Lorinda Brandon
(508) 254-6154 @lindybrandon
About me
Seasoned professional with a proven track record of building and leading successful technical teams, evangelizing products, and providing thought leadership in both written and spoken communications.
Career highlights
Capital One, 2015 to presentMcLean, VA
API Product Strategy and Planning
Build the API strategy and roadmap based on input from external and internal sources
Conduct developer engagement activities to work with the developer communities internally and externally
Coach API Producer teams on delivering APIs for the external market
Manage a team of technical information architects who provide documentation and code samples for Capital One APIs
Develop the API prototyping strategy for product validation during implementation
Evangelize Capital One’s API strategy internally and externally
SmartBear Software, 2012 to presentSomerville, MA
Director, API Partner Development/Evangelist
Evangelize SmartBear products to the API industry via written content and speaking engagements
Develop communications strategies for promoting SmartBear in the API industry
Develop partner relationships and strategy for the API segment
Provide technical and industry consulting to internal Sales and Marketing personnel
Liaise with Product Management to provide feedback about industry trends and customer needs
Manage the Developer Network growth plans and implementation for the API segment
RR Donnelley, 2010 to 2012Andover, MA
VP, Engineering for Helium products
Manage the entire development lifecycle, from product requirements, design, development and quality assurance for two of RRD’s strategic products.
Led Product Management from gathering requirements to preparing wireframes and functional requirements documents for engineering.
Hired a team of Quality Assurance and Software Development engineers, tripling the size of the original team.
Created a more nimble QA process, including individual test environments in a cloud data center, standardized test plans, MATs with the development team, and code inspections in Development as a qualifier for QA
Created a more rapid development process that includes quality checkpoints and a development integration environment in our cloud data center.
Defined and enforced the branching strategy and process, and managed bi-weekly production deployments.
Manage the budget and schedule for the full Helium suite of products
Provide reporting to senior executive management at RR Donnelley on a weekly basis
EMC Corporation, 2005 to 2010Hopkinton, MA
Global Director, Remote Support Programs, Customer Service,2005 to 2010
Manage a global team for Remote Change Management, including locations in Bangalore, Cork, Shanghai, Cairo and the US.
Manage the Remote Support Program Management Office and direct a team of managers and senior managers in developing and implementing corporate strategies for customer service.
Develop training strategies to support cross-training for Support personnel to ensure solutions-based capabilities exist in the organization.
Define, implement and measure organizational changes throughout the global Problem Resolution organization, including virtual Solutions-focused teams to work cross-functionally with customers and remote support functions
Provide executive direction for large-scale efficiency projects to optimize EMC’s resources and processes
Build and direct a Critical Response Team (Fly/Fix). Provided subject matter expertise and strategic direction for team implementation:
- Designed procedural and operational best practices, rules of engagement.
- Designed the key performance indicators required to measure success, continuous improvement and alignment to strategic organizational goals. (Dashboards)
Direction and management of resources to meet customer expectations for critical and often complex on-site engagements.
Establish training programs for technical fly-and-fix teams to build entry-level training paths as well as Subject Matter Expert certification paths. My training paths have been adopted by other organizations and posted on the EMC internal training selections.
Direct a team of corporate escalation managers responsible for driving critical software/hardware issues to successful resolution. Work with multiple stakeholders, (EMC Executive Leadership, Customer,Global Field and Account teams, Sales, Global Technical teams) to successfully meet customer expectations and deliverables.
Manage critical EMC customer accounts requiring customized support and expectations, includingproactive and escalation management of customer issues. Responsibilities included strong product knowledge across EMC software suites, engineering relationships and the ability to articulate complex technical action plans to executive leadership in EMC and customer communities.
KAYAK.com, 2004 to 2005Maynard, MA
Director of Quality Assurance
As part of the original team, launched Kayak.com 1.0
Built the test team by hiring and managing QA engineers
Provide feedback on usability as well as recommendations for operational efficiencies in US and Bangalore, India.
Work closely with release engineering on branch strategy and timing.
Exit 41, 2003 to 2004North Andover, MA
Product Manager
Managed several key initiatives for the Exit 41 product line, including the rollout of the Labor Scheduling and Production Planning modules, and ongoing release of the Inventory and Manager’s Workbench modules for the fast food industry. In this role, defined business objectives, possible strategic partnerships, managed product development teams through the entire lifecycle, and defined priorities for quality assurance patch releases.
Intuit, 1998 to 2003Waltham, MA
Engineering Services Manager, Web Technologies1998 To 2003
Hired a team of QA resources
Hired the initial Technical Writing staff
Developed initial processes and organizational infrastructure.
Managed deployment activities, including release engineering and production releases.
Worked with other Intuit locations worldwide to manage several key projects for our global small business solutions, including managing matrixed product development teams through the entire lifecycle and working with business partners on joint solutions.
Speaking highlights:
API Strategy Conference 2016, Program Chair
Defrag, “Girl Geek Imperative” Keynote
Defrag, “Monkey Selfies and Other Conundrums: Who owns your data?” Security Session
Gluecon, “After the Breathlessness: What we need to figure out about the IoT” Keynote
API Strategy Conference Amsterdam, “Innovative Breakage: Putting the hack into hackathons”API SecuritySession
APIdays Paris, “API Readiness: Is Your API Ready for PrimeTime” Keynote
Gluecon, “API Readiness: Visualizing and Virtualizing”APISession
API Strategy Conference Berlin, “API Readiness: Visualizing and Virtualizing” Keynote
WSO2 London, “API Readiness: Visualizing and Virtualizing” Keynote