I’m a senior strategic program manager with 15+ years of experience, including leading $25M+ platform builds, scaling ARR from $24M to $86M, launching AI solutions with real adoption and ROI. 


🎯SPECIALTIES:
• Strategic Program Management
• Corporate & Business Strategy
• Strategy Execution & OKRs
• Enterprise, Digital & AI-Driven Transformation
• Portfolio & Program Management
• PMO Leadership & Governance
• Change Management & Adoption
• Operational Excellence & Process Improvement
• Executive & Board Communications
• Cross-functional Stakeholder Alignment
• Team Leadership, Coaching & Development

Tye Trepanier

I train in Krav Maga. And oddly enough, it’s taught me more about leadership than many professional settings ever did.

Nothing happens overnight. You don’t “arrive.” You show up, do the work, and repeat it until progress shows up quietly. 

Ego gets checked fast, because everyone around you knows something you don’t. And if you’ve learned anything at all, you owe it to the people behind you to slow down and help them learn too.

It’s a long game. You train in small, incremental steps until the movements become muscle memory. The moment you start overthinking, you freeze. 

And in Krav Maga, freezing usually ends with you getting punched in the face.

That part feels familiar.

I’ve seen the same thing in business. Teams stall when they over-analyze instead of building capability. 
Leaders hesitate when they should trust the preparation. Strategy works best when the fundamentals are so clear that action becomes instinctive.

It’s also taught me focus. If my mind drifts to work during class, I miss what’s happening right in front of me. 
And I’ve literally paid for that with a smack to the face.

The lesson stuck: stay present. Deal with what’s in front of you until it’s safe to let it go.

Leadership isn’t about thinking ten moves ahead all the time. 
Sometimes it’s about staying grounded in the moment, trusting the training, and responding clearly to what’s actually happening.

Miss that, and the feedback is immediate.

"Action Favors The Bold"

#LeadershipDevelopment #PersonalGrowth #Strategy

The first time I led a team, I had rank but zero credibility. That gap taught me something I still use today...

The first time I ever led a team wasn’t in a conference room. It was in the Army.

I was fresh out of college and suddenly responsible for a 30-person team. No easing into it. No training wheels. Just instant accountability. And honestly? It was terrifying.

I had a senior enlisted partner who knew far more than I did and helped me drive the mission. But the responsibility was still mine. And I learned very quickly that rank alone doesn’t earn you anything that matters.

Trust is the currency.

If you walk in with ego, posture, or the need to prove yourself, people will see it immediately. In the military, there’s a phrase for what happens next: stacking arms. It means the team technically shows up, but they mentally step back and let you fail.

The only way to avoid that is to lead differently.

Be prepared. Know your job. Treat people with respect. Get to know them as humans. Make it clear you’re there to lead, not perform.

That lesson stuck with me. Titles don’t create followership. Behavior does.


Be honest. What’s the earliest sign you’ve seen that a team has started “stacking arms” on a leader?


"Action Favors the Bold."

#Leadership #LeadingThroughExperience #ServantLeadership

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned came from a project that actually succeeded.

In IT projects, it’s really hard to be successful unless you have buy-in from your engineers. 

I learned that partnering with the engineer and saying, “Look, I think I understand this, but I need your help to help me really get it,” goes a long way.

The real lesson for me was being humble enough to go to the subject matter experts and ask them for coaching and guidance. On the technology side, when engineers have a leader who opens up, asks for their opinion, and treats them with respect, you win them over pretty quickly.

"Action Favors the Bold"

#Leadership #Engineers #LeadershipStrategy

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You can repair the past. You can transform the future.

Change is what we do to what already exists.
Transformation is what we do when we decide the current path is not the one we want.

I shared a post in my feed with a wicked visual that sparked this thought: https://lnkd.in/g4TDu6uR

Here’s the mental model I’ve been using:
     * The future can’t really be “changed,” because it doesn’t exist yet.
     * The past can be “changed” in a practical sense: you can fix errors, unwind decisions, and clean up what’s still impacting today.
     * But you don’t transform the past. You can only repair it.
     * You transform the future by setting a new course and building something different on purpose.


#ChangeManagement #Transformation #StrategyExecution

𝗜𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝘂𝗽, 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. 𝗬𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲.

Performance isn’t just about skills. It’s about safety.

According to Wiley research highlighted in the article, people who report psychological safety are 31% more likely to be high performers. That’s not culture fluff, that’s a performance multiplier.

When people fear speaking up, problem areas go unspoken, risk gets buried, and teams solve yesterday’s problems instead of tomorrow’s. The real work of change and transformation doesn’t happen in silence; it happens in honest, unguarded collaboration.

Psychological safety isn’t “feel-good.” It’s a fundamental enabler of performance:

• It lets teams challenge assumptions before things break
• It reduces hidden rework after things break
• It accelerates learning instead of hiding mistakes

Leaders who treat psychological safety as a performance priority create environments where real feedback flows and real problems get fixed sooner.

Performance grows where people have both the ability and the permission to speak up.

