Profile
High-performing technology leader directing multi-billion programs and enterprise-level business initiatives. Aligns key corporate strategic goals to corporate business operations minimizing time to market while maximizing ROI (human and capital). Known for a tenacious commitment to excellence, advanced problem solving, and a reputation for exceeding expectations on corporate mandates. A passionate, high energy, trusted influencer, relationship builder, highly analytical straight talker who delivers.
PMO Leadership – managed complex multi-disciplinary programs for product portfolios as large as $2.2B. Advanced expertise refining processes that improve efficiencies, quantifying cost of process, eliminate redundancies, reduce costs and ensure product/program success Innovative
Problem Solving – unique track record for devising innovative solutions that solve/mitigate complex technical, operational, inter-divisional, and service-oriented problems
Enterprise Initiatives – exhaustive experience initiating and leading large-scale corporate initiatives that improve performance and ensure corporate mandates are achieved
Builder of World Class Organizations– skilled at recruiting, developing and retaining top talent in geographically dispersed locations worldwide. Experience creating positive cultures, turning around under-performing teams and motivating staff to excellence
Influencer & Relationship Builder - A trusted influencer and relationship builder, who navigates the political tides of the company, aligning corporate and decision maker goals. “Paint the picture” aligning all cross-organizational parties to a common objective
Skills
Experience
HEAD OF REVENUE GROWTH OFFICE Extreme Networks
2020- Present
Reporting under the Chief Revenue Office, lead executive recruited to create and run the Revenue Growth Office. The focus of this corporate entity is the cross-functional coordination of corporate-wide processes which deliver an effective end-to-end customer experience with an outcome of maximized revenue performance.
Strategic Sales Initiatives:
- Formed new organization within Sales Operations and a partnered with the IT PMO organization to form a Center of Excellence for worldwide Sales. Established proper governance and ongoing oversight for corporate Sales KPIs
- Proof of Concept: Utilizing Kaizen methodologies to Value Stream Map of Extreme’s Proof of Concept processes
- ~$70M recovery of loss of material annually
- Increased efficiencies of customer evaluation resulting in sales increase associated with POC activities by 60%
- Product Transition: Utilized Kaizen methodologies to map the end to end processes associated with the Sales ramp of new product portfolios to drive NPI Sales ramp velocity while at the same time transitioning the Extreme Sales off of the old mature products to minimize the Excess and Obsolescence corporate exposure and drive greater contribution margins.
- Increase in sales ramp linearity by 40%
SR DIRECTOR, LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT/BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION Extreme Networks
2017 - 2020
Reporting to the COO, lead executive hired into Extreme to create a new Corporate Program Management organization. The corporate mandate was to operationalize Extreme’s corporate strategy by aligning the product portfolios to achieve long range revenue targets. Department's span included SaaS, Cloud and Applications (Agile) Software Business units as well as Hardware Development.
Program Management Leadership
● Formed new global program management organization from internal and external resources within the first 180 days.○ New Product Introduction Programs under management within first 30 days.
● Created of corporate development processes (Waterfall, Agile, CI/CD) and governance for all Extreme’s $1B portfolio ○ Increased corporate efficiency by 60%.
● Created Key Corporate Performance Indicators (KPI) aligned to corporate goals. ○ Aligned cross-functional teams resulting in defined ownership and accountability based on data.
● Managed Quarterly Business Reviews: Responsible for managing all corporate QBRs. ○ Material available for pre-reads, action items taken/tracked/closed, meeting productivity increase by 80%.
Strategic Initiatives
● Pre-GA pipeline: Process by which pre-sales could build demand prior to GA. ○ Resulted in over $70M of bookings and an increase in sales ramp of 60% in the first six months.
● Corporate Strategic Processes: Formalized Strategic Planning Process in support of Corporate Annual Operating Plan.
● End of Life Process: Developed process focused on Excess and Obsolescence (E&O) Mitigation. o Reduction by 90% of corporate write off of materials.
● Corporate Performance Dashboards: Designed and implemented Tableau dashboards to measure product portfolio performance of business segments. o Utilized by executive staff to assess the performance of corporate investment and make segments accountable to revenue and gross margin targets.
Brocade Communications
2009 - 2017
Senior leadership role managed Brocade’s entire $2.2B portfolio of SAN, Enterprise, Routing, Switching, Application Delivery and Software Networking portfolios. Full strategic and tactical leadership over all corporate program management, managed a team of 11 senior globally distributed technical program managers and led major enterprise-wide business initiatives.
● New Product Introduction Life Cycle Process Evolution: Introduced Agile/Lean design methodologies for all software development resulted in increased customer satisfaction and program throughput by 30%.
