Ray De Varona

Current

Vice President at Abaco Lighting, Inc.

Past

FAE Manager - Wireless at Spansion, Inc.
Director of eCommerce at Electrical Marketplace, Inc.
President and Managing Member at 1 Potato, LLC

Florida Area Developer at The Chippery
Vice President and CTO at Insight Investments, LLC
Senior Staff Engineer at Motorola
President and Co-Founder at ScribeCenter, LLC
Chief Executive Officer at Innovative Media Systems, Inc.
Lead Product Engineer at Z-Systems Audio Engineering
Summer Intern at Florida Power & Light

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Education

University of Florida - Warrington College Of Business
University of Florida

Recommended

2 people have recommended Ray

Connections

289 connections

Industry

Wireless

Websites

Energy Efficient Lighting

Ray De Varona’s Summary

Proven problem-solver with 14 years of sales, design and project management experience at both Fortune 100 and start-up organizations. Well versed in all aspects of the consultative process, product design and the skills needed to work effectively in a modern multi-site team environment. Repeatedly exceeded performance expectations and drove continuous improvement on internal and external processes.

Ray De Varona’s Specialties:

* Sales and customer project management

* Effective communication skills at every level of an organization

* Managing complex customer issues

* Strategic account planning

* Contract negotiation

* Customer advocacy and company evangelist

* Self-motivated; able to work independently and remotely

Ray De Varona’s Experience

Vice President

Abaco Lighting, Inc.

(Wholesale industry)

January 2009 — Present (11 months)

Prospect, qualify and close opportunities for energy efficient lighting with large commercial and industrial accounts. Define company’s sales process and identify new channels for growth for the company’s lighting products.
* Designed, presented and managed multi-facility lighting retrofit roll-out programs for strategic national accounts.
* Implemented marketing initiative to increase mind share among the company’s national distribution partner.
* Identified vertical markets not currently served by distribution and expanded direct sales channel.
* Directed sales activities and implementation of customer relationship management system.
FAE Manager - Wireless

Spansion, Inc.

(Public Company; SPSN; Semiconductors industry)

June 2005 — July 2009 (4 years 2 months)

Responsible for driving pre and post sale engagement with key embedded and wireless accounts throughout complex sales cycles and assisting current and potential customers in removing obstacles in the use of the company’s flash memory products.
* Closed over $127M in sales with Tier 1 Wireless and Embedded customers throughout North America.
* Managed multi-national interdisciplinary internal teams through highly complex customer issues while serving as the main contact point for senior management within the customer’s organization.
* Managed North American Field Application Engineering team focused on Wireless Business Unit.
* Received President’s Spotlight Award and was inducted into Spansion Achievers Club.
Director of eCommerce

Electrical Marketplace, Inc.

(Internet industry)

September 2007 — May 2009 (1 year 9 months)

Define, develop and execute all aspects of company's eCommerce strategy to maximize conversion rate and sales of electrical and lighting products through the online channel.

* Implemented new ecommerce platform that increased online sales by over 3x and contributed to a doubling of offline sales.
* Actively managed ecommerce platform to maintain operational integrity and consistency and ensure accurate product representation.
* Established web metrics to ensure best practices and measurability reporting processes, and drive aggressive performance improvements through testing, tracking and data analysis.
President and Managing Member

1 Potato, LLC

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Restaurants industry)

March 2004 — January 2006 (1 year 11 months)

Negotiated and secured large exclusive territory for the Chippery concept; an exciting new concept in mall-based specialty food concession that offers premium freshly-prepared potato (and other vegetable) chips, dips and beverages in Florida. Responsible for all aspects of human resources, operations, purchasing, sales and marketing of flagship store. Expanded sales by developing a wholesale channel of gourmet markets and groceries.
Florida Area Developer

The Chippery

(Partnership; 1-10 employees; Restaurants industry)

March 2004 — June 2005 (1 year 4 months)

