Lionel Felix

Brainstormer, Business adviser, Business leader, Change agent, Concerned citizen, Consultant, Foodie, Technologist, World traveler, Writer/Editor

A fixer by nature, challenges intrigue me and I enjoy the entire process of solving them. It’s not simply technological challenges that I find interesting, I’m drawn to cultural, physical, financial, and process challenges as well. I approach all of them with tenacity, creativity, technical knowhow and a passion to leave things better than I found them. I’m known as someone who is cool under pressure and can be counted on to make things happen when it seems impossible. My career exposed me to a diverse set of businesses from startups and Global 500 to movie studios and semiconductor. I’m cool under fire, comfortable with the fact that change is constant and chaos does not make me flinch. If a decision needs to be made, I’ll make it. When a direction taken was wrong, I’ll own it and right it and not point fingers. I’ve never said “that’s not my job” nor have I said “good enough for government work” without it being said in jest. And to that point, I bring levity to my role. I’m serious about what I do but I have a lot of fun doing it. I strive to grow employees that are enthusiastic supporters of the team, department, company and world in which they live. Subject matter expertise is important but someone with a good attitude, tenacity, strong problem solving, a desire to learn and a collaborative spirit can do just about anything. Global Director, IT Enfatico (Young & Rubicam Brands), Austin, TX March 2008 – Current • Defined the overall global IT strategy for hosting, infrastructure, service and support • Coordinated IT M&A for AdPeople acquisition in Copenhagen & Dhaka. Brought on and integrated the IT teams, systems, technologies, software and networks to allow both businesses to continue to operate without interruption • Grew a highly collaborative and functional borderless IT organization to manage servers, datacenters, LAN, WAN, IT projects and incidents across all offices • Deployed a 10 city video conference system strategy that helps avoid unnecessary travel and also connects teams in different locations in a more collaborative setting • Coordinated technology, furniture, interior finish-out of 4-floor, 100,000 square foot construction project • Delivered a new SaaS timesheet system for the finance team that allows for robust time reporting and more granular job tracking for client billing • Created a 24/5 support organization to handle client and corporate service requests Vice President, Technology RelevantMind.com, Austin, TX / Berkeley, CA May 2007 – March 2008 • Developed an SaaS product that allowed businesses to mine social media sites to gain an insight into what customers were currently saying about their products and services • Managed team of developers and systems administrators in US and India to develop SaaS social media mining software • Designed and built a datacenter operation to support development and live-site activities • Leveraged previous vendor relationships to ramp up production and development quickly • Acted in a business development capacity working with agencies and potential clients Director of Information Technology frogDesign, Austin, TX April 2006 – May 2007 • Managed team of 18 in US, Germany and Italy • Managed $5M IT budget • Provided senior team with simple visibility into the IT organization’s operations and strategy • Defined complete IT strategy for hosting, infrastructure, service and support across all studios • Managed all technology, desktop support, network operations, SAP (HR, Finance, Sales), telecom and software development for US, Asia and European offices • Implemented structured change management system to ensure more stable internal and external systems • Oversight of development of internal and external web 2.0 tools based on Sharepoint, Ruby on Rails and PHP • Managed IT portion of M&A from Flextronics to Aricent • Developed vendor relationships with Dell, Adobe, HP, Microsoft and Adobe to consolidate support and licensing • Reengineered IT numerous processes to create efficiencies and improve security to exceed SOX requirements Enterprise Technology Consultant / OD / Writer FC, Austin, TX September 2004 – April 2006 • Provided IT strategy services ranging from helpdesk efficiency, definined SLAs and performance metrics to server lifecycles and deployment best practices • Offered team building, professional development coaching, organizational development and executive coaching for operations and technology groups seeking organizational excellence • Provided insight into best practices, high performance customer service, vendor management, op

Data visualization, simplifying user interfaces, single sign-on, the changing face of digital media delivery, industrial design, organizational development, economics, global politics, green tech

It's time for IT to come out of the caves and become real strategic partners is business. For too long my people (IT People) have been all too happy to hide in windowless back rooms and manage "our computers". It's time for IT leadership to actually lead, be strategic, work with the business, put things like usability, customer service, simplification, business alignment at the top of or lists and stop fixating on building bigger datacenters, buying more software and continuing draconian us and them management as the main MO. IT people are much more change averse than you would think. We've spent a lot of time treating people like careless children rather than adults. We've put systems and software out there for the business to use without thinking about how people might really use it or even what they actually want. And we've never been much in the way of customer service. Often talking over people's heads, sometimes condescending. Its time for my people to evolve.

Global Technology Management, Global Technology Operations, Home Automation, Infrastructure Architecture, Media Systems Engineering (design), organization development, Solutions Strategist, Technology - Simplification

Cooking, welding & fabrication, frequent flier secrets, finding anything on the internet, driving (as in on the track)