Brian Kissel

Summary

• Focusing on Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability. After a career in enterprise software, I have pivoted to focus on one of the most important challenges facing humanity. • Prior Roles: CEO of VC-backed startups, CIO, E/SVP Product & Project Management, Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Management Consultant, US Navy Submarine Division Officer. Stanford MBA, US Naval Academy BSME. • Career Experiences: Cross-functional leadership in high growth public and private companies. Extensive experience with product management & marketing, web and mobile UX, IT, customer success, B2B and B2B2C SaaS, CRM & marketing automation, social media, strategy and partnerships, M&A, business process re-engineering, change management & organizational development, offshore product development. • Public Company Experience: BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), CheckFree (NASD: CKFR), Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) • Private Company Experience: Sysomos (social media management platform, acquired by Meltwater), Janrain (SaaS social identity and marketing platform acquired by Akamai), Paraform (Stanford University spin-out, acquired by Nikon), Bain & Co. • What I Love: Team building, strategy, business partnership building, organizational development, leveraging technology to improve satisfaction and productivity of individuals, groups, and enterprises. Big fan of Guy Kawasaki's "surprise and delight"​ customer experience mantra.​ Practitioner and advocate of agile product development. Strong proponent of cross-industry functional collaboration for benchmarking best practices, knowledge sharing, etc. • Thoughts on Leadership: adopted best practices from Laszlo Bock's Work Rules & Jim Collins' Good to Great: lead with passion, provide psychological safety, deliver goal clarity & structure, ensure the work has meaning & impact, be a good listener, don't micromanage, over-communicate, be humble, praise often, provide career development pathways, ask for help and admit when you're wrong, be accessible and genuine. • Ideal Situations: Thrive in dynamic environments: start-up, turn-around, re-positioning, launching new products, entering new markets, building new sales channels & partnerships, and organizational change management. Like Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm"​ and "Dealing with Darwin" for different stages of company transformations.