Blake Bristow

About Blake Bristow

Starting at Convey during college, we were immersed in a culture that allowed us to run. We were a small technology startup in the throws of a revolution from the ASP model to SaaS. Flexibility and the high growth nature of our business allowed us to learn and make significant technology changes very fast. Within a couple of years we had built an ISO27001 certified security program, made the transition to SaaS, grew the tech team from 1 to ~20. Convey was geared up for acquisition which ended in a transaction with Vista. Reeher brought a new level of learning an opportunity. Great engineering team with organization that was poised for explosive growth. We built a security program, engineering, operations, UX, and product ownership program which helped grow the business 300% in 5 years. What a great opportunity to shape the culture and organization from close to inception. We eventually sold the company to Blackbaud.My role with Blackbaud enabled a much different scale. Multiple products, teams and technologies to support. Our organization has the potential to truly reshape how fundraising works through data analytics: Our data teams are trying to solve that problem.Helping the team find their right role, finding talent, and creating the safe space for teams to take risks and go fast are what drives me.

Experience

1. Director Application Ops & Data Intelligence Engineering

   Blackbaud

   May 2018 — Present · Minneapolis, MN, US

   Established Data Competency within largest non-profit software provider in the world.• Build Data Engineering practice to enable Data Science work that enable 30% revenue growth over 3 years• Established three year strategic plan to enable data science capability and transform existing ASP business to SaaS • Managed 75 person engineering and operations team that supported Blackbaud’s Data Initiatives and core CRM products.• Consistently removed barriers for engineers to be successful• Built culture of learning, professional development to transition ETL Engineers to Data Engineers• Developed Data Platform and associated Ecosystem to enable internal decision support and power AI & Machine Learning for Blackbaud products• Established strategic plan to transition core Blackbaud products from ASP model to SaaS model with focus on culture, improving gross margins from ~50-> 70% and reducing technical risk.• Transitioned multiple products from legacy datacenters to Azure, totaling 50MM in ARR

Education

• University of St. Thomas

  Bachelor, Political Science, Psychology, Philosophy

Skills

• Professional Services
• Software Development
• Scrum
• Leadership
• Team Leadership
• Erp
• Vendor Management
• Software as a Service (Saas)
• Business Process Improvement
• Process Improvement
• Sql
• Business Analysis
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Saas
• Business Intelligence
• Cloud Computing
• Crm
• Agile Methodologies
• Security
• Enterprise Software
• Enterprise Architecture
• Enterprise Resource Planning (Erp)
• IT Strategy
• Solution Selling
• Salesforce.com
• Virtualization