An operator who builds. I run the systems I write about.
Twenty years building product at scale. Now building AI systems in production, and helping leadership teams rebuild how they operate around them.
I come to it as a builder.
I spent 20-plus years building and running product at scale. Then I left the big-org seat. Since 2024 I've been building my own AI systems and stepping back into product leadership: full-time for the right company, and interim and fractional work. I got back in because AI changed what a small team can actually do, and most companies are still running the old playbook into a new environment.
I rebuilt my own operating model around AI first. Built the agents myself. Worked out how a system earns more access as it earns more trust. Read-only, then more, once it proves out. So when I sit with a leadership team, I'm drawing on things I run in production, not a deck.
I was in a record store, saw an album I half-remembered wanting, and texted my system to ask if I already owned it. It checked 473 records and a wantlist and answered before I got to the counter.
That is the least impressive thing it does. It is also the one I tell people, because it shows the actual idea. Not a model that knows everything. A system that knows my things.
The same system runs the work. It knows my projects, my contacts, my commitments, and what I said about them six months ago. It sends me three things each morning instead of a list of forty. It tells me when someone has gone quiet who should not have. It notices when I have moved the same task three times and asks what is going on.
And it tells me no. It stops me most weeks, once for quoting a source I had not checked, once for a command that would have put a credential into a chat window. None of it is a prototype I built so I would have something to show. It has two years of my own mistakes in it, and that is the part that makes it worth anything.
I write about the shift as I work through it. That writing is how a lot of new clients and founders find me now.
The scale sits underneath all of it. SVP and CPO at Verizon Media, across Yahoo! and AOL. Multi-billion-dollar portfolios. Teams from five people to seven hundred and fifty and beyond, across product and engineering. Consumer platforms, SaaS, marketplaces, and companies growing fast enough to break.
I work with the leader who owns the team, the VP of Product, the CPO, the platform lead, to redesign how their org builds and decides around AI. Not over their head. With them. I line up product investment, team structure, and operating cadence with the outcomes that move the business.
I work with a small set of public and confidential clients: the VP Product, CPO, or platform leader whose team bought AI and didn't get faster, growth-stage companies scaling up-market, and larger enterprises resetting how they operate around AI.
"An extremely capable operator who makes tough decisions."
Michael can lead multiple distinct product organizations, communicate clearly, and make the hard calls needed to move teams forward. He balances product excellence with strong business alignment.
"Strategic, decisive, and trusted at scale."
He led large, diverse product and design teams at massive scale while driving multi-billion-dollar performance. A rare executive who combines strategic clarity with operational discipline.
"Calm leadership through complexity."
Michael established structured operating discipline, led through reorganizations and ownership transitions, and drove impact with clarity and accountability.