I have spent my career inside industrial technology, but I came into it through the plant floor, not the org chart.

At Schneider Electric, I sold power distribution, quoting substations, switchgear, and transformers through the distributor and contractor channels that actually move industrial product. That work teaches you something no strategy deck can: how long an industrial buying cycle really runs, how many people quietly hold veto power, and how far the distance is between a good product and a signed deal. I learned to read that distance before I ever learned to close it.

The engineering degree from Michigan State University gave me the systems thinking and supply chain lens I still use to read a manufacturer's business, and a stint at 3M, working on 5G and food-safety systems, showed me how global industrial problems get solved at scale. Later, the MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business gave me the other half: how to build the business case and the attribution model that turns a good idea into a funded one. Most partner strategies fail not because they are wrong, but because no one framed them in the language the money speaks. I learned that language on purpose.

Following my time at Kelley I made the jump to the other side of the table from where I started. As a partner development manager, I evaluated more than one hundred partner solutions across two dozen companies, and I sat in the rooms where co-sell decisions actually got made. I watched which industrial solutions the field leaned into and which ones quietly stalled. It was rarely about product quality. It was about whether a partner had made themselves easy to say yes to.

That is the whole reason Paulk Advisory exists. I have stood in the industrial seller's shoes, and I have held the Microsoft pen, and I know exactly what closes the gap between them, because closing it was my job on both sides. There are people who understand Microsoft's programs and people who understand the industrial floor. I understand both. That is the vantage point I bring, and I will use it to help you grow your business in ways that are easy to measure.

AT A GLANCE