Senior Program Manager, Strategy and Innovation - MILLERKNOLL, INC
(2025-05 - 2026-06)
Led product-management responsibilities within a program leadership role, translating customer and business needs into priorities, requirements, and cross-functional delivery. Drove enterprise innovation, strategy, and commercialization initiatives focused on emerging technologies, advanced manufacturing, and new business model development. Directed global cross-functional teams through opportunity assessment, customer validation, portfolio prioritization, business modeling, risk reduction, and implementation while partnering with leadership to align with strategic objectives.
- Coached product management on lifecycle management and portfolio governance by implementing an optimization matrix to map customer-valued features to structural parameters (P&L unit cost, margin impact, modularity, sustainability, etc.); justified line consolidations, innovation initiatives, and resource allocations.
- Utilized adaptive leadership to derisk a new category's core Value Hypothesis by roadmapping more complex technology integrations out in time. That effort expedited the market validation of the MVP. Leading indicators showed a 40% margin increase, on $8M revenue targeting only 2% of SAM. The work resulted in a 4X faster time to market validation and a mindset shift from Waterfall to Lean Startup thinking.
- Directed internal groups (sales, product management, test, legal and brand) to devise a new offering strategy to optimize durability of our medical product offering. Utilized market data, competitive insights, and performance analytics to create a PRD that balanced market-based pricing against revenue and warranty estimates.
- Architected the pre-launch validation roadmap for key product lines, partnering with the Strategic Sales Group to vet the commercial concept before initiating a third-party evaluation study alongside a leading orthopedic surgical brand to build the brand citation authority required for modern AI-driven search engines.
- Bridged technical R&D with financial strategy, implementing screening methods involving TAM/SAM/SOM, feasibility, and time-to-market. Aligned product performance to growth targets for products averaging $40M/yr.
- Managed creation of PRD's and product/design briefs utilizing market research, and Value Proposition frameworks. Proactively integrated product managers earlier in the stage-gate process reducing cycle times by 20% and streamlining the development intake stages since the product managers were co-authors of the briefs.
- Partnered with Enterprise Tech & Data Enablement team to use AI Agents to digitally bridge siloed databases. Enabled infinitely faster analysis and drove data governance to enable inference, not just automation.
Program Manager and Senior Innovation Engineer - MILLERKNOLL, INC
(2015-04 - 2025-05)
Led product-management responsibilities within a program leadership role, translating customer and business needs into priorities, requirements, and cross-functional delivery. Drove enterprise innovation, strategy, and commercialization initiatives focused on emerging technologies, advanced manufacturing, and new business model development. Directed global cross-functional teams through opportunity assessment, customer validation, portfolio prioritization, business modeling, risk reduction, and implementation while partnering with leadership to align with strategic objectives.
Senior Principal Product Strategist - WMS GAMING (LIGHT and WONDER) - Chicago, IL
(2009-01 - 2014-12)
Held progressively responsible leadership positions spanning engineering management, product strategy, user research, competitive intelligence, technology assessment, and commercialization. Led multidisciplinary engineering and product teams responsible for developing highly complex electromechanical gaming platforms while serving as a strategic advisor on market trends, technology disruption, customer behavior, competitive positioning, and long-range growth strategies.
- Product Line & Portfolio Management: Owned end-to-end technical performance and commercial viability for high-density electro-mechanical platforms generating $700K/day in recurring revenue.
- Modular Systems Architecture: Partnered with engineering to architect a modular control system standard, replacing custom solutions with reusable components to decrease development cycle time by 20%.
- Budget & Program Accountability: Managed $2.5M in operational and capital development budgets, ensuring rigorous adherence to project milestones, product cycle times, and margin expectations.
- Strategic advisor on a team tasked to research the industry and formulate strategy for next-gen platforms.
- Business Analytics & Intelligence: Founded and led a high-impact competitive intelligence group reporting to the C-suite to inform multi-million dollar M&A and investment strategies. Led the gap analysis of internal corporate capabilities versus external market threats, identifying Bally Technologies as a primary strategic target.
- Transition to Scale: Conducted deep-dive due diligence on SHFL entertainment and Bally asset portfolios to define pathways for integrating disparate platforms into a global enterprise solution.
- Developed network of new technology partners, coordinating contracts, product requirements, roadmaps, and timelines to champion concepts with R&D team Interviewed distributors and end users for unmet needs, incorporating insights/solutions into new product linesEcosystem Management: Evaluated the vendor/startup ecosystem to identify disruptive threats and partnership opportunities, reducing enterprise risk.
- Served as Sr Principal Product Strategist guiding a 20-person R&D team; utilized human-centered design to drive strategic pivots and successful product launches.
- Created a new category for the key demographic (60+ years old) by addressing dramatic visual degradation concerns; implemented high-brightness displays and large font sizes, leading to a featured industry platform.
- Led user research to optimize innovation portal with goal completions improving 400% and resulting IP filings improving 25%. Advised how to improve reviewer response times and increase submitter retention.
- Promoted to Engineering Manager after conducting a comprehensive audit of team's stage-gate workflows from concept to commissioning, identifying core tasks to optimize for business value and employee engagement.
- Stabilized an 11-person development studio whose manager and 2 senior-most employees left; then streamlined the group's processes by identifying wasteful tasks and reducing development time 20% with Lean 6 Sigma.
- Reduced operational overhead and weekend overtime by implementing a PDM database that streamlined data input, significantly boosting team morale and retention.
Engineering Manager - WMS GAMING (LIGHT and WONDER) - Chicago, IL
(2006-01 - 2009-12)
Process Engineering and Machine Design - Assembly Machines Inc., Silgan, Composiflex
Manufacturing Experience
- Designed index/dial pick-and-place assembly equipment. Created end-of-arm tooling (EAOT) to grip and insert from feeder bowls and conveyors to then inspect, assemble, verify, and eject parts for the automotive industry.
- Setup and performed SPC and preventative maintenance for a high speed, high volume tin can processing plant. Ran and maintained automated welding, curing ovens, leak detection, seamers, conveyors and palletizing equipment.
- Designed composite products and processes involving carbon fiber, fiberglass, foam laminates, RIM, platen press molds, composite over metal substrate molding, hydro-jet cutting, CNC programming, and autoclave molding.
- Advised leadership on quality best-practices such as using QC process travelers to identify nonconformities after each process stage, monitor each process station for performance capability and ensure deviations are not propagated.
- Wrote ISO 9001 process control documentation for products made in clean room environments.
Product Development Consulting - IDEO, RADIUS (Jabil), Insight Product Development (Nemera), Square 1
Supported Fortune 500 companies and growth-stage organizations through product strategy, innovation, engineering, user research, commercialization, and business development initiatives across healthcare, consumer, industrial, and manufacturing sectors. Participated in all phases of development from opportunity identification and proposal generation through engineering development, production launch, and commercialization.
- Developed 50+ products for consumer, healthcare, and industrial markets in ISO 13485 certified consultancies.
- Managed client relationships and multidisciplinary development teams, with project budgets averaging $500k.
- Conducted ethnographic research, focus groups, stakeholder workshops, and customer observation studies to uncover unmet customer needs and market opportunities.
