Short Bio
What I share and write on is based on 30+ experience working in Martech with great people in great companies – my journey:
- Currently, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Marketing & Decisioning Solutions, at Pegasystems (www.pega.com)
- Prior to Pega, I was IBM Product Management Director for the OmniChannel Marketing Products (formerly Unica).
- Prior to IBM, I was Unica Professional Services Practice Director where I led teams and managed Unica implementation projects for large enterprises, working directly with executive sponsors.
- Prior to Unica, I was with SAS, Rapp Collins / Omnicom, and UPS. I have over 30 years of experience with marketing technology systems design and implementation, strategic planning, customer analytics, business intelligence, and Enterprise Marketing Management systems implemented across a variety of industries.
I have a BSBA in Marketing from Georgetown (Washington DC), an MS in Database Systems / Operations Research from Univ. of MD, am a certified Professional Direct Marketer, and have spoken, blogged and written on various Marketing technology topics during my career.
Also featured
My Photos. Pictures I’ve take over the years – Organized chronologically. I love taking pictures. I’ve filtered down in here to just my favorites.
A little about my general story –
I’m a middle child with 4 brothers and 3 sisters and 2 feisty parents.
I’m a hobbyist of many things, including guitar playing (which means a master of none of them). I’ve included some of my music from my SoundCloud site.
My dad, Joe Jeffs, was the librarian at Georgetown University for over 30 years. He is a writer. Check out his book of short stories, “The Blarney Boy.”
My brother Tim sells really amazing intricate animal art. Check him out at Tim Jeffs Art.
My daughter Rachel Jeffs is an amazing creative talent – Check her out at racheljeffs.com or at her business site Good Grub.
My daughter Sara Jeffs loves everything Japanese, especially Hello Kitty. Here is a Charming Kitty video she did that got 42k views on YouTube.
Full Resume
A highly versatile manager with over 25 years experience managing product management and professional services teams and projects, information systems teams and business units – who designs and implements Decision Support Systems and Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems directed at optimizing customer engagement initiatives, processes, and automation – thus enhancing ROI and stockholder value.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Pegasystems (2014 to Present)
Senior Director, Product Strategy, Marketing & Decisioning Solutions (2018 – Present)
Director, Strategy & Product Marketing – Customer Decision Management Solutions (2014-2017)
Responsible for go to market strategy, messaging, content, positioning, pricing, partnerships, and product management strategy for the Pega Marketing and Customer Decision Hub applications.
IBM/Unica (2004 – 2014)
Senior Director – Product Management (2010 – 2014)
Responsible for the Omni Channel Marketing Solutions / Products (former Unica products), and manages a team of product managers.
- Grew Unica portfolio under IBM ExperienceOne brand from $90 million to over $200 million, fueled by growth in campaign management and real-time personalization sector.
- Team with marketing to ensure 2x to 3x pipeline coverage, and helped sales close strategic deals.
- Lead workshops with customers (understanding use cases), engineering (writing user stories and coaching teams). Drove using agile and adapting a hybrid model for on premise and SaaS applications.
- Thought leader for the portfolio, responsible for developing overall roadmap and engaging and exciting large audiences in numerous public speaking sessions, leading to initial interest and ultimate conversion.
- Personally responsible for the creation and design of several innovations in real-time and marketing operations (MRM) workflow modules.
- Led efforts to ensure portfolio remained in the leader quadrants for Forrester and Gartner reports.
Senior Practice Director – Professional Services (2004 – 2010)
Led various Unica implementation projects for a wide variety of customers, collaborating with executive sponsors and project managers as well as Unica business partners on joint implementation projects.
- A detailed list of clients / projects will be provided upon request.
SAS Institute, Inc (2002 – 2004)
Practice Manager – Marketing Automation
Responsible for Pre-Sales and Delivery Teams (over 25 professionals) supporting Sales and Consulting.
- Example SAS Marketing Automation Customers in US: AAA of SC, Abercrombie and Fitch, Ameritrade, Bank of America, Executive Greetings, The Hartford, Hibernia Bank, Morgan Stanley, National City Bank, Peoples Bank, Provident Bank, Sony Music, Sprint, and others.
- Sold and delivered 15 Marketing Automation contracts valued at about $15 million in 2003.
- Spearhead for definition and prioritization of product requirements for the re-write of SAS Marketing Automation.
