Chris Busch
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Woodside, CA, United States
Toptal member since January 27, 2020
Chris is a product and technology executive with 25+ years building enterprise platforms at SAP, Cognizant, and Elevance Health that generate over $350 million in revenue. At Elevance, he led a 160-person AI organization and shipped a prior-authorization engine that cut decisions from days to seconds. He now builds production AI products hands-on with agentic tools (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini). CISSP-certified, he guides healthcare companies through NIST 800-53, HITRUST, and FedRAMP readiness.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- B2B
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
- Enterprise SaaS
- Product Owner
- Product Roadmaps
- Product Sales
- Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO)
Work Experience
Operating Partner | Fractional CIO & CISO
Mulligan Valley Partners
- Advised startups and growth-stage companies as an operating partner and fractional executive (CIO, CISO, CPO, CTO), focused on AI product strategy and delivery.
- Built production-ready AI applications hands-on with agentic tools such as Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini, taking prototypes from concept to working MVP solo.
- Guided healthcare and medical-device companies through security and procurement readiness (NIST 800-53, HITRUST, HIPAA, and FedRAMP) to unblock hospital and enterprise sales.
Startup Mentor & Angel Investor
Stanford University
- Acted as a startup mentor and angel investor at Stanford Business School Ignite, Alchemist Accelerator, and the German Accelerator Silicon Valley, with exits of over $250 million and raised over $160 million in capital.
- Served as a startup mentor and member of a VC panel on Ignite New Business Incubation Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford, CA.
- Worked with Stanford startups to enable them to successfully raise capital and launch rapidly growing products to market.
VP IT & Cybersecurity
Avails Medical
- Identified cybersecurity posture as the critical barrier to hospital procurement and enterprise sales; reframed compliance as a revenue-enabling function rather than a back-office cost center.
- Translated NIST 800-53 and HITRUST requirements into a pragmatic roadmap and budget that enabled the company to clear hospital security reviews and sustain enterprise sales conversations.
- Authored the NIST 800-53 roadmap and deployed initial controls supporting customer security questionnaire responses.
- Built IT infrastructure from zero at an around 50-FTE medical device startup; implemented enterprise WiFi and network hands-on with FortiGate firewalls and Ruckus hardware.
- Led core platform migration from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 E5, covering tenant design, identity, endpoint management, Conditional Access, Defender, Purview, and Intune.
- Led QMS migration from Enzyme to ComplianceQuest QMS to support regulated growth and enterprise readiness; programmatic tracking of migrated versus remaining content.
- Oversaw Salesforce implementation; hired and validated contractors.
- Built and managed a vendor and tooling stack across endpoint security, MDM, SIEM, network, and SaaS; selected vendors and negotiated commercial terms.
- Served as a trusted advisor to the CEO and executive team; unblocked enterprise sales that would otherwise have stalled at hospital procurement and security review.
Product Manager
Primex Wireless, Inc.
- Tasked to fully redesign and relaunch the hardware and software product portfolio for a SaaS healthcare IoT manufacturer with $100 million in revenue. Reported to the CEO.
- Performed a comprehensive market and competitive analysis to identify white space and opportunities. Conducted detailed user interviews to inform next-generation hardware requirements as well as SaaS UX, cost, and administration requirements.
- Assessed and sized adjacent market opportunities and launched FedRAMP, GSA Advantage, and 21 CFR Part 11. Launched the company's transformation and engineering processes to comply with control requirements and enable clients to enter these markets.
- Drove customer‑centric insights by directing a team to conduct more than 30 user interviews across hospitals and schools; synthesized findings, refocused the IoT temperature‑monitoring roadmap on the needs of multi‑location healthcare facilities.
- Repositioned product and pricing, bundling hardware/SaaS and tailoring compliance for Canada; opened Canadian and education segments, expanding addressable market by 25% and forming MSP partnerships.
- Corrected a flawed product thesis through customer discovery, ethnographic field research, user interviews with nursing leadership, and customer journey mapping across multi-shift clinical operations.
- Identified an 8-figure qualified federal pipeline across the VA, DoD, and HHS; established FedRAMP as the prerequisite to monetization and designed the roadmap, budget, and execution plan with a fractional CISO and compliance SMEs.
- Reworked pricing and sales enablement to shorten sales cycles and accelerate enterprise adoption.
Product Manager
Media in vita
- Researched and delivered competitive analysis and target market segmentation for the German market.
- Performed research on pricing strategy, pricing, and tiers for the German market.
- Researched and delivered a go-to-market strategy for the German market.
