Services

Mentoring Programs

Provide your team with solid “On Tap” functional guidance to avoid pitfalls and speed time to profitability and success.

Meet our Mentors

Mary Ann Bianco

Functional Focus: High Growth SaaS, Customer Experience

Fun Fact: Steeped in AI for Customer Service

Mary Ann is a seasoned high-tech executive with over 30 years of experience leading growth in both legacy enterprises and entrepreneurial start-ups. With a strong background in Cloud SaaS Enterprise Applications and AI/ML for B2B and B2C companies, she has consistently driven revenue and customer success across the ecosystem. Her expertise spans sales, business development, customer management and partnership alliances, where she applies a customer-centric approach to scaling businesses. Mary Ann’s operational leadership includes large-scale digital transformations, focusing on aligning business workflows with leadership behaviors to ensure successful cultural and organizational shifts.

Mary Ann is also a recognized leader in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. She has pioneered global women's leadership initiatives, offering mentorship and coaching to professionals at all career levels. Her commitment to fostering inclusive environments extends to her work on the boards of several high-impact nonprofit organizations, where she has played a key role in defining culture and creating mentoring programs to promote leadership and equity across industries.

Marcy Alstott

Functional Focus: Operations Leadership, New Product Introduction

Fun Fact: Robotics Maven

Marcy has a 30+ year career as an executive in high growth technology companies and used this experience to help aspiring leaders reach their goals, both personally and professionally. Marcy has a proven track record of architecting change by bringing the best out in her direct and indirect teams. While building global operations capabilities for small and large companies, Marcy consistently mentors top performing leaders; many of them are women who have now risen to VP and CEO levels in global companies. Mentoring has always been a core competency and part of her own formula for personal success. Recently, as Marcy has consulted in the start-up realm, she has mentored multiple founders and executives in the medical, industrial, automation and consumer spaces.

Through her own experiences in executive leadership roles, Marcy helps her clients connect the dots: evolving and increasing job requirements, corporate culture, key functional and corporate deliverables, lifestyle priorities, personal strengths and development areas. Marcy partners with leaders to help them identify their applicable challenges, both real and perceived, and collaborates with them to find actionable solutions. Getting to authentic self-awareness and acceptance of blind spots is a path to achieving leadership breakthroughs. Marcy will help her clients identify areas in which to improve and put a measurable action plan together.

Mark Williams

Functional Focus: Sales and Marketing Leadership

Fun Fact: Nepal Junkie

Mark’s passion is building: leaders, teams, and companies. A serial entrepreneur, Mark works with leaders at consumer product startups and scaleups to build their go-to-market strategy, grow sales, and get connected to proven experts and resources. Through his role leading the Sales on Tap practice of On Tap Consulting, he’s mentored 100+ high-performing teams including those at Oura, reMarkable, Eargo, Sense, Tile, Embark, and SimpliSafe. Before joining On Tap Consulting, Mark led sales teams for iconic brands including Pure Digital (Flip Video), Kobo, and Anki.

Terry Quinn

Functional Focus: Supply Chain Management, Reverse Logistics

Fun Fact: Masters in Psychology

Terry is an experienced operations executive having managed Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Reverse Logistics for multi-billion dollar tech firms, all with a global reach. Part of Terry's experience includes mentoring at all levels of the organization. He has mentored not only his staff, but also peers and at times, superiors. The mentoring activity has included areas of individual as well as departmental performance, especially in challenging situations of either high growth or business constrictions. Terry excels at this because as a C suite level executive, he has been in most if not all of the roles of those with whom he has mentored. He has a strong behavioral background through academia which contributes to his overall effectiveness. It doesn't hurt that he really likes mentoring as well. Terry's approach uses a combination of technical expertise and an ability to connect with those he is mentoring.

