Superpowers
- Goal-driven enterprise strategist who seeks clarity of values, vision, and goals between stakeholders to align outcomes and incentives for long-term growth and impact
- Proactive individual contributor who utilizes multi-scale planning and time blocking to productively achieve his goals and make time for mentoring and team-building
- Curious AI/ML consultant undaunted in tackling the hardest problems involving complex systems, multiple jurisdictions, and heavy regulation
- Quick learner and thoughtful problem solver across diverse industries including: finance, healthcare, legal, private intel, media, education, and big tech
Experience
AI/ML Solutions Architect (Jan 2023 - Present)
Krono.Works (Remote) → AI/ML Research, Publishing, and Consulting Network
- Consulting legal, finance, healthcare, and family office clients on expert-tailored, AI-savvy, compliance-friendly solutions to increase productivity, decrease costs, and uplevel their business
- Coaching creators, executives, entrepreneurs, and business owner on AI tools, prompt engineering, process optimization, data verification, publishing, and automation with Cloud-AI and local-AI LLMs
- Architecting the data governance, dispute resolution process, feature roadmap, and pricing for AI/ML products
- Designed the Doc Seal Protocol, a local-first tamper-verifiable protocol for managing document and content integrity, and published the Doc Seal - Smart Paper and open sourced the working implementation
- Prototyped bespoke property management rewards card and program to demonstrate cost distribution, decentralized credentialing, and agentic permitting capabilities
Board of Directors & Solutions Architect (Jan 2023 - Jan 2024)
Ricardiam (Remote) → Algorithmic Private Equity Company and Executive Advisory Firm
- Implemented local-first, decentralized, AI-enabled system of record for blockchain-compatible corporate governance, which includes prototype ricardian contracts and token allocation algorithms for portfolio companies
- Advised executive teams and founders on product strategies, company incentive models, tokenomics, and technical initiatives
- Developed multi-tier cross license hub frameworks for micro-PE expense and profit attribution
- Designed, prototyped, and deployed an encrypted p2p consent protocol
- Curated a wiki of mutual benefit resources, workspaces, best-in-breed tooling
Startup Advisor & Co-founder (Dec 2021 - Jan 2023)
Z4A DAO (Remote) → Impact-first Startup Studio
- Mentored 50 founders on strategy, biz dev, workflows, and blockchain applications
- Incubated a voluntary law DAO designed with principle-based self-governance
- Prototyped and deployed goal-centric tokenization protocols across 5 organizations
- Prototyped time-driven tokenization models (“skill-sharing”) for an international startup studio and pubco
Partnership Architect & Startup Advisor (Feb 2020 - Sep 2022)
IonRev Technologies (Greater Salt Lake City Area) → Venture Studio
- Incubated 5 startups, attracted investors, and recruited key personnel and board members
- Established strategic partners and investor relations via personal rolodex and facilitating a weekly roundtable panel of creators, founders, and innovators
- Co-designed and co-authored the white paper for a time-based blockchain token that attracted 50k tokenholders before poor governance and mismanagement divided the community
- Developed data governance practices for navigated privacy regulation for core products and partner entities
VP, Product Solutions & Customer Success (July 2018 - June 2019)
LeapYear Technologies (San Fransisco Bay Area) → Enterprise AI/ML with Differential Privacy
- Produced and co-edited a seminal white paper and technical marketing materials on differential privacy and AI/ML algorithms, enhancing product understanding for executives, IT, sales, and engineering teams, as well as current and prospective customers
- Co-developed and implemented a comprehensive product roadmap and customer feedback process, along with an organization-wide documentation system and product release process, which aligned sales, engineering, and key enterprise customers with clear feature timelines, improving coordination and efficiency
- Developed a customer success playbook and established processes for a team of data scientists, ML engineers, and product experts; and led the implementation of this differential privacy-tunable business intelligence platform featuring customized ML algorithms and data processing workflows
Director of Professional Services & Solutions (Mar 2016 - July 2018)
SingleStore, formerly MemSQL (San Fransisco Bay Area) → Real-time Distributed Database
- Consulted executives and architects from over 10 Fortune 500 companies, to develop real-time, high-volume, scalable data processing systems; achievements include increasing global billing system ingest speed from 0.4 to 10 million upserts per second, improving ETL speed by 50x for an accounting firm, and enabling a 20x expansion of cloud DVR capabilities on the same hardware
