A 15+ year Commercial Director in a traditional corporate environment serving Fortune 500 and government institutions bringing maturity and adoption to crypto and web3. 5 years’ experience in the cryptocurrency space with a blending of traditional enterprise commercial operations, sales, solutions consulting, and delivery with startup and blockchain/crypto experience from top-ten blockchain platform companies. Successfully built, scaled, and trained distributed functional teams globally and across a wide range of cultures, backgrounds, time zones, and geographical locations.
Experience
Commercial Director – 2020 – present
Blockchain infrastructure research and engineering
- Built and scaled Commercial Team to a team of 70+ with functions including sales, account management, sales enablement, operations, business analysis, deal desk and services teams.
- Founded Professional Services Department (PSG), the team responsible for deploying the world’s largest digital identity project for the Ethiopian Ministry of Education.
- Culture Officer directly involved with managers and staff in support of mentoring, coaching, conflict resolution, performance improvement, and professional development of staff across the company.
- Direct support to Chief Commercial Officer in managing Commercial Department Operations in support of executing commercial strategy.
- Directly manages and mentores personnel including Business Analysts, Salespeople, Account and Partner Managers, Business Developers, Financial Modelers, Commercial Operations and Event Coordinators.
- Built a pipeline of 700 leads for products and services and all processes to support pipeline management.
- Business Development in Europe, United States, Latin America, the Republic of Georgia, Mongolia, and Ethiopia.
- Advised countless early-stage startups introducing them to the Catalyst Innovation Platform.
- Organized, coached and directly managed Commercial Events Team to create global presence at industry events.
- Created connective tissue across the organization with product, legal, marketing, finance, treasury and comms through the commercial operations team and business analyst teams.
Professional Services – 2018 – 2020
- Built the Professional Services function from scratch.
- Hired and set up all-women Data Analytics and Services Team in Addis Ababa Ethiopia with HR and Director of African Operations.
- Worked teams to define and deliver company’s first service offerings, including implementation, advisory and tokenomics engagements
- Built two business analyst teams whose contributions were so valued that they were hired into various Product Teams as Product Owners, Product Managers, Delivery Managers and even Head of Product.
- Designed, hired, and trained the Technical Consultant role in the Professional Services group, resulting in the creation and sale of blockchain advisory services.
- Represented the company with Enterprise and Government clients both remotely and in-person, including site visits and commercial workshops.
- Routinely advised executive level stakeholders across all departments on matters related to commercial activities, services, enterprise, the business of software, platform strategy and culture.
- Worked closely with the HR team through the early years of the business to address staff challenges and improve company culture, implementing numerous inexpensive enhancements to connect the staff, including digital coffee time, high fives channel, company newsletter, and a remote meditation program pilot. Many of these initiatives are still in operation today.
- Built the teams directly responsible for landing all commercial deals except for the initial platform contract. Enterprise deals include Ministry of Education Digital Identity, Dish
- Network Loyalty Points POC, and countless smaller deals with startups, ecosystem partners, and advisory clients.
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