Taariq Lewis Resume

TAARIQ LEWIS

+1 (646) 479 - 6098 •

EDUCATION

MIT SLOAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Cambridge, MA

MBA, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Certificate 2007 – 2009

Carroll L. Wilson Award recipient, 2009
Founder MIT Sloan South East Asia Venture Capital & Private Equity Seminar & International Study Tour
Lead Trek Organizer: Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship & Innovation Trek (62 students, 2 faculty)
MBA thesis successfully completed and co-authored with Bryan Long, MBA 2009: Case Analysis Studies of Diffusion Models on E-Commerce Transaction Data

COLUMBIA COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY New York, NY

B.A., Economics and Philosophy (combined degree) 1992– 1996

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS London, United Kingdom

Junior Year Abroad studies in Operations Research, Game Theory and Philosophy 1994 – 1995

EXPERIENCE

HIVEFIRE (A natural language processing and machine learning technology company) Cambridge, MA

Director of Sales & Marketing 2009 - Present

Launched the go-to market strategy for a content analysis and entity extraction company of MIT CSAIL engineers
Led management decision to focus on a $6BB online marketing and online branding industry
Doubled lead pipeline and closed new contracts successfully over quota, during first six months, and within stealth
Created HiveFire’s first company sales roadmap and customer sales engagement process. Reduced qualification and sales close time within first six months
Sandler Sales Institute President’s Club Member

TRADEMAX (A program-trading portfolio risk management software startup) Cambridge, MA

Founder and Sales Lead Summer 2008

Led team of 3 MBA students to launch a program-trading optimization software project from an advanced class in linear and dynamic optimization. Successfully completed a class paper on the trading strategy
Designed a portfolio pre-trade cost analysis approach using data-mining of desk trading behavior to predict and optimize trade costs for any equity program-trading desk
Identified over 10 basis points of possible savings in $2.5 billion of equity trades at prospective client trading desk

DEMANDWARE (A Leading Software-as-a-Service e-ecommerce company) Woburn, MA

Business Development Summer Associate Summer 2008

Led the launch of a new and innovative price and promotion optimization service expected to deliver at least $25 MM in new revenue. Convinced the CEO and Chairman to present service to lead client-advisory group
Identified $273 MM in new contact-center sales revenue for existing merchant clients, within 1 month
Built a cross-functional team between Engineering, Marketing and Customer Service VPs to uncover added-value of at least $75 MM in optimized revenue to existing merchant clients using new optimization services

LUCID IMAGINATION (An Open Source enterprise-search company) Cambridge, MA

Business Development and Product Development Summer Associate 2007

Launched initial go-to market strategy to target $1BB enterprise search market
Created company’s first business-plan consisting of marketing and pricing strategies and revenue analysis
Collaborated with CEO and Vice President of Sales to position company in the “information retrieval market”; Successfully stimulated interest from leading Boston Venture Capital firms
Designed initial product-development roadmap ultimately used by software engineering team

COMPETE (A leading online analytics and consumer research company) New York, NY

Sales Director, Wireless 2006 – 2007

Identified $2 MM in new wireless content revenue by analyzing competitive best practices and performing cross-shop gap analysis
Converted C-Level executives of 4 untapped “Fortune 500” companies into qualified prospects.
Served as a wireless-content industry expert; contributed to wireless team sales of $4.2 MM
Led team of 3 research associates to develop new advertising effectiveness analysis tools for the top 5 US
wireless content players. Convinced Wireless managing directors to pitch new tools in all sales presentations

GOTAARIQ LLC (A wireless marketing consulting service) New York, NY

Founder 2004 – 2006

Founded America’s first text-messaging, advertising-sponsored quiz-game startup company, SMS2Win
Created marketing and business development opportunities for 3 wireless advertising startups
Delivered innovative text-messaging marketing strategies to leading New York publishing companies

BRINGITON TOURS (A leading online luxury and hospitality tour operator) Ibiza, Spain

Founder & President 1999 – 2004

Created a successful luxury-tour company with gross margins of 50% compared to a 7% industry average
Converted $3,000 in startup capital into summer-season sales of over $500K per summer, over 4 years
Led an on-island operations team of 4 employees to deliver 24-hour customer service coverage, over 10 weeks
Created a shared fund for international tour agency partners to acquire Euro-Dollar forward contracts
Hedged US dollar currency risk exposure in hotel and car-rental liabilities from 2002 - 2004

PERSONAL

Trained Professional Actor: 2 Years professional acting at the Maggie Flanigan School of Acting
USPA Skydiver Member: Completed 35 free-fly jumps
Ballroom Dancer: 1999 – 2004 Quadrille Ball dancer and Junior Committee Social Chair