The Art Institutes

VP of Product

We’re creating a shared standard so we finally have a common language. Our powerful platform, Great Expectations, enables teams to have confidence in the quality of their data so they can focus on actionable, real-world insights.

Great Expectations

President & Board Director

DataRobot is the leader in enterprise AI, delivering trusted AI technology and enablement services to global enterprises competing in today’s Intelligence Revolution. DataRobot’s enterprise AI platform democratizes data science with end-to-end automation for building, deploying, and managing machine learning models. This platform maximizes business value by delivering AI at scale and continuously optimizing performance over time. The company’s proven combination of cutting-edge software and world-class AI implementation, training, and support services, empowers any organization – regardless of size, industry, or resources – to drive better business outcomes with AI.

DataRobot

VP of Product, Global Platform

Algorithmia was acquired by DataRobot in August 2021.

For machine learning leaders that need to put ML models into production faster, more securely, and cost-effectively, Algorithmia is machine learning operations (MLOps) software that manages all stages of the ML lifecycle within existing operational processes. Unlike inefficient, expensive and insecure do-it-yourself MLOps management solutions that lock users into specific technology stacks, Algorithmia automates ML deployment, optimizes collaboration between operations and development, leverages existing SDLC and CI/CD processes, and provides advanced security and governance. Over 110,000 engineers and data scientists have used Algorithmia’s platform to date, including the United Nations, government intelligence agencies, and Fortune 500 companies.

Algorithmia

As Advisor to Roby, my focus is on supporting the leadership team on both strategic planning and tactical execution, meeting with the CEO and CTO weekly.

Roby (Techstars ‘18)

Advisor

Participated with Roby in the 2018 class of the Amazon Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars '18

Techstars

Amazon Alexa Accelerator, powered by Techstars ‘18

As Chief Product Officer at Roby, my focus was on designing, positioning and selling innovative AI solutions for the next generation office. This role encompassed all aspects of modern product ownership from ideation of the product, designing the end to end UX, driving and planning engineering, sourcing and contracting GTM partners and resellers, pricing/positioning/messaging/marketing, direct selling and co-selling with partners, enterprise account management and revenue/financial ownership.

Roby provides a conversational AI service hub for the next generation office. Roby learns from employees feedback to take predictive actions that resolve employee complaints, handles requests, and ensures employees have the right information. Roby is the only conversational AI service hub that provides a single human interface for employees, using voice or chat. Roby connects with the existing technology including support ticketing system, calendars, mechanical systems such as HVAC and lighting to create a truly smart office experience.To learn more, visit tellroby.com

Chief Product Officer

As Chief Product Officer at Blue Box and later at IBM, my focus was on efficient, repeatable, high quality product development, delivery and operation. In this role I lead the Product/PM, IT/Technical Operations, Customer Support/Implementations and Software Engineering teams with an emphasis on building with and contributing to OpenStack and other open source projects. With datacenters across North America and Europe, my charter was to ensure that Blue Box delivered comprehensive, customizable cloud solutions for businesses with applications of any scale. Heavily participated in Bridge financing and Series B fundraising. Blue Box was acquired in June 2015 by IBM. I continued in this role for two years at IBM.

Blue Box Group was a custom Bare Metal and Managed Cloud company.  Since 2003 nearly 600 online companies have trusted Blue Box for infrastructure agility -- easily-scalable cloud hosting environments complimented by leading technical implementation and management expertise.   Building a foundation on OpenStack as well as ownership and control of the infrastructure in datacenters across North America and Europe, Blue Box delivered comprehensive, customizable cloud solutions for businesses and applications of any size.

Blue Box Group, An IBM Company

As Senior Director of Technical Operations at HP Cloud Services, my role included all facets of technical operations for HP's new Public Cloud offering, HPCS. HPCS was focused on building and deploying a very large-scale OpenStack based Public Cloud. The role encompassed four global teams; NOC, DC Operations, Network Engineering and Systems Engineering in the US and EMEA with offices in Seattle, Cupertino, Austin, Las Vegas, Reston, Galway Ireland, and Bristol UK. 
My role grew to Principal Operations Architect. With a split focus, supporting Sales directly on pre and post sales engagements for large enterprise, as well as designing the HPCS OEM/Private cloud architecture, Global Datacenter strategy, Global Hardware strategy and end to end platform, system and service optimization.

