Tim Ruggles

 

 

Summary of qualifications

·    27 years experience in imaging systems marketing and sales planning.

·    Experienced in: analyzing and developing business opportunity strategies and tactics; shaping and executing corporate vision and business plans; defining market segments and analyzing user requirements; managing product development and marketing plans; developing partnership relationships; and managing sales channels.

·    Demonstrated ability to pull marketing/sales and technical development teams together by articulating needed product capabilities and schedules in terms pertinent to technical developers.  Experienced in finding appropriate means to ensure meaningful and productive dialog between technical, marketing, and sales groups.

Career Skills

Sales / Marketing Executive Management	New Product Design & Management
·         International sales/markets	§         Technical–sales–marketing product development
·         Sales forecasting	§         Competitive features and differentiation analysis
·         Subsidiary relations with non-US parent	§         Feature/function requirement forecasting
·         Strategic/marketing plans	§         Product specifications
·         Market share strategies	§         Product development and alpha/beta test analysis
·         Major client development	§         Product manufacturing and rollout
·         Competitive situation analysis	·         Team coordination
·         Organizational development
·         Staff supervision/development

Achievements

·         Founded several successful engineering consulting and product development firms specializing in imaging applications for scientific, engineering, commercial, law enforcement, and civil applications.   

·         Experienced in the development, marketing and sales of imaging solutions for bioinformatics and biometric industries.  Recognized as a leader in the design, development, and implementation of large-scale fingerprint feature imaging and matching systems.   

·         Successfully managed integration of advanced imaging technologies into supportable products running on commercial-off-the-shelf hardware platforms and operating systems.  Coordinated and directed efforts of integrated technical, sales, and marketing teams to define product requirements, set development priorities, and establish detailed statements of work for product development and testing. 

·         Won key, multi-million dollar contacts to provide biometric fingerprint imaging systems to the states of New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Maryland, Wisconsin. Texas, and Arizona, thereby establishing a dominant market share position against entrenched competitors from Japan, the US, and the UK.  Managed relationship between US subsidiary and French parent’s product development units.   

·        Negotiated and established key agreements with distributor and support partners in Europe, Asia and the United States. 

 

Professional Experience

President and CEO

Expression Array Technology (10/2000 to Present)

Offices in Seattle, WA and Vancouver BC

Founded software firm specializing in image processing and feature analysis software applications for recombinant DNA/RNA experiments.  Negotiated license of core technology from the University of Washington and managed evolution of the licensed technology into a commercial product.  Negotiated OEM and distribution agreements with domestic and overseas partners and hardware manufacturers.  Negotiated and won a small business research grant from the National Institutes of Health.  P&L responsibility.  Managed and participated in the process of designing product extensions based on MetaGraph and SQL database tools, Web bots, and the establishment of a server-based for-fee DNA array image analysis business using Java applets and Internet browsers.

 

Senior Vice President, Business Development (9/1997 to 10/2000)   

SAGEM Morpho, Inc. (a subsidiary of Groupe SAGEM, S.A.)

Offices in Tacoma, WA and Paris, France

Executive with P&L responsibility for SAGEM’s marketing, sales, product development, project management, system maintenance services, channel/partner recruitment and development, and remote business enterprise operations in North America.  Company develops, manufactures, markets, sells, and integrates large-scale image processing systems focused on biometric (fingerprint) imaging and feature segmentation/matching applications.  Responsibilities also include the identification of market segment customer technical requirements, and the coordination of marketing and technical product development teams composed of multi-national partners and sister divisions.  Developed the master Business and Product Development Plans used to coordinate US and French market and development teams.

Program Manager (9/1992 to10/2000)                      

TRW, Inc., Avionics and Surveillance Group

Sunnyvale, CA

Assigned as Principal System Architect and Project Manager for a large-scale, multiple-agency city/county emergency services information management system based on a proprietary, object-oriented database management system running under a CORBA NT client – UNIX server architecture over an ATM WAN.  Coordinated all aspects of system design, partner selection and management, and the management of internal TRW resources.  Provided expert consulting services to TRW teams assigned to develop system solution proposals for state- and federal-level automated fingerprint identification systems and criminal justice management information systems.

President & Co-Founder (9/1990 to 9/1992)              

Neudorfer Ruggles Limited

Offices in Great Falls, Virginia and Seattle, Washington

Provide business and product development consulting services in the area of advanced information management, image segmentation, measurement, and feature matching systems. Establish product development and integration strategies, schedules, and objectives on behalf of client product development groups.  Assist client’s product design teams with product specifications development, component selection trade-off analyses, and evaluation of candidate product designs.  Design and develop solutions for automated information management applications involving image file transfer using advanced communications, database, content/feature indexing, and imaging compression subsystems.  Clients included the British Home Office, DEC State & Local Government Systems, EDS State & Local Government Division, IBM Federal Systems Division, TRW Integrated Engineering Division, and Unisys State and Local Government Sector Systems.

Senior Vice President, Marketing & Sales (8/1986 to 9/1990) 
North American MORPHO Systems, Inc.

Tacoma, Washington

Established US commercial branch of the Ecole de Mines de Paris (Paris School of Mines) Morphological Mathematics Laboratory, a French government-owned technology group responsible for commercializing advanced image segmentation and feature analysis applications based on Unix (AIX) OS and C/C++ programs running on the IBM RS/6000 RISC platform.  Directly responsible for developing MORPHO’s integrated imaging systems product specifications and for all aspects of product marketing and sales in the US and Asia-Pacific regions.  Personally achieved imaging systems sales totaling more than $60 million in first three years of operation.  Managed a national sales force of 15 and was directly responsible for marketing operations in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia).  Negotiated installed systems maintenance contracts with partners in EEC, Asia, and US.  Coordinated the services of legal counsel in US, France, and Hong Kong and was responsible for all aspects of corporate legal operations, including customer contract negotiations, licensing, partner and channel agreements, and service contracts.

Vice President (1/1979 to 8/1986)

Applied Systems Technology, Inc.                          

Carlsbad, California

Co-Founder and principal shareholder of consulting group providing expert system design and vendor selection assistance to government clients.  Provided management consulting services to clients on projects involving automated imaging systems.  Managed systems analysis and requirements evaluation teams responsible for assessing client requirements, performed activity-based cost-benefit analyses and developed formal system technical specifications.  Assisted client’s proposal team with technical and project management sections of customer proposals.  Clients included the states of Alaska, California, and Virginia, the City and County of San Francisco, the City of Houston, AT&T, and the British Home Office.

Education

Juris Doctor

William Mitchell School of Law (1979)

St. Paul, Minnesota

 

Master of Science - Psychology

University of Wisconsin (all but dissertation, courses completed 1976)

Madison, Wisconsin

 

Bachelor of Science

University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, Elective Studies Program (1974)

Minneapolis, Minnesota