I’m an entrepreneur who thrives on challenge and solving significant problems. I utilize Agile and Lean principles to break down unnecessary systems and get to the root of issues early and often. I use my practical decision- making skills to balance the different and sometimes conflicting needs of business. My educational background is in both engineering and management, and it helps me understand problems from multiple perspectives. My business goals are social goals, because I believe for-profit business is the most effective way to achieve socially positive outcomes.
Chief Executive Officer | August, 2017 – Current
Nori is a company on a mission to reverse climate change by removing enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to lower the overall concentration of CO2 below 300 parts per million. We are building a platform that enables customers to pay other people to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Project Manager / Director of Operations and Delivery | Dec, 2014 – July 2017
My role at Mentor is to manage our projects to delivery and facilitate everything else that keeps the business activities running smoothly. I’ve delivered over 10 mobile and web applications while managing multiple projects with multiple clients in varying technology platforms. I’ve implemented tools and systems to help our teams communicate more efficiently, helped clients create new business models, designed technical architectures, debugged and updated iOS apps, located office space and built out the office infrastructure, researched and selected health insurance plans, developed a recruiting and interviewing process, purchased computer equipment, etc.
Instructor - Agile, Scrum, and Kanban Course and Product Management Bootcamp | Aug, 2015 – July 2017
I teach others how to improve their project processes. My Agile overview class covers the basics from how to break down large projects into achievable tasks, how to visualize work in a kanban board, all the way up to the mechanics of Kanban, Scrum, and Scrumban. More than 200 students have completed this class with an understanding of how to design a process for their teams that will give the best chance of success.
My Product Management Bootcamp is a full-day introduction for students on how to think about product development, what an MVP is and how to design and test it, and how to analyze their own context to create the best product possible.
Co-Founder | Sep, 2016 – August 2017
As the technical co-founder of You Enjoy My Stickers, our iMessage sticker design company has seen over 3000 downloads of our apps since launch. Our mission is to collaborate with our community to produce sticker packs that help people communicate exactly what they want to say. My role is to develop all the applications, manage them on the App Store, develop our website, and market our apps on social media.
Founder | May, 2014 – Aug, 2015
I launched The Happy Crate in May 2014 because I saw a significant need to establish entertainment and educational niches in the brand-new legal marijuana market. My solution was The Happy Crate - a monthly subscription box of activities, snacks, and smoking accessories. I ran all aspects of the business including hiring and managing contractors, product sourcing, order fulfillment, website design, customer service, internet marketing, and business development. In the summer of 2015 I decided to move on to new challenges, and I sold The Happy Crate.
Product and Project Manager | Jul, 2011 – Sep, 2014
As the Scrum Master for a 14 person cross-functional team, I coached in Agile processes and unblocked their way to delivering an iOS mobile point-of-sale application for Nike retail stores in just 3 months time. After an initial pilot program in two stores, Nike’s executive leadership was thrilled with the results, and we began scaling the application for deployment to every store in the United States. As a response, I led the team in a strategic transition from Scrum to Kanban (Scrumban) so that we could remove unnecessary processes and better respond to changing needs from production.
When Deloitte became a keynote sponsor of SXSW Interactive in 2014, our studio was asked to “make a mobile app to support the sponsorship.” With that direction, I organized and led multiple creative strategy sessions of a team of volunteers. After deciding on our app experience, I put together back-end, Android, and iOS development and design teams. In under 12 weeks, we built gamified apps that incentivized users’ attendance at events with Deloitte speakers.
Founder | Sep, 2015 – Current
I founded the Carbon Removal Seattle meetup group because I want to work on solving climate change, and I need to find other people who are passionate about fixing the damage humanity has done. The mission of this group is to incubate new businesses, products, and practices that will remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. We want to create a platform for like-minded individuals to share, examine, and build upon innovative ideas and projects that will restore levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350ppm. We aim to provide tools and information for people to work on this problem. I also maintain a related blog at carboncmdz.com.
Developer
Rate My Meeting is an app for people who are sick of being stuck in boring and unproductive meetings. I designed and built this app to be used at the end of every meeting. Every meeting participant anonymously gives feedback to the rest of the group how productive they felt the meeting was. The app grabs those votes and displays an average percentage for the group. The rating is meant to be used as a talking point for improving the process going forward, so that next time it’s a bit more productive.
Master of Engineering Management - Engineering Management | 2010 – 2011
Bachelor of Science, Engineering - Computer Systems Engineering | 2006 – 2010
