Charles brings a rare combination of entrepreneurial technical, business, relationship, and creative talent to Prevocative.
A proven leader at Microsoft Corporation, with over 24 years experience innovating technology, architecting solutions, building effective teams, shipping products, IT solutions, creative marketing and media initiatives — across company functions, geographies, organizations with diverse customers and partners. Accomplished in strategic planning and analysis, execution and management of products and programs, and initiatives to meet timely business objectives, with follow-up measurements and improvements. Focused on end-to-end design and customer experiences, products, services, and strategic relationships for enterprises, network operators, consumers, numerous vertical industries and government.
Expert customer relationship builder. Highly rated public presenter. Filed six patents in media, web. Managed multi-million dollar budgets. Diversity leadership/recruiter/mentor. Angel investor in technology, media, energy and sustainable development. Member of Keirestu Forum.
Microsoft Corporation
* Principal Program Manager - The Microsoft Network
* Principal Group Program Manger & Customer/Partner Evangelism & Planning - Expression
* Principal Program Manager - Windows Vista Digital Media Tools
* Group Program Manager & Technical Evangelism Manager - Microsoft TV Developer Tools
* Group Program Manager - Knowledge Worker Solutions
* Group Manager - TechNet Content & Events
* Group Program Manager - Microsoft Information Technology Group
* Sr. Marketing Manager, World Wide Competitive Accounts Technical Marketing (CATM)
* Sr. Systems Engineer in Field Sales - Groupware/Email/Network Solutions Architect (SF Bay Area)
Key accomplishments
* Envisioned Web Video Strategy for company leaders (Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie)
* Led company-wide strategy and end-to-end solutions for internet video with advertising
* Jumpstarted Silverlight video and advertising efforts
* Adobe/Google competitive analysis and strategy
* Made acquisition recommendations such as YouTube, Grouper, others
* Built vision, managed 10+ products and SDKs from v1 through v3 - shipped on time/budget; agile process, w/Microsoft trustworthy computing
* Led a strategic effort to increase IT Professional satisfaction with Microsoft (studies showed a 20%+ annual rise). Required strategic partnering with product groups, Microsoft WW technical sales & consulting, key industry partners, and solution providers
* Exceeded reach goal by 20% to reach more than 1 million IT professionals per year at live events, and millions more on the web and on CD.
* Successfully turned around four broken teams in ITG
* Drove improvements in IE4, Proxy server, NetMeeting, Multicast streaming media. Result: Widespread Microsoft rollout and showcases.
* Designed customer solutions and led successful trials and rollouts, performed field sales and marketing, evangelism. Won small and large account customers in Silicon Valley including Visa, Lockheed, Apple, Intel, Bank of America, Levi Strauss, Chevron, PacBell, Stanford University and many more.
* Designed and led successful initiative, with Microsoft Research, Office product group and IT for Microsoft to improve Knowledge Worker solutions. Result: Early phase rollout of using Sharepoint solutions for the company wide intranet
* Managed strategic ISV business development: Some joint initiatives with partners lead to acquisition such as the Mesa Group.
* Formed and led area NorCal MSMail user group that consisted of all leading companies in the area plus nationwide groupware and HW vendors.
Career Highlights
* Has 16+ years of deep experience in diverse technical, business and leadership areas by taking on new roles via choice and re-organization
* Managed Global Microsoft IT planning and feedback processes for the CIO and Microsoft enterprise product improvement. Improved & deployed Site Server, IIS, Windows Media, NetMeeting, more. Delivered showcase results.
* Worldwide Tech Evangelism leader for Exchange, BackOffice, Office, Windows NT, IIS, IE, etc. Partnered with global ISVs, Solution Providers.
* Built and led program management teams for Expression, MSTV Tools, TechNet
* High team morale & positive leadership feedback.
* Led game-changing innovations in consumer content relevance, efficiency and business intelligence for maximum ROI.
* Led seven feature teams in Windows Vista Movie Maker including expert for security, privacy & accessibility shipping process.
* International business development, technology solutions and relationship wins with Akamai, Yahoo! Intel, Motorola, NVidia, AMD, Comcast, QUMU, Telstra, Winnov, Viewcast, Tata, Coca Cola, BofA, Visa, Telefonica, and more.
* Built partner, ISV customer, analyst communities for evangelism, peer support, planning, product training, user groups
* Managed business development & contracts for partner software, hardware components and technologies for Expression, Windows and MSTV.
* Produced interactive training, sales-tools, “how-to” event and web content for worldwide field sales TechNet community.
* Managed marketing budget of over $2,000,000.
* Developed and managed cross-group relationships with senior Microsoft Product group executives and ITG executives
* Coordinated and performed presentations with account executives for special interest IT groups, early adopters, and enterprise customer executive briefings. Helped win Fortune 100 IT business.
* Participated as highly rated presenter and subject matter expert in solution selling classes to field sales and consulting.
* Led competitive technical marketing efforts for Microsoft products in groupware, internet, kiosks, customer management, and hospitality systems.
Early Professional Experience, Education
Twin Spirits Communications 1991 to 1992, Partner, consultant, producer, contracts manager. Partner in start-up computer and media consulting company.
Retix Corp. 1989 to 1991 Sr. Systems Engineer. OSI LAN/WAN/Internet/Email business development engineer, working with IT departments, software vendors and Network Operators. Received special recognition for leading numerous early field interoperability trials for Email gateways, X.400, FTAM, OSI protocols, in conjunction with the public networks, the Internet, and large corporate environments
US Department of Transportation 1986 to 1988 Program Manager, Consultant. Received Special Achievement Award for analysis, architecture and implementation of base transportation network.
Lockheed IMS 1984 to 1986 Network. Engineer/Project Manager. Managed all aspects of U.S national engineering projects, IBM main-frame & LAN, network design, implementation and operations, architecture, budgets, schedules, carrier and vendor management, equipment specification and acquisition, end-user and network control center support training.
Education: Bachelor of Arts degree in Computer Science from Potsdam College, with a specialty in communications software, minor in media production & psychology. Post-graduate studies include New York University courses on multimedia production, continuing education classes from Microsoft, third parties, and previous companies in leadership, management, architecture, specific technologies, business, and design.
Awards
* Star performance award -MSTV. High review scores and/or promotions -Expression, MSTV, ITG, CATM, Field Sales. Special Achievement -Technet
* Invented Hyper-targeted advertising system, won innovation award
* Awarded and submitted multiple patents in media content authentication and tracking, user-controlled, highly targeted advertising, artificial intelligence enabled video editing, metadata extraction and relative 3D browsing, and TV safe colors, and ad sponsored software.
