Kevin Burgess.

Product Manager

HP Inc.

Nov 2021 — Present

Fort Collins, CO

• Own product strategy and roadmap for HP's Edge Compute portfolio, translating customer and market insights into strategic engineering investments across three scrum teams.
• Evaluate dozens of product opportunities each quarter through customer discovery, competitive analysis, usage analytics, business cases, and executive presentations, recommending the highest-value investments for engineering execution.
• Influence product commercialization by shaping pricing, positioning, customer messaging, demonstrations, and go-to-market strategy, accelerating enterprise adoption of HP Edge Compute solutions.
• Developed more than 15 AI-powered prototypes to validate product concepts, accelerate executive decision-making, improve stakeholder alignment, and communicate product vision prior to engineering investment.
• Championed a virtualization strategy with NVIDIA that doubled the Edge portfolio's addressable market, increased customer deployment flexibility, and strengthened competitiveness against traditional VDI solutions.
• Initiated and led an Epic Games collaboration, aligning 25 cross-functional stakeholders around a new enterprise compute concept for independent game developers.
• Redesigned product planning and Azure DevOps operating practices for a backlog exceeding 3,000 work items, improving roadmap transparency, prioritization, and delivery execution across multiple engineering teams.
• Reduced enterprise deployment time from four weeks to two days by automating customer onboarding and infrastructure configuration, while leveraging telemetry insights to reduce infrastructure operating costs by approximately $50K per month.

Founder and Principal Consultant

Independent Consultant

Sep 2019 — Present

Fort Collins, CO

• Lead strategic transformation engagements across product, operations, and go-to-market functions for owner-operated and mid-sized businesses.
• Conduct primary customer research and competitive analysis to realign positioning, pricing, and channel strategy, contributing to commercial expansion including new product launches and a ~20% increase in distribution footprint in a representative engagement.
• Reengineered client operating systems, shifting manual sales and reporting workflows to AI-enabled automation, eliminating a full functional role in a representative engagement and generating ~$150K in recurring annual savings while transforming executive visibility.
• Design and deliver executive AI capability workshops that increase organizational adoption and unlock previously deprioritized initiatives by removing manual effort constraints.
• Implement real-time analytics dashboards and decision frameworks that accelerate executive decision-making by replacing retrospective reporting with live operational intelligence.
• Guide leadership teams in sequencing technology and automation investments, redirecting capital from low-impact experimentation to high-leverage initiatives.
• Conduct doctoral research on AI awareness and its influence on strategic agility in small and mid-sized businesses using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods to develop applied transformation frameworks.
• Founded and host Cohort in Progress, interviewing senior executives and leading researchers to translate academic insight into practical strategy for modern product and business leaders.

Digital Marketing Associate

Red Ventures

Apr 2019 — Nov 2021

Fort Mill, SC

• Formed and led a new product team, implementing scrum practices and building roadmaps to deliver 12 key features across 5 milestones, culminating in a successful MVP.
• Led development of a data-science-based HVAC lead matching system to reduce missed dealer contacts, targeting an improvement from 20% missed leads to 5%.
• Identified a critical data discrepancy in a high-value contract, leading to improved financial clarity and strategic renegotiation opportunities.
• Revamped MYMOVE's email strategy to prioritize post-move user needs, increasing retention by 30% and expanding customer lifetime value from 3 to 14 months.
• Coordinated with product and UX teams to refine landing pages based on behavioral data, increasing conversion efficiency and reducing drop-off.
• Drove 80% lift in phone lead conversions and a 60% email open rate increase for 6M+ subscribers by combining A/B testing, behavioral data, and personalization in Iterable campaigns.
• Enhanced the "dealer score" model into a data-science-driven algorithm that boosted dealer feedback rates from 30% to 80% through improved lead qualification.

Owner

Another Round Disc Golf

Apr 2014 — Apr 2019

Charlotte, NC

• Built customer-focused retail operations and grew store footprint to a location three times larger through consistent community engagement and content-driven marketing.
• Scaled inventory and e-commerce using Squarespace sales analytics to produce sustained annual sales growth of 50%.
• Produced and hosted a disc golf podcast generating over 100,000 annual listens to increase brand awareness and customer retention.
• Implemented SKU system that reduced shoplifting to near zero and improved supplier terms, lowering cost of goods by 15%.
• Captured roughly three-quarters of local market share by organizing events and content that outperformed competitors.
• Redesigned POS reporting and purchasing workflows to align stock with demand, improving stock turns and inventory flow.
• Hired, trained, and managed store staff, developing performance standards and growth plans that increased team capability and retention.

Structural Engineer

SteelFab, Inc.

Jun 2008 — Apr 2014

Charlotte, NC

• Designed over 10,000 steel connections for diverse projects, including hospitals and skyscrapers, ensuring structural integrity and safety.
• Led connection design efforts for high-profile projects, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

Doctor of Business Administration

Temple University

Sep 2025 — Jun 2028

Philadelphia, PA

• Research focuses on AI awareness, strategic agility, and decision-making in small and mid-sized businesses using mixed qualitative methods.
• Emphasis on translating academic research into actionable frameworks for executives and operators.
• Coursework and research inform advisory work, product strategy, and applied experimentation.

Master in Business Administration

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

May 2019

Charlotte, NC

BS in Civil Engineering

North Carolina State University

May 2008

Raleigh, NC