I'll keep it short, and then you guys can ask follow ups if you want. Um, I originally had a different plan for myself. I wanted to go in the I want to go to law school. So, um, you know the best laid plans that are sometimes disrupted with our even our especially our current economy. But so, um, I majored in business, finance and philosophy, and my undergrad and I did some financial advising, and I worked at some law firms, and I started to apply to law schools and even back then law school, the whole law school degree once upon a time, you know? And if there's any attorneys here present, you know, forgive me, but I decided not to go that direction for a variety of reasons, right? Um, it didn't pay off well, as it did in the for example eighties. Eso. So once I got to law firms, though, I found that there was a big need for technology professionals, and the paralegals weren't equipped to do it. The attorneys weren't equipped to do it. And so I fell into legal technology at 1st and and 1st, you know, I think it's important for people to find something that they latch on to write something that they like doing. So for me, what really grabbed me was the power of search and ranking. You know, algorithms, Um, thereafter first images, you know, complex query. So I was fascinated with how well you could specify a set of documents with complex queries. And then after that, we did a lot with there was a, you know, ranking algorithms. And and so I just stayed in technology, and I kind of left my finance for to some degree, you know, the business. The business part always informed my career and even almost more especially the philosophy did I think that the you know, the balance there. So it's important to be ableto read critically write critically and and also have some familiarity with you know, why a business does what it does, you know. So if you're whether you're a director or, you know, entry level person, it z really helpful to kind of understand why your managers managers are making the decisions that they dio, um and and keeping that in perspective. So I was in technology for a while doing kind of hands on search and curation of databases for larger cases. Um and so I was working this area called electronic Discovery, which has become more famous. You know, with Apple and Samsung suing each other, you you end up trading millions of documents back and forth, and then the game becomes, um, saving millions of dollars by finding the needles in the haystack the quickest. So if you can figure out, uh, what's your exposure is that's that's key. So for these, these companies that have, you know, millions or even billions of dollars to lose on patents, um, finding out whether or not your company has 9/10 of that patent secured or not, or whether your employees said such and such to a supplier or not as key. So so that area of technology was booming at that particular time. This isn't like the early oh ohs mhm and and so I I gained more and more of an expertise in natural language processing and search, and and and it was. But it was still that that route that key discovery or, you know, love that I had of search that really grabbed me and took me off from the technology direction. Um, so I made my way into product management. And so that's where sort of process started. Take hold. And I started to realize in product management, this is probably in 2005 that, um I'm from San Francisco in Seattle originally and now I live in the Washington D C area and, um, just a quick comparison. I mean, I still think the Seattle in San Francisco folks are, uh, you know, a couple of years ahead of the East Coast in product management, although it's it's all catching out these days, so but I sort of moved over to D. C. With a product manager mindset, which is, you know, put the customer first and and work backwards. Figure out exactly what you're building for and do it in an agile fashion and work backwards because if you're if you're because I did have experience of waterfall, and if you're just building out a bunch of specs, test for a product that you think or that your development team thinks is best, you can easily, you know, get the original expect wrong or, you know the requirement will change. The market will change and So I got a real interesting strategy, and I guess that's why I was trying to get to so love of technology. Find, you know, got a sense of the strategy was hugely important. You have to figure out what what is the strategy for the product? Does it does it compete in them, You know, from a all the way down from from an industry level on Ben down to your company level, Does your company have the resource is and capabilities to even execute on that strategy Should should you get out Or, you know, should you just license the software and, you know, leave it up to the sales team. So strategy became my focus and I went to graduate school and I'll stop there.