- Managed the customer accounts through the go-live, renewal, and expansion process that contributed to 40% of the company’s revenue target for two quarters
- Developed command-line interface tools in Python, Go, and SQL for implementing, managing, and operating distributed databases, which automated critical steps and enhanced product usability and robustness
- Built and led a team of 9 data architects and product experts; organized consulting packages and customer success processes that streamlined the go-live and implementation phases, resulting in improved customer retention through higher quality setup and enhanced enterprise documentation and awareness for ongoing support
Forward Deployed Engineer (Sep 2012 - Apr 2015)
Palantir Technologies (United Arab Emirates) → Private Intel, AI/ML, and Elite Data Analytics
- Managed the region’s first healthcare pilot project from start to finish: built trust with the CIO, analyzed claims to identify $572 million at risk using 14 anomaly detection schemes, and established the technical infrastructure for further analysis, triaging, and research
- Transformed a single-purpose SIGINT tool into a comprehensive system of record by delivering new investigation and analytics capabilities, addressing national security concerns following the Snowden revelations, integrating new data sources, and enhancing system stability
- Led an enterprise-wide user adoption and engagement initiative that nearly doubled the usage of the core analysis tool within three months, expanding access to five additional teams and introducing three new use cases, unlocking significant additional value for the organization
Assistant Vice President, Analytics (Apr 2010 - Jan 2012)
iQor (New York City) → Business Process Outsourcing and Debt Collections
- Managed cross-functional analytics, strategy and profitability projects with a team of 5 across 4 departments in 3 locations, interfacing directly with CEO in weekly
- Developed resource allocation strategies for clients, including 3 Fortune 500, increasing annualized revenue by $78M. (Experience prior to Grad School - Ask for details)
Skills & Tools
- Ai Tools: Perplexity.ai, Claude.ai, Llama3.1 (local), Codestral (local), nomic-embed-text (local)
- Productivity Tools: Obsidian, Notion, Pipedream, Airtable, and more
- Organizational Skills: Multi-scale planning, enterprise architecture, ontology design
- Programming: Python, SQL, Dataview, JavaScript, Bash, and learning what it takes
- Analytical Tools: Jupyter Notebook, STATA, SAS, Matlab, Statistica, and beyond
Education
Columbia University (Aug 2010)
Masters of Operations Research (New York City)
- Achievements: 3.4 GPA (3.8 GPA in last half) Outreach Scholarship
- Research: Neural network modeling of ForEx, Monte Carlo simulation of golfing, persistence training techniques
Brigham Young University-Hawaii (Apr 2006)
Dual Bachelors of Mathematics and Computer Science (Hawaii)
- Achievements: Cum Laude, 3.5 GPA, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, full-tuition scholarship, math and CS academic scholarships
- Research: Task persistence, partial reinforcement schedules, cognitive chunking, logic emulators in teaching architecture
Northern Marianas College (May 2003)
Associate of Arts (Northern Marianas Islands)
- Achievements: Magna Cum Laude with 3.8 GPA in Phi Theta Kappa honors society
Conferences & Publications
- Benson J. B., & Stryder J (2024). Doc Seal Whitepaper. WikiWe.org.
- Miller, R. M., Au, K. Y., Benson, J., Cowden, K. O., Snarr, T., et la. (2009). The Implicit Association Test: Implicit Attitude or Simple Exposure. 21th Annual Association for Psychological Science Convention, San Francisco, CA.
- Stanley, T. D., Wong, L., Prigmore D., Benson, J., Fife, L., & Colton D. (2007). From Archi Torture to Architecture: Undergraduate Students Design and Implement Computers Using the Multimedia Logic Emulator. Computer Science Education, 17, 141-152.
- Miller, R. M., Olds, K., Benson, J., & Strong, N. (2006). Question Order Effects on Task Persistence in Computerized Testing. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education, 10A, 118-121.
- Miller, R. M., Kapapa, R., Au, K. Y., Strong, N., & Benson, J. (2006). Cooperation persistence in the prisoner’s dilemma: A sequential analysis. 86th Annual Western Psychological Association Convention, Palm Springs, CA.
Additional
Languages: English (Native), Tagalog (Professional), American Sign Language (Limited Working), Japanese (Limited), Arabic (Limited) Extracurricular: Youth Assembly (2011), VP of Entrepreneurship Leadership Consulting Club (2009-2010), SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) Project Director (2003-2006), President of Swing Club (2004-2006), Student Advisory Council (2004-2005) Awards: Second runner-up in SIFE National Competition 2004, 2005, & 2006, SIFE Service Leadership Award 2005 & 2006, First place in Hawaii region in Association for Computing Machinery Competition 2005, Eagle Scout, H. S. Valedictorian