AKA: The time I quarterbacked engineering, product, and client security across four orgs — and didn’t drop the ball.
This wasn’t a deeply technical moment. I didn’t refactor anything. I didn’t architect a novel system. But I still helped close a $200K deal. And I did it by aligning teams that otherwise would’ve spun out in separate orbits.
Boston University was evaluating our platform. They had real needs, a healthy budget, and just enough red tape to trip up a rhino. Procurement, security, IT — all involved. Meanwhile, our Product team was still refining what features would land in time. Our AE wanted to close the quarter. I stepped in to stitch the flow together.
I kicked off biweekly calls with BU’s IT and security team. We walked through architecture, integrations, and feature timelines. After every meeting, I sent a summary with action items and owners — both on our side and theirs.
This wasn’t a one-way sell. I made sure BU’s team had to move too. No passive buyers allowed.
“If it’s 10 tasks for us and 1 for them, that’s not collaboration — that’s babysitting.”
Through these calls, I charted their approval layers: technical validation, access control, then final procurement. Knowing that let our AE forecast accurately. No false-hope closes. And when delays hit (which they did), I could explain exactly where the bottleneck was — and whether we could do anything about it.
This helped our leadership stay confident in the deal’s velocity, even when it slowed.
BU’s security team was conservative — understandably. But their delay risked stalling the entire implementation. I worked with them to identify lower-risk proof steps. I built docs. I looped in our compliance lead. And when I needed our AE to escalate — I gave him the precise story to run with.