Chief AI Engineer | Technical Product and Product Portfolio for AI Platforms
Elevance Health
- Oversaw efforts to structure product and engineering processes and patient data for 60 million members, developed market and end-user expertise, established channels into healthcare organizations, and drove adoption of a customer-focused culture.
- Led a matrixed, cross-functional team of 160 across product leaders, front/back-end engineers, data scientists, quality specialists, and CI/CD.
- Invented and delivered a transformative prior authorization solution, reducing prior authorization decisions from days and weeks to seconds using FHIR patient data. Identified and analyzed a $1 billion cost-saving opportunity.
- Established and led a cross-functional team of 38 FTE from idea to production launch in five months on a zero-trust platform.
- Established ethnographic customer research methodologies and strategic product management focus to drive a better understanding of target users, customer segments, revenue opportunities, and GTM strategies.
- Forged strategic partnerships with data science leads at Harvard, Mount Sinai, UT Austin, and other leading institutions to collaborate on machine learning and improve patient outcomes.
- Oversaw technical product and portfolio for the Elevance Health AI/ML app platform and product portfolio of around 30 initiatives, like telehealth, machine learning models, utilization management, and interoperability.
- Led a team to create an FHIR R4 clinical data pipeline, transforming multi-sourced data into FHIR R4 lifetime patient records for 70 million Elevance members/patients, crosswalk CMTs, and UCUM, updated daily.
Emergency Systems Software Fractional CIO
Retrac Inc dba Think Safe Inc
- Worked directly with the CEO to restructure the team and engineering processes and set a strategy for the next 12 months, reducing overhead and enabling the team to consistently meet deadlines.
- Introduced scalable and agile engineering processes and methodologies, reducing conflicts and enabling the team to meet deadlines and prioritize work. Trained them in agile, created a prioritized roadmap, and introduced and implemented DevOps and CI/CD.
- Led 10‑12 engineers to enhance hardware‑software communications for multi‑location healthcare IoT; cut downtime 20% and launched subscription billing, raising ARR 15%.
- Advised founders and C‑suite on comprehensive evaluation of the emergency‑management platform; redefined lean systems and processes to improve communication and response times.
- Led the development and launch of EMMA, an integrated mass-notification and two-way messaging app, within 6 months. Achieved adoption by over 20 school districts and improved emergency response times by 40%.
VP Global Product Practice | Head of “Insight to Code”
Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Hired to turn a 2.5-year-old, zero-revenue software product development practice off the ground and scale it. I won multiple new product development deals after analyzing root causes and implementing a new strategy, leading at C-Level.
- Combined human-science-driven insights and Agile development methodologies to define, build, and launch new strategic digital products for Cognizant's F500 clients within 4-6 months, hiring and leading an engineering team of 50 FTE.
- Increased ARR for product practice from $300,000 to $10 million across 12 SoWs in 10 months, 7x of 2018 MBO at a 65% margin, 100% utilization 100% turned into multi-year SoWs, $60-million pipeline in August 2019 from $600,000 invest.
- Specified, engineered, and launched an elastic, self-service advertising platform from concept to market launch by hiring and leading a team of 47 engineers across five global Scrum teams.
- Oversaw the client engineering delivery from concept to successful market launch in five months. Delivered a new strategic Azure self-service advertising platform for Comcast, hiring and leading CI/CD and DevOps engineering team of 47.
- Defined and rolled out repeatable agile, CI/CD, DevOps product engineering methodology and practice GTM and sales. As part of the new practice strategy, led client product ideation and defined epics/stories, requirements, and multi-year roadmaps.
GTM | Product Head | Global Head of IoT for Consumer Industries and Life Sciences
SAP Labs, LLC
- Was promoted and expanded the industry coverage of my IoT solution into healthcare and life sciences and continued to lead the product team and drive sales and GTM for IoT products that I conceived.
- Obtained a $30-million product development approval and investment from EVP (Feb 2016) for a global DevOps product engineering team of 130 engineers (2012–2016) and eight PMs.
- Launched an IoT platform to market in November 2016 (today: SAP Connected Goods, released Nov 2016).
- Worked on an IoT Salesforce platform (CPG and retail industry) which closed $33 million (2016) and entered $54 million into a CRM pipeline for CPG and retail IoT (2017).
Global Chief Product Owner and Creator | SAP Leonardo IoT Connected Goods
SAP Labs, LLC
- Conceived the product, validated product/market fit, created business cases, and defined the requirements and architecture of an IoT platform leveraging IoT for real-time monitoring and maintenance of large distributed fleets of assets.
