I've climbed sheer rock over several hundred feet of air. I've walked in a 70 mile per hour blizzard on a lonely mountain. I've taught myself about trust, strength, agility, intellect, risk and emotional control in a riveting outdoor environment, in meeting rooms, and in front of glowing screens.

When you need someone fearless… you need me.

I came to MassMutual, having left a company with fifteen employees to join one with five thousand. I went from having one critical project under my complete control… to gain several enterprise-wide projects with stakeholders from business, technology, creative, security, and legal. I learned the people and their viewpoints - so I could generate consensus among Vice Presidents, Directors, and operational personnel of every level. On each project, I presented the options and brought stakeholders together to forge business processes that would successfully integrate new technology.

My job description was: explore new technologies, find who wants them, show how they can solve business problems, and make the technology work. Accomplishing drastic change is normal for my career. I thrive on it.

• E-Mail Marketing and Notification: Offering a potential first year ROI of six figures, just from publication savings, it required that I create a multi-stage product investigation / purchase methodology that was later adopted by the enterprise.

  Stakeholders included Retirement Services, Annuities, eBusiness, Distribution eCommerce, Legal, Security, and the eMail technical team. I led them through vendor presentations to show the range of products and capabilities. I was ruthless with the vendors. I held them on topic, to time, and kept them to facts. I made sure everyone - vendors and stakeholders - had what they needed beforehand, so our meetings were effective.

  I established a knowledge management website for the stakeholders. I created a critical feature matrix, by product, with requirements based on stakeholder feedback, and it helped them decide what to buy.

  I wrote the specifications for the servers, software, and network (bandwidth demands and topologies). I briefed the infrastructure teams and obtained agreement on the model. I designed a support plan. I created a Policy and Procedures Committee to bring the lines of business, and the technical, legal, and security leaders to consensus on the right way to use any product in this space. I hammered out the contract, gaining a reputation and a nickname because I read the contracts, knew the language, and helped our negotiator attain aggressive pricing and service levels from the vendor.

  When the preferred vendor balked at critical provisions, I stayed firm. When price was still an issue, I reconvened the stakeholders. The knowledge management website, critical feature matrix, and other tools I developed enabled the stakeholders to select a new vendor in two hours. When the enterprise funding disappeared, I canvassed the stakeholders. They raised enough from the lines of business to convince my management that the enterprise wanted this product. It was funded and implemented.

• MassMutual.com Architecture Changes - eBusiness knew the enterprise portal needed a change. When my management asked for my ideas, I prototyped a fifteen-page portal using HTML, ASP, and a database to show a variety of innovations. They could see and try - not just read - what I meant.

  I was then faced with the daunting task of designing an enterprise web architecture in a couple of weeks. I led a team of five eBusiness architects, laying out an innovative system that leveraged content management databases, XSL / XML, Java objects, and which included a new Enterprise Application Integration framework.

  The next challenge was a presentation to over thirty enterprise architects with veto power over the project. I facilitated a brainstorming session, and stayed up until 3 AM editing the result into a seamless PowerPoint. I brought the team together to rehearse the next morning, and we were ready to sell. Presentation and Q&A went smoothly. The architecture was accepted by consensus, and the enterprise also adopted my EAI framework.

  I led two teams of developers to build part of what I had designed. I used a long weekend to craft over a hundred major tasks into a project plan, to identify deliverables and to mitigate risks. Then I took the plan to the teams showed them how and why they had to perform. They were energized and beat the planned schedule.

• Digital Asset Management (DAM) - $18M-$36M in untracked creative assets sitting in file drawers, on hard drives, even on servers - difficult to find or repurpose. Two years before, an effort to convince the enterprise to solve the problem had failed. I did the first inventory of creative assets (HTML, text, graphics, presentations, files, layouts) in the history of the company. I created a simulation, because the only way to understand return on investment for DAM is to understand the cost when you don't find the pictures, text and facts you need for web, print, and broadcasting. I put together a presentation to convince the Enterprise Architects (I was so sick with the flu that I had to go into the hallway and cough for a solid minute before I could present - but it didn't show). The initiative was approved. When vendor presentations were complete, Creative Services wanted the technology and adopted the project.

• Digital Signatures - I was asked to assess the implications of the E-Sign Act on MassMutual eBusiness strategy. I devised a weighted evaluation matrix to help project management decide what they required and I helped put it to use. I brought in well-known speakers and the legal minds that had helped create the act. I helped Security evaluate technologies. I collaborated with an IT auditor to create the first formal e-sign audit plan.

That was just part of one year - and just one job. But I had done it before…

2000: At V-Technologies, indecision threatened to stall their next generation product. Frustrated with the lack of progress, and knowing how critical it was to move ahead, I prototyped a new vision of the product engine in an eight hour weekend session. On Monday, I did a presentation for management, who quickly approved it for development. The software I then built was delivered to United Parcel Service (to resell as part of their shipping software) on time.

1994: For PetroVision, as Director of Software Development in a startup, I was involved with everything. I spent days with PetroCanada, one of the largest oil companies in Canada, doing presentations and persuading technical and business people of the merits of our product, even over dinner. I presented to venture capitalists and investors. I built the product that kept us going.

1992: At Heberger Associates, my first day, my new office - it looked like a file cabinet had exploded in a closet. Under the pile: a dusty 286 computer. For a moment, I was sure I had made a big mistake taking this job. But within a few months, I had arranged an on-site competition between five PC manufacturers for our $125,000 order. I had debugged the IPX network, upgraded the servers and NOS, and written the IT capital budget. I helped users go from DOS to Windows and WordPerfect to Word. And my office was much neater - the way I liked it.

1990: At Ultimate Data Systems, hired to design their next generation system. I ended up selecting a CASE tool and methodology. I taught myself C, Icon, X Windows, and a CASE tool API and wrote 30,000 lines of code to translate diagrams into frameworks within three months, while managing a Sun network and mentoring the team.

1984: At Anocoil, I rescued development of an entire suite of operational systems from an endless consulting assignment. Then I secured permission to rebuild it from scratch, because the consultant's choices couldn't grow to sustain business needs. Four years later we had one and a half million lines of code that could - including email, workflow, MRP, purchasing, shop floor control, tools, code libraries, and adaptive user interfaces.