Joanne West Metzger

Joanne West Metzger is an accomplished leader with proven success championing new products from inception to launch. She has a passion for innovation and emerging technology, understanding both the technological landscape and business environment. Joanne executes strategic vision to create new programs and products, meeting revenue goals, and increasing user engagement and market share. She also leads cross-functional, collaborative teams — including research, development, UX, QA, operations, marketing & sales, and legal — through all stages of product life-cycle. Joann has a proven track record of building strong partnerships with commercial, research, governmental and community groups, internal and external to the organization. She is truly a proactive champion and evangelist for the product and end-user.

In product management roles, she's worked through the entire product life-cycle: Market research and technology evaluation, market strategy and product differentiation, product definition, minimally viable product, test - feedback - iteration, release, installation. One of her strengths is listening to the customer, understanding their requirements, uncovering their pain points, knowing what's technologically feasible, and translating all of this in discussions with internal engineering, operations, sales and marketing groups.

As a successful entrepreneur, she co-founded a high tech start-up, Reality by Design Inc. and grew the company from inception and incubation to 25 people in 3 US locations, then took the company to the next level of growth through a merge and acquisition process with Advanced Interactive Systems. We developed 3-D immersive computer simulation and training products -- the precursor to today's online multi-player video games. We forged technology partnerships, technology licensing agreements, and teaming partnerships.

She is a passionate advocate for technological innovation as an enabler.