the team and later owned our long term product roadmap. I learn something from him each time we meet and would absolutely love to work with him again in the future. 

- Phi Vo, General Manager, StudyMode

Jeff is an all around awesome guy and he really looks after his team and the company he works for. I helped him with hiring someone on his team and he's one of the best hiring managers I've worked with. He's responsive, knows what he wants, communicates enthusiastically about both the company and the opportunity of the position and is very considerate of peoples time. He looks for both potential and cultural fits and likes to find 'x' factors in people. He strives for a positive candidate experience and knows the importance of leaving a good impression. Everyone I've sent over to Jeff's way always has positive things to say and seems to be anxious in waiting for next steps. Solid guy, great mentor having worked in both start-ups and larger companies and overall fun guy to hang out with when he's got the time.

- Jared Rouppet, LA Tech Recruiter

I have worked with or managed Jeff for 5+ years in various capacities. Jeff has an exceptional technology learning curve - whatever task is thrown his way, he masters quickly and systematically, so much so that it becomes second nature. Jeff is a highly skilled visual stylist, with an innovator's gift for creating a cleaner, more refined version of anything the business imagines.  His broad technology skill set, from his exceptional wireframes to complete understanding of email marketing/communications architecture to awareness of cutting edge tools, has rendered him a strong and impressive resource for us. He is bright, driven, equally comfortable with business or technology endeavors, and a pleasure to work with. Highly recommended - any company would benefit tremendously from Jeff's involvement.

- Amer Saleem - VP, Product, Prime Focus

Jeff is on my VERY short list of people about whom I can say, "I'd found a company with that guy in a heartbeat."  Jeff has a seemingly innate ability to bring out the best work in everyone around him, resulting in products that exceed expectations with every release. Beyond all that, though, Jeff's simply a sweetheart of a person, a joy to work and hang out with. He's as comfortable leading a team as he is being a key contributor.

- Jason Scoggins, President & COO, Slated

Jeff has proven to be a level-headed and innovative member of the Baseline team. His ability to dig into any challenge and successfully deliver a solution is second only to his warm and positive personality. Jeff is a true innovator with his eye trained closely on figuring out new ways to solve problems - which is why he has been successfully growing within the Baseline organization for several years now. Jeff is a pleasure to work with.

- Ryan Williams - Founder, Wonderment Apps

Jeff is incredibly creative, highly technically skilled and a genuine team player. Working with him was fantastic and any Company he works for is lucky to have him. He's able to take on projects of any size and scope and see them through to completion with great attention to detail, excellent execution and speed. Loved working with him and would do it again any time, any place!

- Alex Amin - Entrepeneur