David J. Asher

David Asher brings an unusual perspective to software management based on his varied career as a product management leader, inventor, entrepreneur, systems analyst, and lifelong coder, in addition to leading engineering teams. Some of his roles were at well-known names like Amazon, Bose, Iron Mountain, Dialogic, Banyan Systems, and Grumman, while others were at smaller companies and startups. His software experience spans from cloud to mobile apps to firmware, and his backgrounds in physics, signal processing, sensors, and electronics further broaden his perspectives from pure software to complex real-time systems. Asher developed a career pattern as an inside entrepreneur as he would work within companies to initiate and lead startup programs that result in disruptive new products. He authored multiple patents, published several mobile apps, and wrote the open-source software electron-firebase. His education includes an MBA from the University of New Hampshire, MS Electrical Engineering from SUNY Stony Brook, and BS in Physics and Computer Science from SUNY Albany. In his volunteer life, he is on the Board of Directors for a non-profit org where he had served as VP and President, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the IT Management and Leadership (ITML) Institute. Asher’s career took an unusual twist. Transitioning from an Engineering Manager into a Product Manager is fairly common, but it is quite unusual to revert and rediscover engineering leadership and the joys of building teams that build great products. It is with all these experiences that he is now giving back to the community of software managers and challenging them to raise the bar on their leadership of technology development and people.