Fifteen years turning operational chaos into instrumented systems — across aerospace primes, a high-growth design firm, and, most recently, my own fractional-COO practice. Applying to Goodfire because interpretability is the operational problem hiding inside the scaling story, and I like problems that don't have runbooks yet.
The BizOps role at Goodfire is a scheduler: contracts, recruiting, immigration, vendors, and whatever this week's 0→1 project is, all competing for one operator's attention. The failure mode isn't any single task — it's the queue.
I've spent my career instrumenting queues. VBA plug-ins that saved Raytheon analysts 2.5 hours per close. An FP&A stack built from zero at Revel while headcount grew 30% YoY. Now, an AI-agent orchestration prototype running on my desk. Different domains, same move: watch the flow, find the constraint, remove it, log it, repeat.
I don't need to publish on SAEs to be useful here. I need to make sure the people who do never spend an hour on a task that should have taken five minutes.
A local-first AI studio prototype on my own hardware: Postgres+pgvector, n8n, a FastAPI approval broker, optional LiteLLM routing, and a Hermes-agent scaffold — all sandboxed behind 127.0.0.1 with a written threat model. Built to draft a CFO close summary from a CSV, gated by a mandatory human approval step.
Excel/VBA plug-in that automated the repetitive close-cycle tasks eating our analyst team alive. Shipped four more VBA models used live in contract negotiations. Saved 2.5+ hours per analyst per close. Won internal recognition for adoption.
Founded and shipped a real iPhone app end-to-end: managed the technical team through back-end, front-end, UI/UX and app-store release. I've been the non-technical founder holding a spec and a burndown; I know the shape of that conversation from both sides.
years across finance, ops, program controls
YoY headcount growth held with sub-industry turnover at Revel
per analyst, per close — reclaimed via Financial Toolbar
aerospace programs supported at Raytheon & Northrop
Financial models, dashboards, cash-flow forecasts, and AI-integrated reporting for BioTech / CRO, professional services, and buy-side M&A clients.
Shipped Terminal Buddy (iOS) from concept through beta to app store. Owned the technical team, product plan, and release.
Built Operations and FP&A from zero. Owned Finance, HR, IT. Migrated to a third-party MSP with a scalable IT roadmap. Held culture through 30% YoY growth.
Monthly operations reviews for senior leadership. Four custom VBA models used in live contract negotiation. Financial Toolbar plug-in adopted org-wide.
Program financials on multiple defense contracts. Chairman's Award for Innovation on a staffing/population planning model. Early-Career Leadership Development cohort.
The Revel job description was Director of Finance. In practice, that meant HR ops, IT roadmap, month-end close, and whatever else was breaking. I optimize for org outcomes, not for the box on the org chart.
The Financial Toolbar existed because I refused to keep re-doing the same close tasks by hand. Same instinct is why I'm currently paying for Harvard's Agentic AI program while running a client practice.
As a fractional COO the assignment is always the same: identify the actual problem, own it end-to-end, then leave the client with a system so it doesn't come back. No handoffs to hide behind.
Aerospace program reviews teach you fast that a decision made Friday is worth more than a perfect deck delivered Monday. I default to shipping the 80% version and iterating in the open.
SF-ready. Available for a working session — bring the messiest operational problem currently on the team's plate and I'll walk you through how I'd sequence it.