Pre-Sales Manager – Marketing Automation
- Managed Team of 5 highly motivated Pre-Sales Consultants (Sales Systems Engineers) who supported the account teams in proving to prospective customers the value of the SAS Marketing Automation Solution by using their extensive business domain and technical expertise.
- Sold 13 Marketing Automation contracts valued at about $13 million in 2002.
Rapp Collins Worldwide (1998 – 2002)
Senior Consultant
Developed Database Marketing and Fulfillment Systems for improved direct marketing.
- Designed Analytical Plan and Data Model for The Vanguard Group (Mutual Funds), and targeted High Potential Clients for focused up-sell and retention efforts.
- Designed Data/Process Model and Campaign Management System for Cox Communications and SBC
- Coordinated database development for Georgia Natural Gas Services (a sister company of Atlanta Gas Light).
- Managed project team of 8 on $500,000 fulfillment project for DaimlerChrysler / Ross Roy, aimed at processing up to 20,000 new leads per week using highly effective digital customized direct mail.
- Performed SWAT assessment and transition engagement to fix response system for Ameriquest Mortgage who mails over 4 million piece/month; reporting system that was previously 5 months behind was up and running in less than 1 month.
- Exclusive marketing consultant with com (a B2B e-commerce site) and was responsible for billings in excess of $150,000 in 5 months. Consulted with them on all facets of direct marketing, including driving strategy and the design and implementation of an Oracle based Marketing Data Warehouse enabling them to more effectively evaluate acquisition efforts, target buyers, and sell site inventory.
- Other clients: Hyatt, com, UPS, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines, Marriott Vacation Club.
United Parcel Service – UPS – (1987 – 1998)
Database Marketing Manager
Developed Database Marketing System for improved marketing segmentation.
- Helped design CHAID and Hierarchical Discriminate segmentation models used to improve UPS promotion response rates from about 2% to in some cases better than 4%.
- Responsible for building in RFM, LVC and Retention data to drive churn analysis and loyalty programs.
- Responsible for developing sub-system for campaign management using Desktop Direct.
- Managed team of 7-10 through technical design, testing and implementation of a database and user interface built on a Windows NT to SUN UNIX client/server platform using Harte-Hanks P/CIS software.
- Responsible for design and testing the Data Warehouse.
- Helped build Lotus Notes Database containing critical database marketing reports such as cross-sell analysis.
International Business Planning and Forecasting – Manager
Developed and delivered integrated business planning systems worldwide.
- Re-engineered worldwide planning processes and systems resulting in corporate wide savings of $ 1.2 million.
- Directed software development team ranging from 5-7 people.
- Developed 3 major releases of the UPS Business Planning System software.
- Provided training and planning support services to 15 international departments and divisions.
- Developed an EIS (Executive Information System) to speed and improve executive decision making.
- Made significant design improvements to the General Ledger System to improve data stored for planning and reporting, and Activity Based Costing.
International Systems Analyst/User Representative
Designed and implemented customized cost reduction systems worldwide.
Systems Programmer/Analyst
Designed and implemented Operations Improvement Systems.
EDUCATION
University of Maryland – College Park, MD
Master of Science in Information Systems and Operations Research
Georgetown University – Washington, DC
Bachelor of Science in Marketing
University of Kansas City Missouri
Certified Professional Direct Marketer
COMPUTER / APPLICATION EXPERIENCE
Examples:
Windows User: Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Project, Visio, Adobe, Lotus Notes, Outlook
Database: Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, Teradata, Netezza, MS Access, Hadoop
Data Modeling: Erwin, Bachman, Silverun, Visio
OR/Stats software: SAS, SPSS, Unica Model / Predictive Insight, Pega Predictive Analytics Director, R, Python
Collaboration: Sharepoint, Rational Team Concert (for Agile), Box, Dropbox
OLAP/Reporting: SAS, Cognos, Crystal Reports, Business Objects
Marketing Software / EMM / Campaign Management:
Pega Marekting; Also 9+ years experience with Unica (various modules: Unica Campaign, Unica Interact, Unica Optimize; Unica Distributed Marketing, Unica eMessage, Unica Detect, Unica Marketing Operations); Also used Xchange, E.piphany, Siebel, Kana, SAS Marketing Automation, Aprimo / Protagona
INTERESTS
Enjoy:
Golf, guitar, racquetball, running, reading, and personal computing advances
Member:
- Ambassador – Must Ministries – Atlanta Organization for Homeless since 2010
- Former Board Member of Optimist Club of Windy Hill – Helping disadvantaged youth
- Former Board Member of Kincaid Elementary School PTA
- Reserve Committee Member – Ebenezer Farms Homeowners Association
Speaker at many large marketing conferences to very large audiences, receiving outstanding ratings.