so H L P is not a, you know, large company were about 150 people. So a c t o. You know, that scale is very different than you know, Fortune 500 C t o. Um, although I did get some good training at University of Virginia in a program that was very much aimed at CEO CTO s right. So every technology deployment or idea needs a business case behind it needs a strategy behind so product management. In a way, it was great training for, uh, CTO, And I think there's there's, you know, there's there's different routes being carved out for that these days. Chief product officer and whatnot. But these days I do work from home about 50% of the time, our offices in D. C. I'm I manage. I'm also sort of a chief product officer. We do have a machine learning out product, and what it does is it's it's Ah, it's a bit like Pandora or Spotify, where so in that in that it's still, you know, carrying through from my initial. Um, so there's a C there. You know, there's a thread that connects all of this But from when I started, search was so important. And how can you How can you save people in process time with technology? And so machine learning is really help with that. So you can give You can give the machine now five documents and it'll bring back five Mawr and say, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down and you can have isolated the sort of the needles in the haystack within, you know, hours, as as an individual or a couple people working on it instead of spending literally. I mean, firms would spend, you know, millions of dollars over months Thio to just pour through documents. So the power of machine learning is hit. You know, a lot of the professional, um, but but legal is one of them. So I still have a specialty in legal machine learning, and then so I kind of two roles. I'm sort of the chief product officer for this products nto. And then I also manage a team of project managers and and under under that, we have a lot of, you know, if anybody's familiar with, you know, you know, business intelligence, we basically have e t l platform It's called process things. We pull in terabytes of data every month, process it into a review space and are project managers work with a bunch of processing analyst or ET al specialists and even translators. So we handle cases from, you know, Korea and China. Depends on where the patents air from, you know. So so So I end up having, like, a thankful if the right before this whole covert thing hit. I wrapped up a project where I was managing about 100 translators underneath 10 project managers, and it was happening simultaneously in Korea and some courts in the United States. And that was kind of it was It was a bit too much 24 7. So that's one of the things that legal will do with technology. But yeah, okay, so I try to find a work balance there, and but really, I think product management's my and strategies my real sort of driving force, and it's sort of informed these other areas where even in the medium, you know, small to medium sized company, um, nobody will tell you you know the customers wrong, or if they do, it's an executive with an agenda and you, you gotta You gotta work with them on that. But eso that still really helps me if I can. If I can put it into terms that that an executive will understand my CEO on say, Look, I know we wanna cut corners there, but, um, here's what's actually going to create, you know, success for us with these customers with the majority of our customer base over the next, you know, you know, 12 24 months, That's key. So I do put together business cases. Um, at a small to medium sized business. Those business cases look different than than they will, and the the level of bureaucracy looks different. But But I still put it in those terms, and I found shortcuts. You know, ways to take a look, a industry company, competition customer, and kind of got a framework that I sort of piece it together really quickly. And and it turns into like three slides for a small to medium sized business. Whereas if you're tryingto socialize this at a fortune 500 level, you do have thio, you know, do a little bit more work, and there's more committees. But so I'm enjoying what I do, but, um, yeah, I'm not sure where I'm not. I'm honestly not sure where I'm going to go from here. I've got some specialties in areas and and CTO is a you know, it's a weird role. Um, and I keep talking to startups. This is probably jumping ahead. Well, let's imagine this real quick. I keep talking to startups, um, that wanna chief product officer or CTO And, you know, this pulls in the macro economy and I've actually turned down a few of those I got as I got into it, you know, like the rounds of funding. So I've done that. I've done that as well. In my recent past, I've worked with VC funded companies, and it's fun. It's great. It's, you know, it is trade shows and travel and and you get to kind of do the product marketing all the way through. But there's, you know, there's some risk there. At my last prior company, they were actually started, you know, sort of winding down on Dwork, getting, you know, the next round of funding that they wanted. So they kind of let me know, and I I had to jump. So that Z kind of how I ended up at my current role and but I had relationships with these guys. So it's just, you know, if you're in startup culture, you gotta you gotta have a plan B and but but it's exciting, Thio.

Yeah. I mean, like, 80% of those challenges probably are just, you know, not enough time. Not enough people, Uh, too many client requests. So it's really a matter of so communication is huge. Um, I have to keep my team, my teams, you know, happy and and And make sure that they understand that there is, ah, a roadmap or trajectory for their careers within our company. So they don't lose hope. And, you know, during during, you know, really busy times and I have to keep my, you know, CFO and CEO Uh huh. Understanding that aspect of it. So, um, they're they're both from a originally from kind of a business and sales background. So it will be different, you know, different companies, but they're great at selling big deals and and and kind of pushing it through and kind of, you know, I've I've worked with lots of sales folks, you know, selling beyond what you can dio. Uh, but that pushes the organization to kind of step up. So there's a lot of that especially, I think, in small to medium sized businesses. There's that, um and so you have to just It's all about communication. It's like and what I usually dio. I heard this from It's good a c t o at NBCUniversal. He he came and spoke to our class when I was in school, and he said He never says no and I thought that was good advice. He always says Yes, but here's some of the trade offs we're going to need to make. I need I need you to help me decide. And he would bring the numbers and he'd say, Look, um, if we're going to do that, we're gonna have to pull off you know, 10 of our project managers or whatever to handle this new case. And what that's going to do is it's gonna put some of these other cases on the back burner in the slow lane. Is that okay? And so you have to kind of bring them some trade offs and and kind of include them in the decision. So but saying no is is risky and what I thought