- Analyzed the market to define a $250 million ARR IoT product. Conceived product, validated product/market fit, and built business case, requirements, and architecture of an IoT platform using sensor signals for real-time distributed asset monitoring.
- Planned and delivered an IoT platform, from product vision, MVP, customer pilots, and launch to a multi-year roadmap for the SAP CPG IoT portfolio.
- Assembled a cross-functional team of 60 FTEs and coordinated multimillion-dollar efforts with engineering, QA, design, sales, marketing, pricing, and legal across 15 product teams in North America, Germany, France, Austria, and Hungary.
- Established a strategic partner ecosystem, filling SAP IoT portfolio gaps with global telco carriers (Verizon, Orange) and leading IoT hardware (Telit, Intel, Samsung) and software (ILS) partners.
- Enabled a sales team of 50 account executives globally and collaborated on creating a pricing model and sales motion. Built and drove a pipeline with 100 leading global CPG businesses, e.g., Unilever, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Phillip Morris, and Red Bull.
- Won the first $4-million implementation deal with Coca-Cola six months after creating a business plan.
- Established SAP as a thought leader in IoT. The team won the 2014 and 2015 Product of the Year awards.
- Created a solution that CNN covered as 1 of 5 highlights at Mobile World Congress 2015; was on stage at Cisco IoT World Forum Keynote 2013 and added coverage from BBC, CNN, and CCTV. Demonstrated thought leadership in Gartner Magic Quadrant 2014.
- Created a project management methodology that was applied at the bottling company above and was turned into a case study and featured throughout a design-thinking training curriculum at SAP for 8,000 attendees.
Senior Director | Head of Product
SAP Labs, LLC
- Turned around SAP NLP technology through first “Voice of the Customer” solution, now $13B TAM (2016), among leading consumer product manufacturers. Product eventually included in SAP Customer Activity Repository and capability in SAP HANA.
- Created a product that eventually included in the SAP customer activity repository and capability in SAP HANA. Led a dedicated agile, full-stack engineering team of 15 in India.
- Increased the total obtainable market to $600 million and 30x (2012) which turned around the modest revenue.
- Pioneered a consumer-facing CPG product solution by transforming unstructured into structured data.
- Demonstrated product/market fit by winning customer pilot implementations with leading CPG companies.
- Created a product that went on the SAP price list and contributed $30 million in ARR in 2016.
- Won the best talk award for VOC at SAP consumer products advisory council by CIO’s of SAP’s 20 largest CPG customers.
Senior Director | Senior Product Owner of SAP Cloud Imaging and New Product Development
SAP Labs, LLC
- Conceived and led cross-functional product development for SAP’s 1ST internal system imaging cloud, replacing physical computers with cloud virtual machine clusters to reduce TCO by 90% per user/month.
- Assembled and led a team of 15 engineers across SAP to prototype, test, and deploy.
- Saved SAP $80 million within ten months, serving 15,000 instances/month (2013) enterprise-wide across all development and external demo systems.
Director | Product Manager of Enterprise Widgets and New Product Development
SAP Labs, LLC
- Led product management and engineering team to develop small, real-time analytics apps providing succinct business value via real time reporting. Led cross functional development team of 30 in Latvia.
- Managed a cross-functional development team of 30 in Latvia.
- Presented to the CEO which led to the CEO adding the functionality and roadmap into SAP HANA Analytics product portfolio.
Director of Head User Experience and Mid-market ERP
SAP AG
- Directed enterprise software user-centered design processes throughout product planning, development, and user testing life cycle.
- Increased ease of use by 80% when objectively measured user experience of the flagship SMB ERP product.
- Saved SAP €5 million in development cost with a project with the introduction of the Six Sigma approach.
Principal Consultant
SAP, AG
- Led a software quality engineering unit of eight directly reporting to me.
- Served as a principal quality manager on two of SAP’s biggest/most risky custom development projects (Siemens, Schneider Electric), each with ~20,000-person days.
- Increased ease of use by 80% when we objectively measured the user experience of the flagship SMB ERP product.
- Delivered 20,000-person day quality projects on time and within budget.
Director of Process Implementation
SPM Technologies GmbH
- Worked with a German F100 to sell and develop complex enterprise software.
- Evaluated, created business case, and began the implementation of 400 FTE joint-venture between SPM and Deutsche Telekom.
- Developed quality management offerings for large IT organizations.
Founder | CTO | CEO
Brainjunction GmbH
- Built the company and product from scratch to 30 FTE and $2 million in revenue.