● Corporate External Engagement Model permitted key customers to pre-qualify Brocade products for their specific environments; accelerated revenue ramp by 40% and major customer deployments by three quarters.
● Delivered 180 multi-million-dollar programs and numerous first-to-market successes. ○ Delivered portfolios which generated tens of billions of dollars in revenue.
● Enterprise-wide gap analysis initiative to identified and prioritized corporate performance gaps. Orchestrated the enterprise-wide delivery of solutions to maximize ROI. ○ Corporate savings realized in the ~$100M range.
● M&A Integration: Primary integration of Brocade’s Networking Business Segment into Extreme Networks.
● Acquisition Integration: Integrated into Brocade’s ODM partners (EMC, IBM, Fujitsu) the entire Foundry Networking portfolio. All products transformed to meet ODM branding requirements. ○ Result: Qualification pulled in by one fiscal quarter resulted in sales of >$100M of revenue.
● Strategic Initiative: Country Compliance Methodology: Architected, implemented and rolled out extensive cross-functional initiative to manage product worldwide compliance. Allowed Brocade to easily manage certification expiration dates and plan for the resulting engineering budgetary impacts, KPIs allowed for assessment of cost of certifications across the portfolio vs. in country revenue. ○ Resulted in a 70% increased efficiency ○ Reduction of ~$10M of certification costs by ROI-aligned portfolio certifications.
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS: PROGRAM MANAGEMENT Force10 Networks
2000 - 2009
Senior leadership role oversaw the operation’s interlock for the entire Force10 product portfolio. Resulted in a decreased time to market of new product portfolios by 20%.
● General Manager of Security Business Segment - Completed M&A and managed hardware and software engineering through the next two generations of Force 10’s Intrusion Detection/Prevention/Lawful Intercept security product. o Resulted in annual revenue of ~$5M.
● Senior Manager of Software - Managed a worldwide team of engineers through eight successful code releases and led to a dramatic reduction of issues in the manufacturing process. o Reduction of transformation costs of $4M.
● Introduced new tools and protocols for global service’s Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) requirements ability to meet customer issue resolution KPIs. o Reduced time-to-resolve by 99% (from 10 hours to seconds) o Reduction in labor associated with RMA center’s hardware issue identification by 20%.
● Head of ASIC Verification Architecture - ASICS Verification Lead and Architect on custom ASICs for Force 10 products. Developed and implemented unique architectural model allowing for system level ASIC regressions with error injections. All critical defects were addressed during simulation. o Resulted in no ASIC re-spins. Estimated savings of ~$15M over three ASICS.
Education
Certified SCRUM Product OwnercPrime
2019
A Certified Scrum Product Owner® (CSPO®) is one such certification that helps holders become successful product owners by training them on aspects of on-time delivery of high-value releases and maximizing the ROI.
Extreme Leadership Extreme Instructor Lead
2018
Extreme Ownership is written by Jocko Willink, a SEAL leader who explains how the lessons he learnt in combat are relevant to leaders in any role. The importance of team is emphasized, you are only as good as the men or woman behind you. This
book provides fundamental leadership lessons through Willink’s insightful combat experiences and stories. Willink examines a number of leadership concepts that have been proven as effective in both combat and business scenarios
Leadership Strength Assessment Gallup Strength Finders
2016
The Gallup Clifton StrengthsFinder is a powerful online assessment that helps individuals identify, understand and maximize their strengths. ... By exploring the ways in which you naturally think, feel and behave, Clifton StrengthsFinder can identify and build on the areas where you have infinite potential to grow and succeed.
Competent Communicator Toastmasters International
2012-2015
Competent Communicator (CC) Competent Communicator (CC) The Competent Communication manual, which has 10 speech projects, is the first step in the communication track. It helps develop your speaking skills one step at a time. Every project builds upon what you learned in the preceding project.
Certified SCRUM Master cPrime
2014
he Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team.
BS, Computer Systems Engineering / Minor: Math University of Massachusetts, Amherst
A computer systems engineer uses expert knowledge of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis to design software systems and computing technology. A typical day in the life of a computer systems engineer might include: Advising clients about software and hardware needs and requirements.
Patents
FIFO BUFFER WITH MULTIPLE STREAM PACKET SEGMENTATION
Publication number: 20140321281
Abstract: An epoch-based network processor internally segments packets for processing and aggregation in epoch payloads. FIFO buffers interact with a memory management unit to efficiently manage the segmentation and aggregation process.
