Dana K. Richard

 

Accomplished Global Business and Technology Executive


Summarized Career Biography


 

My talents lie in my ability to integrate technology solutions with individual business objectives to drive accelerated and continued growth with superior customer satisfaction and retention. In this light, I provide extensive knowledge and experience in business and technology leadership, pre & post sales consulting, strategic planning/execution, international relations, and customer relations and support. Having spent 90% of my career in staff and management roles in 24/7/365 mission critical environments I have an intuitively acute sense of urgency with a strong appreciation of the customer perspective.


Throughout the 1990’s I led the consolidation of literally hundreds of data centers around the world into channel-extended “mega-centers”. This required in-depth knowledge of all network, mainframe, open-systems and DB technologies including LAN/SAN/WAN technologies (Ethernet, T1, OC-3, OC-12, SCSI, ESCON, FICON, Fibre Channel), and integrated network and channel technologies such as Fibre Channel over IP and, conversely, IP over Fibre Channel. Knowing the technology was not enough. Being able to design and configure the logical layout of hundreds of devices, channels and network connections was critical, requiring certification and in-depth knowledge of EMC, IBM, and Hitachi storage devices, applications and protocols.


In the late 1990’s I was one of a small team of 6 from CNT, EMC and MCI that developed the world’s first “storage over IP” (SoIP) technology, which was essentially database storage over the internet on a massive scale. I defined the functional criteria, and later the standards, that this technology utilizes today. Once proved, I led all designs (and redesigns) as well as all implementations for several hundred networks worldwide. These networks were primarily for financial institution’s global enterprise systems, internet banking, and disaster recovery, and included institutions and businesses such as Morgan Stanley, Chase, Bank of New York, Barclay’s, State Farm Insurance, and Wells Fargo. In every single case the requirement was for absolutely no delay (which included overcoming inherent latency) in all data transfers with distances anywhere from across town to across the world, the latter being the most common. US and World Bank banking regulations dictated perfection and banking solvency demanded it. Since this technology was new but needed to be implemented into existing customer infrastructures, I designed, developed and built a portable systems analysis suite which fully tested customer infrastructures to insure they could support the technology as well as to identify problems in advance of implementation. This test suite reduced the implementation time by a full 3 weeks on average based on hundreds of implementations. All implementations required the utmost security, reliability, and redundancy, and had to meet or be tested and retrofitted to meet SOX regulations, both in its strictness and vagueness at times.


I then moved on to developing, building patenting, and leading to operational status a fully redundant tier 1 ISP and Network Management Center. This facility provided the ability to monitor, manage, and proactively identify and predict degradation and failures in these same systems, and others, which I turned into a $9M hosted network monitoring service in 1.5 years.

Simultaneously I worked directly with new product development from design through operational support to incorporate customer usability and supportability as well as features to support recurring revenue streams (services).

Further, I incorporated these functionalities into customer support and sales systems where, in the former it provided unparalleled proactive customer degradation and outage insights and, in the latter provided advanced notification of sales opportunities through resource utilization trending. In the end I created a customer life-cycle profile that began at opportunity engagements and ended at new product development, creating a seamless vision of business and technology analytics and trends from both an individual customer perspective and a customer-base perspective.


Subsequent to this I successfully launched a startup retail ecommerce business called Specialty Village, Inc., which currently does business through its flagship website www.arttowngifts.com.


I am currently with East View Cartographic, Inc., where I am responsible for all Profit and Loss of non-assisted sales of global cartography including maps, and satellite and aerial imagery for government, national security, and resource exploration. This includes developing, managing, and electronically serving extremely high capacity and high bandwidth imagery and maps. I am directly responsible for a collection of over 500,000 electronic maps and images, 200,000 paper maps, and tracking 1.5 million more products through our database. Further, I am responsible for the development and delivery of products to our customers physically and electronically as well as development and operations of the website itself, the product database, and the purchasing of all products worldwide through offices in Minneapolis, MN, Moscow, Russia, Jakarta, Indonesia, Amman, Jordan, Nairobi, Kenya, and Recife, Brazil, as well as for the development, integration and support of all backend applications including CRM and ERP. Lastly, I am responsible for negotiation, management and SLA’s of vendor and government agency agreements worldwide. This includes technology vendors, product suppliers, transportation and shipping, and government mapping agencies. In this light I have successfully negotiated and signed VAR and copyright agreements with the governments if Kyrghystan, Ukraine, Fiji, South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, and Madagascar as well as an exclusive VAR and copyright agreement with the country of Bangladesh.


In each of the previously mentioned cases I have effectively built development, operations and support management and staff up to 120 personnel. I have also managed in excess of $5M budgets, averaging 23% under budget while growing organizational capabilities, value, and revenue.


Some of my other accomplishments include:



In summary, I offer motivated, motivating and decisive technology leadership, defining the right technology for the business need while instilling a sense of confidence and trust in customers. Further, I bring continued long term success through exceptional vision, and creative exploitation of additional revenue streams.



Sincerely,


Dana Richard