- Won deals between 50-400 TEUR with German blue-chip customers: Bertelsmann, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, DaimlerChrysler, and VW.
- Created a product used by the M&A team to coordinate the merger between Chrysler and Daimler Benz.
- Obtained a two-year frame contract for €250,000 from Daimler Chrysler.
Project History
Self-service Advertising SaaS Platform
Led a product from concept through development to market launch.
As part of a new practice strategy, I led the creation and delivery of a strategic elastic Azure self-service advertising platform for Comcast, one of Cognizant’s biggest clients.
TASKS
• Led product ideation.
• Defined epics and stories.
• Established requirements.
• Created a multi-year roadmap.
• Handled technical discovery and engineering delivery.
• Hired and led the development team of 47, including eight directs, SD POs, SD architects, VP UX, VD, and QE with four on/offshore agile, full-stack engineering teams.
• Was accountable for client engagement delivery from concept to successful market launch in five months.
VP Product | Health Care AI/ML Platform
Invented and delivered a transformative prior auth solution, reducing previous auth decisions from days and weeks to seconds using FHIR patient data. Initiated and won an implementation agreement for $4.8M on the ML platform.
Brought in as contractor without AI/ML or healthcare experience. After 24 months, hired at VP-level to re-focus and support AI/ML engineering and product teams to transform healthcare through machine learning at the second-largest insurance company with around 40 million members. Led efforts to structure product and engineering processes, develop market and end-user expertise, establish channels into hospitals/healthcare organizations, and drive the adoption of a customer-focused culture.
Invented and delivered a transformative prior auth solution, reducing previous auth decisions from days and weeks to seconds using FHIR patient data. Identified and analyzed a $1 billion cost-saving opportunity. Established and led a cross-functional team of 38 FTE from idea to product launch in five months on the AWS zero-trust platform.
Established ethnographic customer research methodologies and strategic product management focus to drive a better understanding of target users, customer segments, revenue opportunities, and GTM strategies.
Forged strategic partnerships with data science leads at Harvard, Mount Sinai, UT Austin, and other leading institutions to collaborate on machine learning and improve patient outcomes.
Feasibility Evaluation, Pitch Deck, and LOE for AI Chatbot
Conducted feasibility evaluation for an AI chatbot. Built the team roster and Level of Effort (LOE) estimates from idea to MVP. Created a pitch deck for seed fundraising.
TASKS
• Discussed objectives for MVP with the client.
• Conducted market and competitive research on players, capabilities, and funding.
• Conducted feasibility evaluation for an AI chatbot.
• Created the team roster and LOE estimates from idea to MVP.
• Created a pitch deck for seed fundraising.
Education
Attended Lectures in Economics
UCLA - Los Angeles, CA, USA
Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics
Freie Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany
Completed Courses in Computer Science
Universität Passau - Passau, Germany
Certifications
CISSP
ISC2
A Crash Course in AI (TECH 152 Z)
Stanford University
Summary Statistics in Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
Data Science in Stratified Healthcare and Precision Medicine
University of Edinburgh
Introduction to Clinical Data
Stanford University
AI in Healthcare
Stanford School of Medicine
Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Healthcare
Stanford University
AI in Healthcare Capstone
Stanford University School of Medicine
Evaluations of AI Applications in Healthcare
Stanford School of Medicine
Introduction to Healthcare
Stanford University
Trainer | Professional Scrum Product Owner I, PSPO I
Scrum.org
SAP Trainer for Business Model Innovation
SAP
SAP Project Management Professional (SAP PMI)
SAP
SAP New Product Ramp-up Coach
SAP
Skills
Tools
Zoom, VMware vSphere, Jira, Trello, Slack, Confluence, Pivotal Tracker, Microsoft Project, Strategyzer, Claude, Git, GitHub, GitLab CI/CD, Figma
Paradigms
Agile Product Management, B2B2C, B2C, Design Thinking, Scrum, Waterfall Development, Requirements Analysis, Team Development, Agile, HL7 FHIR Standard, Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C), Agile Project Management, Stage-Gate Process, Domain-driven Design (DDD), Kanban, DevOps, Continuous Delivery (CD), HIPAA Compliance
Platforms
Windows Server 2016, SharePoint, Ubuntu, Debian Linux, Azure
Industry Expertise
High-tech Startups, Marketplaces, Automotive, Healthcare, Health & Wellness
Other