Hewlett-Packard

Sr. Director, Technical Operations, Cloud Services

Coming to WhitePages via the Snapvine acquisition, I was focused on managing all of Corporate IT, Internet and Datacenter operations for this fast growing and exciting company. WhitePages.com is the leading website for people search, serving tens of millions of users each month who conduct more than 2 billion people searches per year. WhitePages was ranked as a Top 50 Website by both comScore and Quantcast. 

As the operations team matured, I was able to take on new responsibilities and lead Product Management for B2B solutions, redesigning and relaunching the WhitePages Pro products and API services.

WhitePages.com

Senior Director IT/Operations

In this role, my responsibilities included managing all aspects of IT and Datacenter operations, customer support, business facilities, financial forecast modes, budgets and G&A. Snapvine was a social networking company focused on providing value add application and tools to “humanize” the social network experience through unique voice enabled application.  Snapvine was acquired in June 2008 by WhitePages, Inc.

Snapvine

VP, Operations

Founded angel funded n2systems, Inc., in 2006 with the purpose of providing an integrated and comprehensive IT solution for the SME market with focus on simplicity, efficiency, security and management. Responsible for the core product vision and market validation as well as all aspects of business administration. Raised initial angel investor round.

n2systems, Inc

CEO and Founder

Joined Farecast early in company’s growth to design and build a world class compute environment that powered a predictive engine that could accurately predict airline ticket prices. These predictions were used to create unique products in the airfare market.  This engine was powered by massive amounts of raw data, an equally massive data warehouse and compute cluster required to run 24/7 for both the daily creation of predictions and the end user experience. I was responsible for the design, implementation and maintenance of all aspects for production operations and technical infrastructure, vendor relationships and a multi-million-dollar budget. Farecast, Inc. was acquired in April 2008 by Microsoft.

Farecast, Inc.

Director, Engineering Operations

Facilitated the explosive growth of Mobliss to become the leader in Wireless applications throughout North America by building a highly reliable infrastructure and high performing teams. Responsible for the design, implementation and maintenance of all aspects of production operations and technical infrastructure at Mobliss including meeting Service Level Agreements for the world’s largest wireless carriers.  In addition, responsible for the Quality Assurance and Customer Service teams.
Notable campaigns included five seasons of American Idol SMS voting, Nashville Star, Coke, Nike and Super Bowl XXXVII.  From this success, articles were written in several popular trade magazines including Oracle Magazine, Oracle Profit and CIO magazine. Mobliss was acquired in January 2004 by Index Co. JP.

Mobliss

VP, Engineering Operations

Joined early with AdRelevance to help it become the market leader in online advertising metrics.  Through the application of creative engineering and hard work, built one of the largest online data warehouses and processing engines.  Extensively used commercial and open source solutions in new applications, which allowed for reliable, flexible and affordable growth.
Responsible for database operations at AdRelevance, which included data center design and implementation, systems architecture for large UNIX systems and disk arrays that were engineered for VLDB, high performance and availability. AdRelevance was acquired by Media Metrix, then Nielsen Net Ratings.

AdRelevance

Senior DBA/Systems Engineer

Provided leadership and growth in the IT department during a massive merger and acquisition phase.  During this phase, the company acquired eighteen new companies, seven hundred employees and more than five thousand consultants.  Directed front-line design and implementation of technology solutions.  Led technology teams through merger and acquisition phases.  Built geographically disparate and redundant data centers. 

Responsible for the design and implementation of key aspects of the company’s infrastructure, including: servers, databases, internet systems, data center design and implementation and disaster planning. Involved with all aspects of initial corporate infrastructure rollout.  In addition to managing the Internet development group, other duties included lead technical consultant on executive committees.

During my tenure at Cotellingent, the company successfully completed a public offering.

Hernan Alvarez