James Li-Chung Chen
Contact Information
chenman @ alum.mit.edu
http://www.jameschen.com/ 		Current Address
Boston, MA 02111

Summary

I've always been known as a technology thought leader and visionary who can be both hands-on to build the product or step back to manage and grow a talented team of individuals that can deliver on the vision. I have over 10 years of management experience and 15 years of programming experience. I am motivated by challenging environments and high aspirations where my natural instincts and years of experience and insights can help execute and achieve the vision/goal.

Education Background

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
1996 - 2000
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Minor in Chemistry, Concentration in Chinese

Experience

Freecause, Inc. (Boston, MA) - Chief Technology Officer
May 2008 - Current

Joined a talented team of young entrepreneurs to help them build out the technology platform quickly and grow a great development team. This is a fast growth startup, thus there are too many things to discuss and/or list. FreeCause was acquired by Rakuten USA in August 2009. - Company Size: 30

Accomplishments
  • Recruited and hired additional development staff.
  • Designed and built the next generation platform framework for all Freecause web based products.
  • Educated and trained developers on building and porting products onto the new platform.
  • Oversaw numerous client implementations.
  • Managed numerous enhancements, refactoring of product code.
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Visual Studio, Emacs, CVS, CodeIgniter, SQL Workbench, MySQL
  • Programming Language - PHP, PERL, .NET, HTML/CSS, JS/jQuery/jQuery UI

Jenzabar, Inc. (Boston, MA) - Chief Technology Officer
March 2000 - April 2008

I spent 8 wonderful and rewarding years at Jenzabar after the acquisition of CampusCraze. Through these years, I gained critical insights and personal experiences which would be hard to match elsewhere in this short period of time. I had the pleasure and privilege to align and consolidate 5 different acquired companies' product lines and development teams to a single company's vision. - Company Size: 250

Accomplishments
  • Chief Technology Officer / Vice President of Technology (2003 - 2008)
    • Was the company's technology visionary and provided leadership in directing and promoting Jenzabar's product vision, road map.
    • Responsible for the management of product managers and product development staff (~100 direct reports)
    • Budgetary responsibility of 9.8 million dollars
    • Provided strategic direction and identified critical success factors for continual growth in the higher education and related market space.
    • Performed analysis of internal operations, cut redundant roles and hardware/software, and streamlined the development cycle for both client-server technology and web technology.
    • Incorporated off-shore development resources to augment existing development initiatives.
    • Managed relationships with key strategic partners (Microsoft, IBM, Cognos, Oracle, SUN, etc.).
    • Evaluated and negotiated with vendors on third party products and services to be included with Jenzabar's line of products.
    • Led migration of applications on AS400, OpenVMS, UNIX systems to Java, Migration of existing windows applications to .NET
    • Initiated new product development efforts on the .NET portal framework as well as Java ERP System.
    • Managed expansion of Business Intelligence framework
  • Director of New Application Development (2002 - 2003)
    • Reported directly to the CEO and president to provide a product strategy that aligned with the corporate vision.
    • Led the execution of the new product development and migration of existing product lines.
    • Simultaneously managed and directed multiple large scale product line development, mainly focused on emerging technologies and new product lines.
    • Successfully led the development of the next generation portal product (Jenzabar Internet Campus Solution).
    • Directly involved in recruiting and hiring the entire emerging technology group within product development.
  • Manager of Portal Development (2000-2001)
    • Provided project management for all the design, development, and implementation processes for the core technology group.
    • Led the successful conversion of the website from ASP, VB/C++ COM, MTS on Oracle 8i to SQL2000. Major duties and accomplishments involved: leading technology projects, including external product-related initiatives and internal system implementation; performance reviews; code reviews; researching of new technologies; weekly team meetings.
    • Interfaced daily with IT and QA to coordinate and ensure that the proper development environment and processes were in place for efficient development.
    • Represented Jenzabar's technology group in partnership meetings to assess scope and implementation strategies.
    • Managed relationships and communications with consultancies and contracting firms to set the goals and expectations for each project (including negotiation on pricing).
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Visual Studio, VSS, CVS, ClearQuest, OnTime, MS Project, Eclipse, Apache, WebSphere, JBoss, Jasper, Cognos, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, DB2, MySQL, AS400
  • Programming Language - Java, .NET, C#/LINQ, PHP, ASP, VB, HTML/CSS, JS

CampusCraze, Inc. (Cambridge, MA) - Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder
August 1999 - July 2000