Active blogger (on this site and pega.com) and tweeter (@vjeffs)
Author:
- DM News – 3/2001: “Customer Identification…The Key to Your Data Mart”
- DM News – 3/2002: “Data Warehouses/Data Marts vs. Marketing Databases”
Early years – 1960 to 1982
Born May 18 (20 years later Mt. Saint Helen exploded…you do the math) in Rockville MD, I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. I attended St. Mary’s Catholic Church from grade 1-5 (where we played tackle football in our uniforms on the blacktop), Hungerford Elementary grade 6 (where I first heard about somebody smoking a roach and I wondered why are they smoking insects), Julius West Junior High school grade 7-9 (where I got straight A’s in school and in being street wise), and Richard Montgomery High school 10-12 (way too many things encountered to go into here – need a blog on this).
In a huge family, I was one of the only kids that took to sports. I tried everything and loved all sports, from football, to baseball, gymnastics, basketball, diving, tennis, golf. You name it, I loved to play and compete (still do in golf and racquetball). I also loved cars, and grew up in the golden age of big muscle cars. My friends were into cars. So was I. We constantly were building, rebuilding and tinkering with our cars.
Here is a picture of my 1967 Firebird convertible 400 cid big block V-8. My parents and some of my siblings will remember I totally rebuilt the engine on this and had all the parts spread out in the basement:
Jobs I had as a teenager:
- Mowed lawns
- Shingled roofs
- Worked for Sun-Ray Cleaning – worked nights waxing and buffing drug store floors
- Digging pile holes for a construction company in Virginia
- Worked at Armond’s restaurant as a dishwasher
- Worked at Phineas Prime Rib as a prep chef, and then a rib cutter
- Worked at Magruders as a meat cutter apprentice
In 1978 I entered the world of Georgetown and in the first half of my freshman year, commuting in my 1967 Firebird and still hanging out with some of my high school cronies; I got scorched by St Elmo’s fire. I nearly dropped out, out matched by the seriously over prepped students from the northeast. But I learned an important lesson that semester (namely you can’t commute as a freshmen), and in my 2nd semester moved into Darnall Hall dorm, made great friends, moved off campus into a townhouse on 36th St, got a great job working at Doggett’s parking, played college golf on the golf team, played club Rugby, persevered and thrived, and in 1982 graduated (on time) from the business school.
Elated with making it through Georgetown, I had failed to look much further forward. With a serious recession in flight, no job offers and no idea what to do next, I took a little money I had saved and headed out west on a hitchhiking trip – determined to see as many National Parks as I could in the summer of 82. Here was my approximate path:
Hitched a ride with my brother Paul, his wife Terry, their 2 year old son Danny to Colorado where along with my oldest sister Denise we visited
- Great Sand Dunes
- Mesa Verdi
- Grand Canyon
- Bryce Canyon
- Leadville, CO
- Jackson Hole
- Yellowstone
I left on my own at the North entrance to Yellowstone and hitched north to:
- Glacier National Park – 4 day backpacking trip
- Olympic National Park
- The Oregon Coast
- Redwood National Park – 3 day backpacking trip
- Downtown San Francisco – stayed at a YMCA
- Somewhere between San Fran and Yosemite – I was dropped off after dark, climbed over a fence and tried to sleep in a pasture that had bulls. Chased up a tree in the dark
- Yosemite National Park – 7 day backpacking trip. Some of the most amazing backcountry I’ve ever seen
- Lake Tahoe
- Forks, Nevada – stuck on side of road for nearly an entire day in desert waiting for a ride
- Amarillo, Texas – didn’t plan to go there, but this is where the guy who picked me up in Forks was going and he wanted a driver to help him
- Knoxville, Tennessee – the world’s fair was there that summer. I was dropped off after dark, and with nowhere to go, slept in a patch of woods near a highway and was devoured by insets that night.
- Smokey Mt. National Park – 5 day backpacking trip. Chased into an Appalachian trail shelter by a black bear
- Back to Rockville (ask me someday if you are interested what happened in Virginia on the way home and I will tell you)