Experience

As a Quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons and Washington Redskins for over eight years, I learned firsthand what performance is all about. Unlike business, there are no gray lines in football. There are only the white lines to mark the difference between inbounds or out of bounds. What you do within those lines is completely transparent to all, including the fans, your teammates and your coaches.

There are no excuses in football, just accountability.

Starting in 1991 as Director of Marketing for Turner Broadcasting’s Goodwill Games in St Petersburg, Russia, my responsibilities included the execution of marketing campaigns for over 20 sponsors in a country previously closed to Western brands and advertising.

Later at Turner, I migrated to the Licensing (Intellectual Property) sales division the largest film library in the world to value the largest film library in the world and monetize it to consumer product and promotional licensees.

We began to successfully bundle licensing fees with media buys for the Hanna-Barbara animation library and I worked my way up to Executive Vice President of Cartoon Network sales, marketing and licensing. These responsibilities included the management of a sales force, creative promotional team, research group, and Cartoon Network Enterprises – a group I founded to manage business extensions evolving from media and licensing relationships. This all included the direct management responsibility of over 120 team members across the U.S. and revenue responsibility that exceeded $500 million (in 2010).

After 17 years with Turner Broadcasting, I left to seek opportunities with small companies where I could add value, as well as benefit from contributing to the company’s growth. When I met John Haber, he had just launched a supply chain consulting company, Spend Management Experts (SME). He had created an analysis process, including proprietary costing models, that allowed SME to evaluate a customer’s transportation spend with carriers like UPS and FedEx. Invariably, the analysis identified a potential savings opportunity via contract renegotiation or an RFP.

I went to work immediately on SME’s marketing, branding, and channel partner sales development. Over the next 10 years, we closed hundreds of clients and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for those customers. In January 2021, we sold the company to a much larger entity, Transportation Insight Holding CO LLC. (TI) and for the next 18 months the management team transitioned our business model and practices to the TI team. This included our unique channel partner sales network, and our extremely successful Thought Leadership program.