State of Michigan

Before Michigan, I designed and led the core solution framework for a San Antonio assistance platform. Michigan’s implementation was a substantial adaptation—not a copy—but that structure gave Kinetech a reusable delivery foundation and helped the company price the initial opportunity competitively.

I was not part of the original Michigan sales process. My contribution began with the product and delivery foundation and became much larger when the first implementation needed recovery.

The first deployment contained high-volume, batch-based reporting defects on a program responsible for roughly $1 billion in COVID assistance. I stepped in while also completing delivery of a second Michigan solution.

I reconstructed the correct financial position with Excel and pivot-table reconciliations, then traced the underlying Mendix defects using conditional breakpoints, logging, and targeted investigation. Over several weeks I made surgical corrections across the application. The federal reporting was fully accepted with no material follow-up issues.

The recovery changed my role with the client. I became their trusted delivery partner, led successive programs, and personally scoped and priced engagements three, four, and five.

The relationship expanded across five engagements over five to six years. The important story is not that I originated the account. It is that dependable execution created the trust behind the next engagement—and the one after that.

Product leadership is inseparable from support and delivery. The closest view of a product often comes when users are confused, reporting does not reconcile, or scale exposes assumptions the original team could not see.

I now keep that visibility through scheduled demonstrations, one-minute asynchronous demos, milestone reviews, and hands-on end-to-end testing. Delegation should create leverage; it should never become abdication.