Alison Armstrong

Functional Focus: Manufacturing Leadership and Quality Engineering

Fun Fact: Tesla and Zero (EV Obsessed)

Alison has a 25+ year career that spans both large and small companies. In recent years, she has focused on Electric Vehicles. Alison’s expertise encompasses a spectrum of vital domains within Operations Management. Her strength lies in her knowledge of Design for Manufacturing and Problem Solving. But she can also orchestrate seamless Product Lifecycle Management, as well as steering Process Re-Engineering, Supplier Management, and Quality Management. Her multifaceted prowess is a driving force behind her achievements.

A once-certified ISO 9000 auditor and a 6-Sigma Greenbelt holder, Alison has distinguished herself with dual degrees in Economics and Electrical Engineering and a recent certificate from MIT on Artificial Intelligence. These degrees reflect her deep-rooted commitment to continuous learning and holistic understanding. Her international exposure has honed her aptitude for cross-cultural collaboration and sensitivity, augmenting her adeptness in global business dynamics. In addition, the implementation of Lean Manufacturing concepts is central to her approach, an ethos that pervades every project she does. Alison’s adept engineering finesse and skill in guiding teams have consistently steered organizations toward elevated productivity, reduced costs, and sustainable improvements.

Maggie Durocher

Functional Focus: Program Management, Product Launch

Fun Fact: Lived in four countries

Maggie is a highly accomplished Product Operations Executive, Consultant, and Advisor with a strong focus on hardware companies. She brings a wealth of experience in global leadership, having successfully transformed engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain organizations to enhance performance, productivity, and profitability.

Maggie’s mentorship has been invaluable both cross-functionally in Operations, and cross-organizationally from C-Suite to Individual Contributors. Her primary focal points are teaching structured and methodical approaches to Operation Excellence and Program Management for transitioning HW from Concept Phase to Mass Production. She is especially passionate about helping Women In Technology and has helped numerous females transition from Engineering to leadership roles in Program Management.

Vincent Lafaix

Functional Focus: Logistics, Global Trade Compliance

Fun Fact: Educated in France

With a solid foundation in Systems and Finance and a transition into Operations and Global Logistics, Vincent offers a versatile and impactful approach to leadership. His career spans both global corporations, like Hewlett-Packard (HP), and agile startups, where he has successfully built and guided teams to achieve high-impact results. Notably, Vincent led a Global Logistics team that supported the company’s growth from $300M to $2B, culminating in a successful stock market introduction— showcasing his ability to drive strategic growth and operational excellence.

Vincent’s mentoring empowers professionals in logistics and operations to navigate complex challenges and scale their careers, whether within large organizations or dynamic startup environments. His approach ensures clients focus on the right areas and implement actionable plans to maximize their impact.

Andre Neumann-Loreck

Functional Focus: Executive Teamwork, Negotiations

Fun Fact: Worked in Japan

Andre mentors entrepreneurs, CEOs, and senior executives in companies large and small, and mentors students and startups affiliated with Fordham University and the Fordham Foundry. Andre is a Managing Partner at On Tap Consulting, which he co-founded in 2013 to support emerging and established hardware companies with strategic operations, supply chain management, and go-to-market expertise. Before founding On Tap, Andre served as Vice President of Engineering & Operations at Cisco Systems' Consumer Products Division, where he led engineering and operations for iconic brands like Flip Video and Linksys. Andre has been promoted to COO at three different startups, recognized for his transformative impact and team-building skills. He has supported the launch of over 100 products and built numerous supply chains from the ground up, negotiating contracts and deals throughout his career.

Tyler Schleich

SVP Operations, Oura

Oura has greatly benefited from the mentoring programs at On Tap. They have helped our executives rapidly get up to speed in unfamiliar domains including S&OP and Logistics allowing us to move faster and make more informed decisions. The depth of operational expertise and leadership guidance they offer is truly unmatched and I highly recommend their services.

What is a Mentor?

Mentoring is a professional development relationship where an experienced individual provides guidance, support, and feedback to someone who is seeking to improve their knowledge, skills, or career prospects.