Publication date: October 30, 2014
PACKET SEGMENTATION WITH DIFFERENT SEGMENT SIZES FOR A SWITCH FABRIC
Publication number: 20150372896
Abstract: An epoch-based network processor internally segments packets for processing and aggregation in epoch payloads. FIFO buffers interact with a memory management unit to efficiently manage the segmentation and aggregation process.
Publication date: December 24, 2015
Packet segmentation with different segment sizes for a switch fabric
Patent number: 9276835
Abstract: An epoch-based network processor internally segments packets for processing and aggregation in epoch payloads. FIFO buffers interact with a memory management unit to efficiently manage the segmentation and aggregation process.
Date of Patent: March 1, 2016
Segmentation of network packets for a switch fabric
Patent number: 9160677
Abstract: A network packet is segmented for transfer through a switch fabric. The last segment of the packet is allowed to exceed the maximum size of previous segments so as to increase the switch fabric utilization. Other features are also provided.
Date of Patent: October 13, 2015
FIFO buffer with multiple stream packet segmentation
Patent number: 8804751
Abstract: An epoch-based network processor internally segments packets for processing and aggregation in epoch payloads. FIFO buffers interact with a memory management unit to efficiently manage the segmentation and aggregation process.
Date of Patent: August 12, 2014
Awards
Testimonials
David is an exceptional operational leader. His understanding of how to use process in pursuit of strategic ends is outstanding. And his direct support made a concrete difference to my ability to drive product strategy across two separate businesses at Brocade.
Michael BushongVice President Product Management - Brocade Communications
During my tenure with Brocade Dave has been my primary business partner in understanding the strategic & tactical alignment of Brocade's various product and strategic initiatives and their impacts the Service & Support organization. I have found Dave’s assessments to be based on a solid understanding of business & development processes and have developed a great deal of trust for his insights. His broad understanding of the various functions within the company and their inter-dependencies has been invaluable in identifying potential issues before they arise. Dave’s has created a talented and versatile team that's able to adapt well as strategic initiatives evolve. His team was a trusted partner that played an central role in our initiative to coalesce Brocade's SDN Application strategy across various business units. Dave’s team worked cross-functionally to align disparate groups to our strategic vision. Success would not have been possible without their partnership work
Todd Regonini Vice President Global Services - Brocade Communications
Having worked with David over the last eight years, what impresses me most is his versatile nature. He questions the status quo. His observations on corporate needs are well thought-out and concise. He gains consensus by listening and guiding corporate mind-share. He can take a strategic enterprise goal and drive it to full implementation. He is detail-orientated and is unsurpassed in following up and driving governance action items to closure. He has been a great partner of finance to help lead the financial measurements regarding new programs and the financial impact to the company's overall goals. I have greatly enjoyed my time working with him and would like to do so again in the future if given the opportunity.
Robert Eggers Vice President of Finance - Brocade Communications
In my role at Extreme Networks, I found Dave to be an example of how a leader motivated and runs a successful team. Dave was hired onto Extreme with a charter of forming a Program Management and Business Operations organization from existing internal engineering project managers. Dave's approach to coaching, goal setting and mentoring allowed his team to rise from a role of project management to managing the business objectives of the corporate portfolio. Dave is an asset to any organization and I would look forward to working with him again.
Mary Katheryn Evans Vice President of Human Resources, Global Markets at Credit Suisse
Working with Dave at both Brocade Communications and Extreme Networks, Dave has been my primary interface into the Technical Program Management organization. I have found Dave to be a key ally in the delivery of new product portfolios to the market. Under Dave’s leadership, the PMO organization provides just the right amount of process and governance. This optimal balance allows the product to reach the market quicker with proper oversight and accountability to achieve corporate revenue targets. Dave always delivers and exceeds expectations. I look forward to working with Dave in the future
Manjunath GowdaVice President of Engineering - Data Center and Campus Products at Extreme Networks
I have been working for David for the past 4 years at Extreme Networks and 2 years at Brocade Communications. David is a remarkable leader, driven by actions, focuses on developing each employee, deals with problems immediately, always acts in the interest of his employees and the company. He has brought a very high level of professionalism, dedication, leadership, and focus to the Program Management office at Extreme Networks and has encouraged and promoted women into leadership positions. In his Executive role, he asks tough questions, demands commitments and he does it with a high degree of skill and professional tact. David has a “big picture” vision which is sought out by corporate leaders when tough decisions need to be made. He has always been very supportive of my needs as his employee, while encouraging me to focus on benefits I can provide to the greater team. His “get things done” attitude is contagious. I consider myself lucky to have David as my manager.
Olga Treyger Principle Program Manager at Extreme Networks