My Story
I’ve spent my career operating as a “Corporate Free Safety” and a servant leader. My sweet spot is stepping into complex, rapidly evolving environments during high-stakes mergers and acquisitions to accretively combine, align, and unify cross-functional teams while protecting operating margins and unlocking aggressive commercial velocity.
My professional trajectory bridges foundational technology architecture with elite executive governance. Over the past two decades, I’ve had the privilege of scaling organizations from early-stage growth to global enterprise status, including steering a decade of top-line revenue and operational alignment within a Fortune 50 environment. Whether rationalizing massive portfolios, navigating nested M&A cycles, or managing full P&L accountability for NPI business lines, my focus remains constant: driving structural EBITDA improvement, maximizing net retention, and building sustainable, transparent organizational cultures.
Currently, I serve as Chief Product Officer for a private equity-backed modern IT solutions provider (MSP/MSSP), where I’m responsible for product, marketing, and analyst relations on our evolution to being a managed intelligence provider (MIP). In this role, my focus is on accelerating market expansion and scaling our practice dimensions to engineer our ascent as a Top 20 MSP/MSSP/MIP. I’m proud to have secured our first-ever industry analyst recognition while simultaneously expanding our midsize enterprise contribution and optimizing ROMI and CAC by double-digit percentages.
Previously, I was recruited to unify multiple complex post-merger go-to-market and offering strategies for a multi $B global consulting firm, integrating cloud infrastructure and developer experience into a single, cohesive global portfolio within 12 months.
I believe true corporate value requires a balance of aggressive market scale and rock-solid foundational trust. I routinely advise corporate boards through successful institutional exits to major global enterprises and publicly traded buyers.
Beyond executive governance, I’m a newsletter writer and podcaster translating complex digital shifts into actionable insights for tech executives. I frequently serve as a trained facilitator in corporate boardrooms and have spoken on major international stages like South by Southwest (SXSW).
If you’re looking for a hands-on operator to scale an enterprise platform, navigate a complex integration, or drive meaningful value for stakeholders, let’s connect. I’m always open to discussion.
My Timeline
The hindsight 20/20 storytelling goes something like this… but my meandering career path was anything but planned.
- I was born and raised in Beaufort, North Carolina.
- During high school, great teachers helped me land an Office of Naval Research internship at Duke University Marine Laboratory.
- Before college, great teachers helped me land a Department of Energy honors program slot at Argonne National Laboratory.
- Eventually, I graduated from North Carolina State University with a BS in Materials Science and Engineering.
- After my co-op at IBM doing TCP/IP benchmarking in development data centers, I dropped out of graduate school to be a digital nomad.
- My first consulting roles involved nascent LAMP stacks for web-based OAM&P at Nortel in both development and production data centers and side-gigs with stealth startups.
- By 1999, I was consulting at Fortune 500 companies while managing software engineers and infrastructure architects for boutique .com consulting firms in state-of-the-art production data centers, peering points, and colo’s around the globe.
- By 2002, I was hired as CTO at NeoNova to digitally transform and grow a business that manages Internet services and data centers for telecommunications companies.
- By 2007, I was hired as VP, GM, and CTO at Digitel to digitally transform and grow a business that manages converged voice and data services in peering points and data centers for VARs.
- By 2009, I launched Cuthrell Consulting LLC to revisit my digital nomad roots of consulting, investing, advising startups, and blogging.
- In 2009, the Acadia and the Virtual Computing Environment coalition were created by Cisco and EMC with additional investments from VMware and Intel.
- In 2010, as luck would have it, I met some folks from Cisco and EMC working for Acadia and I joined the team thinking it would be a year-long engagement.
- By late 2010, Acadia and the Virtual Computing Environment coalition combine to form VCE.
- By 2012, VCE approached $0.5 Billion Annual Run Rate.
- By 2013, VCE reached $1 Billion Annual Run Rate.
- By late 2013, VCE reached $1.8 Billion Annual Run Rate.
- By October 2014, VCE is considered to be the most successful joint venture in IT history.
- By 2015, VCE exceeded $3.0 Billion Annual Run Rate and became an EMC Company.
- In October 2015, Dell and EMC agreed to the largest merger in IT history for a reported $67 Billion.
- By late 2016, Dell and EMC were combined and by 2020 became known as Dell Technologies.
- In 2020, my time at Dell Technologies ended and my next adventure in multicloud took me to Faction, a Dell Technologies Capital portfolio company.
- By late 2022, my time at Faction ended as I once again returned to my consulting roots 25+ years later, and I was fortunate to be able to return to IBM and apply all that I have learned to What’s Next.
- By 2024, I revivified Cuthrell Consulting to once again flex my digital nomad roots of consulting, investing, advising startups, and blogging.
- By late 2024, I began my next adventure as Chief Product Officer at NexusTek to lead growth across product, analyst relations, and marketing as well as contribute to a compelling composable consultancy culture.