Managed the design and construction phase of the flagship store in The Mall at Wellington Green. Developed supply chain relationships and established logistics systems to ensure continuous operation of stores throughout exclusive territory. Created operational systems to ensure quality and consistency of final product. Developed licensee screening process to ensure a consistent flow of qualified candidates and minimize licensee evaluation time.
Vice President and CTO

Insight Investments, LLC

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Services industry)

August 2003 — November 2004 (1 year 4 months)

Responsible for entire design, development and launch of coveredcallpro.com, a sophisticated options screening service for covered call investors. This included generating marketing and technical specifications, milestone reviews, coding and ongoing maintenance. The site made use of web services to fetch end-of-day options data which were processed by a proprietary algorithm and posted in a series of tables for consumption by subscribers.
Senior Staff Engineer

Motorola

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MOT; Telecommunications industry)

December 1999 — October 2004 (4 years 11 months)

TRIPLETS Vx00 INTEGRATION TEAM:
Led multi-disciplinary team charted with creating the memory roadmap for high-volume advanced cellular handset family of products. Maintained close developmental relationships with leading digital memory device makers and co-authored design specifications for future memory ICs. Coordinated activities of four direct reports. Improved contribution margin by $2.4M by reducing total cost of production for product board.

C330 GSM US INTEGRATION TEAM:
Responsible for resolving integration issues for the baseband section of Motorola’s Low Cost Architecture Triton Chipset on the C330 GSM phone. Interfaced with customer account executives and provided preliminary hardware for early field-testing.

VISION GSM PLATFORM TEAM:
Integrated Patriot dual-core processor and memory system into GSM-based wireless handset platform. Key in specifying multi-handset platform architecture. Responsible for maintaining relationships with Flash and SRAM memory providers.
President and Co-Founder

ScribeCenter, LLC

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

November 2002 — March 2004 (1 year 5 months)

Developed complete digital dictation and transcription management system for the legal field.
Chief Executive Officer

Innovative Media Systems, Inc.

(Privately Held; Myself Only; Internet industry)

April 2001 — March 2004 (3 years )

Designed, developed and operate MyBabyUpdates.com for new parents wanting to share the joys of parenthood.
Lead Product Engineer

Z-Systems Audio Engineering

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Consumer Electronics industry)

November 1995 — December 1999 (4 years 2 months)

Responsible for bringing four new digital audio processing and interface products through every stage of development, ship acceptance and initial marketing. Developed multi-processor embedded systems to meet the needs of discerning mastering engineers and high-end audiophiles. Redesigned professional audio product portfolio to take advantage of platforming concept to minimize cost and accelerate time-to-market for future products. Implemented DSP engine platform consisting of 32-bit floating-point processor, microcontroller, system memory and digital audio protocol transceivers throughout entire signal-processing product portfolio. Managed small firmware, hardware and mechanical teams to ensure timely completion of project deadlines. Held seminars and training sessions for customers and dealers of the high-end consumer audio product line throughout North America and Parts of Europe.
Summer Intern

Florida Power & Light

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; FPL; Utilities industry)

May 1993 — August 1994 (1 year 4 months)

SUMMER 1994:
Designed and prepared work orders for the transfer of overhead facilities to new structures. Coordinated transfers with Southern Bell and various cable television companies to assure project timeliness. Maintained power system reliability and customer satisfaction by correcting potential problems left over from Hurricane Andrew reconstruction.

SUMMER 1993:
Wrote software for the automated testing of power system protection relays. Performed installation and maintenance procedures for power system protective relaying equipment. Assisted in ground-up installation and testing of protective equipment at Northwest Dade County’s Palmetto substation.

Ray De Varona’s Education

University of Florida - Warrington College Of Business

MBA , Commercialization of Technology , 2002 — 2003

Kraft-Alba Award of Excellence recipient
University of Florida

BS , Electrical and Computer Engineering , August 1992 — December 1996

Certificate in Sales and Interface Engineering

Activities and Societies:

I.E.E.E. Chapter President