Hands-on AI building. Product leadership with a longer view.

I make complicated systems understandable enough for people to act.

My career began in manufacturing, systems integration, and enterprise delivery. It moved through customer success, product and program leadership, executive alignment, and organizational change. The roles changed. The underlying work did not: understand the real workflow, connect the people and information around it, and create a path from signal to responsible action.

At Salesforce, that meant products, programs, feedback systems, and adoption work at enterprise scale. At Cisco, it meant innovation, engineering leadership, experience design, and day-to-day ownership of an AI-first account-planning product. The same systems approach shapes my operator-led product work: running a rental portfolio and building software against problems I experience directly.

More than twelve years learning from customers—and bringing that learning into the product.

I progressed through delivery, customer success, product and program roles at Salesforce. In the tailored Classic-to-Lightning adoption program, I worked with major customers on software issues, business and IT alignment, and change management. Recurring findings went back to product teams so individual customer problems could inform broader improvements.

Later, I owned IdeaExchange and Voice of the Customer: both the tools and the programs connecting customer input, product roadmaps, delivery and responses. The through-line was making the customer relationship more useful in both directions.

Explore the Marriott transition ↗

Explore the customer-feedback story ↗

Build, buy—or wait until the product is ready.

Leadership needed to decide which emerging technologies deserved investment. A persuasive vendor presentation could not answer whether a product would fit Cisco's work or what a large commitment would mean.

I led an innovation team supported by roughly 40 volunteer contributors. We built substantial proofs of concept and evaluated enterprise platforms against practical use cases, then brought leadership a recommendation to build, buy or wait for the technology to mature.

The evaluations helped leadership avoid commitments to products that were not yet a good fit. My contribution was turning hands-on evaluation into an investment decision, not treating every promising technology as something to purchase.

Rebuild delivery confidence by reconnecting the team and the business.

When I took on Customer Success Engineering, the mandate was to improve how requirements became delivered work, strengthen team capabilities and give business partners a clearer view of commitments and progress.

I helped clarify direction, strengthen the team's capabilities and reconnect delivery with what the business actually needed. Improving the working relationship was part of the engineering job, not a separate communication exercise.

The team became more effective and the business relationship improved. This is the part of leadership I enjoy: helping people grow while making the work clearer and more dependable for those relying on it.

Build the UX team as well as the experience.

A major transformation aimed to bring five legacy Salesforce organizations into one new environment. It needed a coherent user experience and a team capable of shaping it across a large program.

I assembled the UX team, established its working cadence and handled program-level and executive communication. The work connected design decisions, delivery teams and leadership throughout the initiative.

We delivered the first version of the experience during my tenure. That is the milestone I claim—not completion of the entire five-organization consolidation.

A generated account plan needed a human workflow around it.

At Cisco, I became the product manager for AI-powered account planning. The prior Quip process required more than 20 hours of research and writing. We brought internal account context and public company developments into a generated plan that sellers could refine with their own knowledge.

I focused on the work around generation: contributions from different roles, approval, iteration and usable outputs. That experience connects directly to the kind of AI product development and leadership I want to do next.

My own operating problems are becoming product requirements.

Since early 2026, I have been building AI-assisted products through BurkeApps across requirements, design, implementation and testing. DoorSpan is the priority: a property-management platform aimed at operators with 1–50 rental units, with me as its intended first business customer.

Other explorations include MoneyQuest, a simulated investing game for financial education; Remodel Reimagined, for exploring spaces and planning home projects; and HealthRhythm, a general-wellness build exploring movement and nutrition. Friends-and-family beta releases are planned for late 2026.

I enjoy the hands-on building and testing, and I also enjoy mentoring, coaching and teaching. I want to bring those together: solve a concrete problem now while helping a team make better product decisions for the future.

A role that combines building with direction-setting.

I am especially interested in AI product development and AI product leadership that combine hands-on work with direction-setting. Part-time roles are my preference; I am also open to the right full-time opportunity.