About

Leslie “Scott” Kerfoot’s 75 second Story: Started developing software in high school because software changes the world making people productive, efficient and giving businesses a competitive advantage. College Computer Science seemed logical. As a USC CS sophomore, built the first apparel manufacturing industry PC software system as a summer job. After growing that business working part time for 2 years, senior year brought the formation of a startup consulting business. Consulting for Johnson & Johnson building core systems during my senior year. By senior years end an opportunity arose to take over my old manufacturing customers. Over the next decade, that manufacturing ISV business grew from 15 customers to as many as 300 WW concurrent contracts. The technology grew to include CRM, finance, manufacturing, and sales tooling in over 2mil lines of code on Unix and Windows. After many new products cycles every 18 months, with monthly updates and Software as a Service functionality, Y2K was a good time to sell the business. The business still exists today. After a quick foray into Linux web hosting, an awesome opportunity to join Microsoft was the next step. Initially hired as a Windows Server, Exchange, Active Directory and SharePoint systems engineer. After 18 months selection as one of the first WW resources in the new Developer and Platform Evangelism group (Now DX). The next 11 years included launching .NET and later Azure & associated technologies into the market, winning many new customers for Microsoft. Yes, infrastructure and appdev are competencies. Leadership the last 7 years created opportunities shaping and growing that small organization to >2,000 WW resources. Hard work garnered involvement in multiple cycles of High Potential leadership training, receiving WW Architect and later US manager of the year honors. After 13 years at Microsoft, a great opportunity to broaden leadership experiences as the COO & Practice Lead of a consulting company leading HR, Sales, Data, Dev, PM, design and marketing businesses while implementing processes needed for stability and growth. In 18 months the company grew by 50% while, more importantly, increasing customer and employee satisfaction. Implementing a SCRUM based consulting process was a great benefit. Designed, Constructed and Built a co-working space. Once that business was in great shape, Kognitive Ting was created and IoT and associated platform consulting were the next adventure. If my career says anything, I’m a voracious learning high performance builder looking for a challenge. I love building organizations, people, products, technologies, and ecosystems. From a technology perspective, like any good architect I’m a foot deep and mile wide with platforms and technologies. I’ve had the privilege of working with and hiring some awesome people, some of them have said a few words in my LinkedIn recommendations.