"Action Favors the Bold"

#Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #TeamPerformance

Open article: Top 10 Leadership Pivots Every Leader Should Make in 2026 by forbes.com

Leaders face stress, burnout, AI uncertainty, and culture challenges in 2026. These 10 leadership pivots will boost team performance and psychological safety.

Top 10 Leadership Pivots Every Leader Should Make in 2026

AI isn’t changing what teams build first. It’s changing when leaders are forced to decide.

One thing this Fast Company piece surfaced clearly: teams can now pressure-test ideas before they ship, before customers react, before real money is on the line.

That removes a lot of hiding places.

When the signals are there early and leaders still push forward without clarity, that’s not a technology issue. That’s a leadership one.

AI doesn’t guarantee better outcomes. It just makes bad decisions harder to ignore.


"Action Favors the Bold"

#AI #Leadership #Strategy #Transformation

Open article: The AI behind the AI by fastcompany.com

How today’s trendiest tool is driving products and teams

EXECUTIVES ARE FIGHTING THREE DAILY VILLIANS:

1) Focus: priority overload
2) Facts: decision fog
3) Follow-through: adoption drag

 If any of these three feels familiar right now, you’re not alone.
 
The fix is less glamorous than the problem, but it works: align the priorities, create one version of truth, and remove the friction that kills adoption.

This is the playbook I use to get momentum back: Focus. Facts. Follow-through.

 If you could fix only one this quarter, 
 which creates the biggest unlock: Focus, Facts, or Follow-through?

If your GenAI program is ‘successful’ but nothing runs 'faster', you’re not scaling AI. 
You’re scaling typing.

You don’t have an “AI strategy” problem.
You have an “AI theater” problem.

I’ve sat in exec reviews where GenAI usage looked incredible.
Tons of prompts. Tons of “adoption.”

And yet… the business ran exactly the same on Monday:

- Decisions still bottlenecked
- Handoffs still breaking
- Approvals still living in someone’s inbox purgatory

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹: interaction is not impact.

The shift I’m watching (and pushing for) is simple:

- GenAI creates outputs
- Agentic AI owns workflow outcome
Not sci-fi. Just systems that ca take action inside a workflow, defined by guardrails, and knows when to hand off to a human

If you want to separate hype from strategy, steal these 3 questions:

1 - What job does the agent own end-to-end? (not “helps with”)
2 - What metric moves if it works? (cycle time, error rate, containment, revenue leakage)
3 - What is the stop button? (when does a human step in, and who is accountable?)

Just because “We deployed GenAI” is your headline.

The better test is:
-Did the work change?
-Did risk stayed controlled?
-Did outcomes move?

If you’ve seen AI theater up close, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 (mine is: beautiful demos, zero workflow ownership)


~ "Action Favors the Bold" 

#AIStrategy #AgenticAI #GenAI

Strategic Program Management | Strategy Execution | PMO & Program Management | Change & Adoption | Digital & AI Transformation | SaaS & Tech-Enabled | Exec & C-Suite Partner | Veteran

I share a lot about transformation and change with my network, and this visual from Rob Llewellyn is one of the simplest, most elegant ways I’ve seen to anchor the concepts in a practical framework.

Yes, there’s a lot more nuance to both Change and Transformation, but this image captures a big truth in a way that’s instantly usable, so I had to share it.

Equipping enterprise leaders & consultants with the systems & skills they need to have more impact with business transformation & AI | Fortune 100 Advisor | CEO | Author

You don’t get butterflies by fixing caterpillars.
You get them by letting go of the past.

Most teams aren’t confused.
They’re just misaligned.

They say transformation.
But they’re funding change.

Here’s the difference:

Change makes things better.
	•	Faster delivery
	•	Lower cost
	•	Smoother processes

But the reference point is always the past.
You’re trying to improve what was.

Transformation starts from a different place.
It asks: what if we created something entirely new?

It’s not a reconditioned version of now.
It’s a deliberate design of what could be.

Both are valid.
Both are hard.
But they create wildly different futures.

🔄 In change mode:
The past constrains the possible.
Success = improvements over yesterday.

🦋 In transformation mode:
The future pulls you forward.
Success = promises made and kept
about a world that doesn’t exist yet.

So ask yourself and your team:
Are we designing the future? (Transformation)
Or just decorating the past? (Change)

Because strategy doesn’t fail from bad intent.
It fails from unclear ambition.

One shift that improved decision-making everywhere I’ve worked: treat purpose as part of the strategy cascade, not something that floats above it. Integration is the whole game.

Most purpose statements collapse the moment a real trade-off shows up.

I’ve followed Roger Martin for years, and this piece is classic Roger. Calm. Precise. And quietly corrective.

Teams love to debate purpose in the abstract. Big words. Big ambition. But then a hard decision lands. Exit a market. Say no to a customer. Stop funding a capability. 

And suddenly that purpose offers no guidance at all.


That’s the trap Roger is calling out.

Purpose isn’t strategy. And it can’t float above it.


If purpose isn’t explicitly tied to where you play, how you win, and what capabilities you invest in, it won’t survive pressure. It sounds good, but it can’t help leaders choose.

The insight here is integration. Purpose only matters when it reinforces real strategic choices. Otherwise, it’s just decoration.

