Experienced Technical Leader and VP of Software Engineering at top Silicon Valley high-growth startups (Fintech, Series C, $90M funding; Biotech, Seed Round, raised $5M funding; Adtech, $1MM/day revenue program, 4MM visitors per day, top 5 advertiser in the world). Proven history of successfully increasing revenue while lowering costs and reducing time to market. Inspirational leader who builds high-performing organizations (onshore, offshore or nearshore) through cross-functional relationships, systems thinking, and mentoring/coaching.
Born and raised around New York City. At age 8, he wrote his first program in BASIC on the Commodore PET microcomputer, and soon after learned 6502 assembly. Attended the Exploration summer program at Wellesley where he programmed a medieval combat simulator, and studied electronics at Harvard summer school where he built a single board computer from scratch. Graduated with a BS in Computer Science from The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Ran the first benchmark of a commercial RDBMS on a Cray supercomputer. Took a commision from the Maryland Science Center to build a computer kiosk to teach and demonstrate fractals and chaos theory, which was installed and in active use for over 10 years. Moved to the SF Bay Area in 1997, just in time for the dot com boom. Went backpacking in New Zealand and Australia during the dot com bust. Worked at 5 startups over 20+ years in Silicon Valley. Volunteered with The Center for AIDS Services in Oakland, CA.
SAILING: For 12 years, an instructor at OCSC (Berkeley, CA), the #1 school in the country. Blue water experience crossing the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Knowledge of the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Bay of Islands (NZ).
TRAVEL: Hal has been to 40 of the 50 states, and spent significant time exploring Western and Northern Europe, Austalia, New Zealand and Thailand. Has conversational French language skills.
CHESS: Tournament chess player since 1987. Chess teaches many interesting lessons about oneself and about life. There is always more to study.
Richard Branson: Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of the employees, they will take care of the clients.
Simon Sinek: Leadership is not a rank or a position, it is a choice - a choice to look after the person to the left of us & the person to the right of us.
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Achieved PCI and SOC2 certifications | Improved software speed by more than 100x | Increased revenue by onboarding enterprise clients |