Alex Witherspoon

Profile

I love advising, mentoring, coaching, and building sustainable, impactful companies that invest in people, and community with technology driven solutions. A business and people leader with cross-functional experience developing companies, teams, and people in business, engineering, operations, sales, and marketing crafts. Problem solver, servant style leader, team player, empathetic, inclusive culture builder that creates results with solid fundamentals and objective outcome-driven execution and strategy development. I have founded, lead, and supported multiple companies from small garage start ups to fortune 100 and in between with team sizes ranging from 0-1200+. M&A experience with ten events totaling 39 billion USD in deal value.

Experience

Skyfarer Academy

Portland OR, USA

Businesss Advisor

June 2024 - Present

  • Cofounded and jumpstarted the business from 0-1, developing strategy, wearing many hats to get the business to it's initial market offerings.
  • Learn to fly, and improve your aviation skillset through a network of diverse certified flight instructors via online training.
  • Advising
  • Startups
  • Strategy Development
  • Executive Coaching
  • Technology Leadership
  • Aviation
  • Edtech

AW.Run

Portland OR, USA

Founder

Oct 2022 - Present

  • Consulting, Advising, and Coaching executives to help build and scale companies and products.
  • Building impactful technology, product, and design organizations.
  • Business Strategy development.
  • Advising
  • Consulting
  • Strategy Development
  • Technology Leadership

Edify

Portland OR, USA

Advisor

Jan 2018 - Oct 2022

  • ChatOps SaaS platform for onboarding and educating employees faster and better to help enable faster ROI and better quality of life.
  • Advised & coached the founding team throughout company growth phases including fundraising.
  • Hired first engineers, and advised growth of technology, product, and design elements of company.
  • Partnered with team to review company strategy, performance, technology, and product growth.
  • Onboarding
  • SaaS
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Machine Learning
  • Natural Language Processing

Smile.io

Kitchner, CA

Head of Engineering, Product and Design

Feb 2021 - July 2022

  • Grew the company to become the largest international e-commerce loyalty provider with >1 billion users and>300,000 merchants in the Shopify, Wix, and Bigcommerce ecosystems.
  • Built a remote company culture with employees in 22 countries and>7 languages.
  • Led a foundational company rebuild to get finances, process, tech, teaming, and the product into a mature growth stage.
  • Increased revenues with value-based pricing and packaging changes and user journey refinements.
  • Improved reliability, performance, and cost efficiency through tech platform improvements for world scale com.
  • e-commerce
  • Saas
  • Ruby
  • Agile
  • Javascript
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Agile

SurfaceSEO

Portland OR, USA

Board Member

Mar 2008 - Oct 2022

  • Startup marketing and search optimization business focusing on medium to long-term partnerships with small to midsize brands internationally.
  • Fully distributed teams of content creation, branding, promotional work, and search engine optimization through data-driven analysis.
  • SEO
  • Marketing
  • Advising

GitHub

SF CA, USA

Director of Engineering

Jan 2018 - Mar 2021

  • World's largest code collaboration platform with 98% of worldwide developer participation.
  • Joined Pre-Microsoft acquisition - Focused on Enterprise, Privacy, and Security User Experiences.
  • Developed and led seven international teams, cultivating four staff engineers and staff managers.
  • Diversified talent outside the Bay geo and created a creative, agile culture with outsized impact.
  • Lead through acquisition by Microsoft for 7.8 billion USD.
  • GitHub
  • SaaS
  • Auditlog
  • GitHub Enterprise
  • Github Infrastructure
  • Ruby
  • Go

ATWLab Accelerator

Portland OR, USA

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Aug 2008 - Dec 2020

  • An entrepreneur and principal business development consultant working with partnerships focused on technology startups.
  • $48 million USD fund managed for seed stage and series A stages of growth.
  • Mergers and acquisitions experience in buyer, seller, and mediation roles.
  • Global investments with over 80 companies in over nine countries.
  • Portfolio of investments ranges from automated robotics and avionic systems for lightweight aerial vehicles, to educational technology start-ups.
  • Investing
  • Advising
  • M&A
  • Consulting

FlightStats

Portland OR, USA

SVP of Engineering

Mar 2014 - Jul 2018

  • The industry leader for international aviation data and analytics company working with travelers, aircraft, routes, airlines, airports, and more in historical, real-time, and predictive services.
  • Hands-on leader for the global aviation data acquisition, processing, and distribution software and cloud data product platforms.
  • Grew a team of ~40 to over 100 local and remote engineers in cross-functional EPD teams to develop software services, software-defined infrastructure, and big data pipelines and analysis systems.
  • Built and grew our services business, processing 100s of millions of data points in semi-real-time, servicing customers around the globe.
  • I led the company through acquisition by Relx, hitting all strategic targets on time.
  • Aviation
  • SaaS
  • World Scale
  • Data Services
  • M&A

Presidio

Portland OR, USA

C-Suite Consultant & Sales

Mar 2012 - Nov 2014

  • High-end technology consulting firm focusing on CXO partnerships to bring technology strategy and execution together.
  • Partnered with a wide portfolio of nearly 400 private, public, and government companies.
  • Built long-term strategy with leadership teams that incorporated advanced technology solutions for Presidio clients.
  • Provided technical expertise and leadership to lead a Virtual data center and Data Science Practice within Presidio.
  • Consulting
  • Sales Engineering
  • Software Architecture
  • Security Architecture
  • Networking Architecture