B2B, Product Roadmaps, Product Owner, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Product Sales, Enterprise SaaS, Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), Digital Product Management, Team Mentoring, Lean Startups, Software as a Service (SaaS), VMware ESXi, Business to Business (B2B), Business Design, Management Consulting, IT Consulting, App Design, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), SaaS, Project Scoping, PSM-1, Business Modeling, Enterprise Software, Enterprise, User Experience (UX), Business Cases, Go-to-market Plans, Sales Enablement, Product Strategy, Product Design, Product Delivery, PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), Use Cases, Leadership, Remote Team Leadership, Technical Leadership, Thought Leadership, Team Leadership, Backlog Management, User Research, Communication, Communication Management, Digital Strategy, Pricing Models, Pricing Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Market Research & Analysis, Market Research, Commercialization, Product Launch, Product Evangelism, Ideation, Requirements & Specifications, Business Requirements, Design Requirements, Roadmaps, Feature Roadmaps, Team Building, Team Management, Microsoft Teams, Product-market Fit, Internet of Things (IoT), Competitor Analysis & Profiling, Competitive Intelligence, Intercultural Competence, Competitive Strategy, Partner Management, B2B Partnerships, Strategic Partnerships, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), CTO, CEO, Chief Product Officer (CPO), Aha!, Teams, Product Discovery, Discovery, Customer Discovery, Staffing, Operations, Data Science, Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), Competitive Analysis, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Minimum Marketable Product (MMP), Agile Product Delivery, Digital Product Design, Customer Success, Lean Product Manager, Lean Product Development, User Requirements, Strategy, Sales Strategy, Launch Strategy, Digital Transformation, UX Strategy, Wearables, User Interviews, Technical Product Management, Interim CPO, Innovation Labs, Agile Leadership, Product Management, Conceptualization, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Engagement, Lean Analytics, Business Strategy, Business Coaching, Executive Coaching, Business Operations, Startups, Growth Hacking, Growth Strategy, Finance, Marketing, Mobile App Development, Coaching, Mentorship & Coaching, Product Growth, Sprint Planning, Mentorship, Mobile Applications, Web Applications, CIO, Product Leadership, Project Management, Web & Mobile Applications, Competition Research, Consumer Insights, Market Research Analyst, eCommerce UX, Data Analysis, QA Testing, Databases, Business to Consumer (B2C), Apps, Product Consultant, Product Strategy Consultant, Startup Funding, Startup Consulting, Early-stage Startups, Project Planning, Project Timelines, Discovery Workshops, B2B Product Management, Product Vision, User Stories, Feature Backlog Prioritization, User Interface (UI), QA Leadership, Reporting, Dashboards, New Product Development, Pitch Decks, Early-stage Funding, Electronic Health Records (EHR), Wireframing, Voice of the Customer (VoC), New Product Business Cases, Waterfall Methodology, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Consulting, Go-to-market (GTM) Strategy, Investor Presentations, Presentations, Presentation Design, Fundraising, User Personas, Solution Architecture, Buyer Personas, Managed Service Providers (MSP), Integration, User Journeys, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Onboarding, Software Deployment, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Workflow Tools, Business Development, Organizational Design, COO, Process Improvement, eCommerce, Content Management Systems (CMS), Program Management, Business Transformation, Product Development, Workflow, LAMP, Cloud Platforms, Consumer-facing Product Design, Quality Assurance (QA), Estimations, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Retail & Wholesale, Statement of Work, Analytics, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Video Editing, Data Analytics, SaaS Design, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Medical Devices, FDA & EPA Regulations, Bitbucket, Healthcare IT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Healthcare Software, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Data Mapping, Data Management, Omnichannel Marketing, Continuous Integration (CI), Linux, Redis, Java, Senior Executive Management, Sales, Innovation, Innovation Strategy, Disruptive Innovation, CX Strategy, Agile DevOps, Systems Thinking, Health IT, Healthcare Services, Digital Health, Lean, IT Strategy, Product Coach, Executive Support, Artificial Intelligence Product Manager, Machine Learning, Big Data, Digital Advertising, Germany, Digital Marketing, Beta Testing, Advertising, Wellness, UX Design, Life Science, AI Ethics, HL7, ICD-10, icd-9, snowed, ndc, rxnorm, loinc, Data Science Product Manager, Statistics, Scientific Data Analysis, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Large Language Models (LLMs), Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Neural Networks, Business Ethics, Data Scientist, Public Health, Healthtech, MSP, User Needs, Needs Analysis, AI Agents, AI Integration, Compliance, IT, IT Security, Server Security, Cloud Migration, Data Migration, Data Center Migration, Quality Management Systems (QMS), Cybersecurity, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini
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