That distinction is what separates strategy that makes traction, from strategy that disappears when it’s tested.


What’s the clearest sign you’ve seen that “purpose” is being used as wallpaper instead of guidance?


#Strategy #Purpose #DecisionMaking

Open article: Thinking Intelligently about Corporate Purpose by rogerlmartin.substack.com

Thinking Intelligently about Corporate Purpose

Most leaders say they “develop their people.”

Here’s what it looked like when it actually worked.

I’ve noticed learning comes in cycles:
     + head down, just surviving
     + a short “curiosity window”
     + real excitement to go deep

One of my team members was solid, but I knew a certification would boost credibility and long-term marketability.

What made the difference was not the certification. It was the timing.

I asked where he wanted to grow. He wasn’t sure. 
So I did three things:

     + Shared the pattern (learning sprints, then recovery)
     + Came back later with 2–3 specific options
     + Made it clear the company would pay
 
Then I gave him space.


Next 1:1, different energy. He picked a course, finished fast, and applied it immediately. The program leveled up in ways we did not expect.

The point is simple:

Catch the curiosity window. Then remove friction.
 
𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: what’s the hardest part of developing talent in the real world?
     A) Identifying what they should grow next
     B) Getting them to commit without pushing
     C) Getting budget approved
     D) Helping them apply learning back on the job

Reply with A/B/C/D and one sentence. (I read every response.)

A competitor launched “AI-powered” and our leadership room got… weird.
Not because of the product. Because of what it did to our thinking.

The conversation drifted fast, not toward impact, but toward optics and speed.

That’s when it hit me: real AI progress rarely looks impressive from the outside. It looks slow, quiet, and unfinished.

I’ve seen this pattern repeat across transformations. 
- Teams confuse pilots with progress
- Announcements with adoption
- Activity with outcomes

As some influential AI leaders point out, the loudest companies aren’t always the most advanced, they’re often the most pressured.

The progress that actually lasts shows up differently. 
- Leaders invest in data hygiene
- They train people
- They ask whether anyone is using the tools
- Whether work is changing because of them

My test for “real progress” is simple: is work actually changing, or are we just announcing things?

I’ll be honest... I’ve felt that same urge to react publicly instead of building deliberately. 

What helped was 
- Stepping back
- Tuning out the noise
- Refocusing teams on what would create value now, not applause later.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗜 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗔𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿?

If I had only looked at strategy like a sommelier looks at wine.
Instead of chasing certainty, I would’ve built the one skill most leaders skip: taste.

Early in my career, I thought strategy was about frameworks, answers, and being able to defend a position with data. 

The better I got at the tools, the more confident I felt. But over time, something didn’t add up. 

Two strategies could look equally sound on paper, and yet one would feel right in practice, while the other quietly fell apart.

That’s the gap Roger names so well in this piece: connoisseurship.

Strategy is the ability to make fine distinctions when the answer isn’t obvious and the numbers don’t settle the debate. 

And that kind of judgment only develops one way, through practice, reflection, and restraint.

I’ve seen incredibly capable leaders rack up years of experience without getting meaningfully better, simply because they never slow down to ask, 

Why did that land the way it did? Practice without reflection just grooves the habits you already have.

And then there’s the discipline of protecting your own thinking. 

Not letting your perspective get drowned out by every new voice, model, or trend. 

That one hit close to home. It takes intention to create the mental stillness needed to actually see what’s going on.

This post is a good reminder that becoming better at strategy isn’t about consuming more content or chasing certainty. 

It’s about developing taste. That takes time, humility, and a lot of honest reflection.

If you care about strategy as a craft, not just a toolkit, this one is worth reading slowly. 

"Action Favor the Bold"

#Strategy #Leadership #Growth

Nirav Shah

Seasoned Engineering Leader with experience in designing, developing, and delivering systems of all scales.

15+ years of experience in software development.

Highly passionate, innovative, results-focussed professional with 5+ years of engineering leadership experience in leading globally distributed engineering teams.

Proven track record in delivering enterprise-class, highly available, and scalable systems in a fast-paced, agile environment.

Proven record for products Go-To-Market and marketing strategies, subscription model led customer/revenue growth.

A core member of product management: spearheading product roadmap and strategy definition, aligned with market and customer needs.  

Proficient in communicating, aligning, and collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders.

Strategic thinker with excellent problem solving and analytical skills.

Proven experience with software development best practices including agile, DevOps, and continuous delivery.
   
Architected and led multi-tenant cloud products. 


TECHNOLOGIES
JAVA, JEE, REST, JSON, XML, Microservices, SOA, Spring, SpringBoot, Hibernate, JPA, Elastic Search, Solr, Redis, Hazelcast, LogStash, Grafana, InfluxDB, DynamoDB, Riak, Cassandra, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, Sybase, MS SQL, AWS (S3, SQS, SNS, EC2, RDS, CloudWatch), Lucene, Scala, Kafka, SQL, Linux, Unix, Docker, Kafka, Node.js, Javascript, jQuery, Ajax, Html, CSS, Knockout.js, backbone.js, Zendesk, Jenkins, Ant, Jira, Confluence, Bamboo

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