Network & Software Security Architect

Mar 2012 - Nov 2014

  • Partnered with Portland General Electric to modernize and secure their technology solutions.
  • Projects focused on smart electrical metering, modern digital industrial control systems, and customer-facing systems.
  • Migrated PGE data center to a newly designed physical site with no customer impact.
  • Created & implemented CyberSecurity design to secure critical US infrastructure.
  • CyberSecurity
  • Datacenter Architecture

ADP Dealer Services

Portland OR, USA

Solutions R&D

Feb 2008 - Mar 2012

  • Created new lines of technology business as part of ADP Dealer Services for wide-scale international use for over 10,000 car dealerships and millions of users.
  • Early employee as the company grew from millions AAR to billions AAR during a massive growth phase.
  • My work included leading product, design, and engineering efforts to design new product lines and bring them to market at scale.
  • Product Development
  • Networking
  • CyberSecurity

MindScapes

Wichita KS, USA

Chief Technology Officer & Founder

Jan 2006 - Nov 2007

  • Edutech plays with brick-and-mortar locations to augment public school systems and community schools' education with high-tech services, including software development, visual and audio production, music production, clay animation, robotics, and more.
  • Developed & executed a start-up business technology plan, brought together a team, and supported all elements of the business to get it off the ground.
  • Developed infrastructure and E-learning systems for advanced technology instruction for remote and in-class learning.
  • Pioneering new curriculum and business plans for technology-integrated STEM education.
  • Grew to break-even revenue levels in the first year of operation.
  • STEM Education
  • Robotics
  • Software Development

NetApp

Wichita KS, USA

IT Consultant

Jun 2007 - Jan 2009

  • Virtualized and emulated storage systems for sales, quality assurance, and training systems with fully automated SAN environments.
  • Developed new pricing tools for competitive pricing analysis and deal-close support.
  • Created internationalized training programs for SAN storage platforms using video education in 12 languages.
  • Consulting
  • Storage
  • Training

WSU College of Education

Wichita KS, USA

NSF M3 Grant Researcher

Aug 2003 - Jun 2007

  • Hands-on NSF Grant work with future educators, providing technology consulting, assistance, and support.
  • Co-created the WSU Robotics Challenge to bring technology education to K-12 students and educators with industry funding from Boeing.
  • Developed remote education techniques and worked with technologies like Internet2 for Kansas schools and international teaching communities.
  • Academic Research
  • Remote Learning
  • Curriculum
  • Security
  • Robotics

SSI Sprinkler Systems

Wichita KS, USA

IT Consultant

Jun 1997 - Aug 2003

  • Sprinkler system merchant and installation services company in Wichita, Kansas.
  • Designed, deployed, and managed technology elements of the business, including e-com presence, inventory, security, workstations, and software systems.
  • Grew the business from 3m USD ARR to 11m USD ARR through digital transformation efforts & e-commerce.
  • e-commerce
  • IT
  • Networking
  • Security
  • Consulting

Website Developer

Wichita KS, USA

Sole Proprietor

Oct 1995 - Jan 2006

  • Provided website hosting, design, and management services to a portfolio of ~200 websites.
  • Included static html, custom javascript, Joomla, Drupal, and fully custom builds.
  • Website
  • Design
  • Consulting
  • Infrastructure
  • Hosting
photo of me

Personality

Skills

    • Business
    • Vision
    • Mission
    • Culture
    • Strategy
    • Tempo
    • Org Design
    • Decision Architecture
    • Investments
    • Planning
    • Risk
    • Continuity
    • Acquisition
    • Negotiation
      Markets
    • Aviation
    • Consulting
    • Developer Tooling & Enablement
    • CyberSecurity
    • AgTech
    • Education
    • Information Technology
    • Managed Services
    • Manufacturing
    • Power Distribution Markets
    • Power Generation, Risk Management
    • SaaS
    • Big Data
    • Telecom
    • Venture Capital
      People
    • Alignment
    • Growth Mindset
    • Recruiting
    • Hiring & Firing
    • Radical Candor
    • Coaching
    • Mentoring
    • Compensation
    • Contracts
    • Mediation
      Process
    • Agile
    • Kanban
    • Scrum
    • Forecasting
    • Risk Management
    • Retrospectives
    • Incident Management
    • On-Call
    • Software Development LifeCycle
    • Iterative Development
    • Prioritization
    • Product Lifecycle
    • Design
    • Research & Development
    • Site Reliability Engineering
      Technology
    • git
    • GitHub
    • CI & CD
    • bash
    • javascript
    • node.js
    • C++
    • python
    • ruby
    • SQL
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Computer Vision
    • Machine Learning
    • Natural Language Processing
    • Streaming Data Processing
    • Data Warehousing
    • Data Analytics
    • Edge Compute
    • CyberSecurity
    • Pen Testing
    • 3D Modelling
    • Additive Manufacturing
    • Prototyping
    • AWS
    • Azure
    • Kubernetes
    • Docker
    • Virtual Machines
    • Helm
    • Networking

Interests

  • Gardener
  • Beekeeper
  • Hiker
  • Cook
  • Pilot
  • Forester
  • Traveler
  • Writer
  • Maker
  • Hacker

Education

Portland State Unversity

Bachelor of Science

2008 - 2012

Computer Science & Business Management

Wichita State University

M3 Grant Researcher

1999 - 2003

Technology Integration into the Classroom & Remote Learning.

MIT Media Lab

Robotics Education Researcher

1997 - 1999

LEGO Robotics, AI, and ML Research

Languages

  • English
    Native