Our Methodology

1. Mentorship Sessions: Weekly meetings with your mentor to work through areas of current interest.

Career
Job challenges
Management/leadership guidance
OKR development and fulfillment

2. Real-Time Support: Ongoing access to your mentor as issues arise in real-time.

3. Asynchronous Communication: Access for review of communication materials if this is an area of focus.

Mark Humphrey

Head of Channel Sales, North America and Oceania, reMarkable

On Tap's mentors have supported my growth for over a decade, during which time their mentorship has helped me grow into roles of increasing responsibility in my career; I now oversee a team generating 9-figure annual revenue. I highly recommend On Tap's mentors.

Functional Areas

Chris Woodsum

Senior Manufacturing Engineering Manager, Skyline Mobility

Our early-stage startup was in a critical phase of building out our internal systems while also aggressively executing on our goals. When we began working with On-Tap, Maggie immediately began probing our current status to help define the fundamental questions and problems we were facing. Her relevant experience meant she had tools available to share that we could immediately implement or build out to fit our needs. Maggie was always quick to respond and was able to both contribute to our company’s growth and my personal development within the organization. With her support, I’ve been confident we haven’t lost perspective on what is important to our long-term success.

Common Mentoring Use Cases

Client is new to the VP of Operations level and while she had director level experience in a narrower area, she now has managers reporting to her and is responsible for functional areas in which she has no direct experience. The mentoring cadence involved creation of OKR’s, discussion about best practices for planning, logistics and purchasing, coaching regarding leading managers of people and the difference in responsibilities at a VP level. In addition, communication styles, cadence and content were discussed regularly.

Client is a new manager responsible for planning and procurement. Basic management tools and leadership skills along with best practice information for planning and procurement processes were on the agenda each week. Specific problems and challenges were brought into the discussion in a real time manor. Books, websites and articles were suggested for self-development.

Client is struggling in role. Expectations are not being met but the individual has potential to succeed. A mentor can help to close the gap when there are missing skills or just inexperience. This can be at any level and in any functional area. The idea will be to teach the client to be self-sufficient by training in the areas of deficiency.

Client needs a mentor because they are being asked to take on a role with no prior experience in that area. This can be a proactive move to ensure that potholes are avoided. The mentoring work looks like “two in a box” with the goal for the mentor to step back as the mentee takes on more of the full load.

Client is a CEO in need of a sounding board and advisor. Often CEO's are somewhat alone dealing with tough issues and could benefit from a place to discuss options and share perspectives. The work involves brainstorming, reviewing and actioning for effective leadership.

Dugan O'Donnell

Director of Operations, Halter

On Tap Consulting has helped guide Halter through high growth and the operational turmoil accompanying that acceleration. Having content experts who have been through most situations before, a call away is extremely valuable as the challenges arise. I've grown as a leader over the last year, and part of that growth is due to the guidance given by On Tap Consulting. They can step in and mentor me where I have less experience, which has made me a better leader.

Business Benefits to Mentoring

Faster contributions for new or new in role employee
Pitfall avoidance
Best Practices in place without trial and error
Satisfied employees
Better teamwork and communication across company
Content expertise brought in with more junior team
Shorter time to market
Shorter time to profitability
Internal alignment
Employee engagement
Better results

Alex Valeyev

Head of Product, Sutro

On Tap Consulting has been instrumental in my transition from a technical role to a managerial one, providing invaluable feedback from my team on my leadership strengths and areas for improvement. Their guidance has equipped me with the skills needed to effectively execute on those improvements and become a better leader while simultaneously helping me to build an effective strategy and manage priorities for our team.

Contact On Tap Today

We welcome introductions to startup entrepreneurs and founders at every stage, from initial investments to Series A and beyond.

“On Tap” refers to our clients’ ability to leverage our skills as much as they need, when they need it.

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