About

Professional Journey

I’ve had a diverse background, working in many different industries and roles. Below I’ll share the quick story of my professional journey after leaving my undergrad.

You’ll notice a common theme: switching industries, taking a step back, followed by rapid expansion of scope. It shows what intense curiosity and strong drive can do!

Phase 1
Mechanical Engineering at Ford Motor Company

I received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech, and was the team lead for the suspension team on my Formula SAE race car senior research project, so I took that engineering and automotive focus to Ford Motor Company.

I worked in many Powertrain functions during my time there, and eventually settled in the AWD Systems group. In parallel to working full time at Ford I pursued a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, which I received from Purdue University.

After working there for four years I realized I had broader interests that weren’t going to get fulfilled at Ford, so I left to pursue those interests.

Phase 2
Director of Operations in Electronics Manufacturing

I wrote a letter to a company in Austin, TX, offering to fill their published Sales Engineer role. I said I’d never done that work before, but if it didn’t work out, I could start an engineering department for them. They liked my offer and took a chance on me.

In that role I often found myself in the manufacturing area, offering my engineering skillset to help the operational teams diagnose quality, timeliness, or scale issues. After half a year the CEO asked me to run that group. I suddenly found myself as a first time people manager, managing a team of 22 employees.

That company didn’t survive the financial crisis, and I helped wind the company down. My first born son was 6 weeks old when we official shut the doors.

Phase 3
VP of Operations Engineering in Warehouse Management Software

Similar to how I started Phase 2, I wrote a letter to a company offering to fill an operations individual contributor role, and suggesting many of the other things I could bring to the company.

Within a few months I became a manager again, and started getting responsibility for several other internal departments. Eventually I was in charge of the full hardware lifecyle – design, manufacturing, installation, repair. vendor management, etc. – alongside running the full hardware side of our projects. I was also accountable for our Controls Engineering teams. As part of this work I also wrote and drove signoff for sales contracts.

This is highly precise work; you don’t want to be responsible for preventing a 300,000 square foot facility with hundreds of employees from processing containers!

I ultimately chose to leave because I wanted to get out of hardware. Our Controls teams had to write software and I realized how little professional exposure I had to something that drove so much innovation in our world – SaaS!

Phase 4
Driving Business Transformation at Atlassian

Having used Atlassian’s products, when I found they had just opened an Atlassian office, I contacted them about a Reporting and Analytics Program Manager role in their Support department. Despite having no SaaS or formal analytics experience, they took a chance on me.

I eventually spent over 10 years with Atlassian. We grew from a private company to a public company making $5B per year. We went from about 1,000 people to over 12,000. My team grew from 2 to 135 in nine years; a 60% annual growth rate.

Soon after joining I started hiring Data Engineering to join our Business Analyst group. Soon thereafter we decided to consolidate peer functions into a single group, and I was asked to lead the new team. Our mission was to transform the Customer Support Services team as Atlassian scaled. To give this team the systems, processes, and tools they needed to serve Atlassian’s customers.

By the end my 135-person team was a remote-first global department of Data Engineers, Data Scientists, Software Developers, Business Architects, Technical Program Managers, Learning and Development, and Comms.

In my final 18 months of Atlassian I transitioned my role into a Strategic Advisor. This helped me sit at the beginning stages of the most complex and ambiguous problems facing the department.

I realized I wanted to put my skills to work for small companies that hadn’t yet learned the lessons of scale I’d learned at Atlassian, so went into business for myself.

Phase 5
Scaling Companies through Group 18

In early 2025 I officially launched Group 18, where I offer a variety of services to help companies scale.

I leverage everything I’ve learned in my professional journey, and especially the complex growth lessons from Atlassian, to help business owners get through plateaus and hit their goals.

If you’d like to talk about how I can help you, please reach out here.

Personal Interests

I’m a proud father and husband. My family is a big part of my life!

Despite being busy, I manage to cook dinner for five every night. When I graduated college I could only cook frozen chicken breast on a George Foreman grill, but now I know a lot more and love experimenting in the kitchen. Pro tip; AI is a really helpful brainstorming partner.

Our family also has two rescue pit bull dogs, who taught me why that breed are often called “velvet hippos.” They’re soft, sweet dudes.

I read about 100 books per year, starting since mid-2020. I’ve got a good system of note-taking so I can leverage those lessons even after putting the book down. These books are probably 90% non-fiction, so being this widely read really helps me bring diverse perspectives and skills to bear in my work at Group 18.

Lastly, I love to be outdoors and stay active. Every week I try to do some Crossfit, weight lifting, running, and rucking.