CampusCraze was acquired by Jenzabar in July 2000. As with any founder of an internet startup, the experiences during this time were invaluable and will have a great impact for the rest of my life. The accomplishments were numerous as were the trial and errors; it is best sharing these experiences in person. - Company Size: 20

Accomplishments
  • Led the acquisition of CampusCraze, Incorporated by Jenzabar, Inc.
  • Provided the vision and founded a web-based portal technology company serving the 18-24 year old market
  • Specified requirements of a web-based eCommerce portal, connecting the college student community to direct marketers in this vertical niche.
  • Organized the management team to devise solutions and the strategy for the business plan, revenue model, and marketing plan.
  • Managed and contributed to the programming development efforts.
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Visual Studio, Eclipse, Emacs, VSS, CVS
  • Programming Language - ASP, Java, SQL Server, HTML

MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, MA) - Software Developer and Researcher
1996 - 1999

I was lucky enough to have done research and extremely innovating projects in 2 great groups at MIT's Media Lab: Software Agents and New In the Future.

Accomplishments
  • Designed and implemented back-end algorithms for an e-commerce website (Market Maker), using JAVA Servlets.
  • Developed a 3-D Chess package that integrated with on-line newspapers, with client side written in JAVA and chess server written in PERL.
  • Developed and implemented new encryption techniques to encode information in images using C++ and JAVA. (Patchwork, texture mapping, affined invariance).
  • Maintained the Media Lab's JAVA DT library, a cross platform library that can directly communicate / transfer data with PERL, C, and C++.
  • Designed the user interface for Zwrap, an experimental personalized newspaper project.
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Emacs, ANT, Make
  • Programming Language - Java, Java Servelets, Swing, PERL, C/C++, CVS

PricewaterhouseCoopers (New York, NY) - Project Consultant
1999

Hired as the Microsoft technology specialist for the Major League Baseball project.

Accomplishments
  • Established and organized the development environment and process for the PwC consulting team.
  • Wrote the design specifications for the MLB's internal contract management system.
  • Developed standards and set conventions for module based development.
  • Programmed a contract module using ASP front-end, Visual Basic middle-tier business and data access components, SQL 6.5, Access and DB2 databases.
  • Designed and implemented a project managed system for feature enhancements, and a bug tracking and reporting system using ASP and MS Project.
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Visual Studio, VSS, SQL Server 6.5, DB2, Access, MS Project
  • Programming Language - ASP, VB COM, HTML

Merrill Lynch (New York, NY) - Technology Leadership Intern
1999
Accomplishments
  • Designed and implemented an FTP solution to facilitate multiple file linkage of investment profiles to an e-commerce website.
  • Led a knowledge management project. Researched the internal information flow infrastructure of Merrill Lynch and created a mock web based "Knowledge and Information Sharing System" to help increase efficiency.
  • Web development using ASP front-end, C++ middle-tier business and data access components, Oracle 8i database.
  • Database management: designed, created, and modified tables in Oracle using SQL/PL store procedures.
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Visual Studio, VSS, Oracle 8i
  • Programming Language - ASP, C++, SQL/PL store prodecures.

Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA) - Software Test Engineer
1999
Accomplishments
  • Wrote full test break out automation for Design-Time Controls in Visual InterDev.
  • Converted the automation test engine from Visual Basic 5.0 to Visual Basic 6.0.
  • Developed sample applications for Visual InterDev 6.0 that integrated VBScript, Java Script, ASP, Dynamic HTML, and Access Databases. (Runner-up in the application building contest).
  • Wrote widgets in VBA that helped increase the efficiency of the test team.
Technology (Hands-On)
  • Application - Visual Studio, VSS, Photoshop
  • Programming Language - Visual Basic, VBA, VBScript, Javascript, ASP, DHTML, Access Database

Interests/Activities

  • MIT Class Officer 2005 to 2010
  • MIT'S 50K Business Competition, SUMA Case Competition
  • Teacher's Assistant in organic chemistry (5.12), SAT Teacher.
  • National Collegiate Table Tennis Association http://www.nctta.org/
  • National Association of Asian American Professionals http://www.naaap.org/
  • Volunteer webmaster for a MIT Sloan class - Finance Theory
  • Volunteer webmaster for Sampan Newspaper, Asian American Civic Association http://sampan.org/
  • Reading business books, programming
  • Basketball, volleyball, golf, mathematics, and teaching
© 1996 - 2009 James Chen, all rights reserved.