Hugh's Profile

Hugh Sheehy - Overview

I am the guy you go to when you need to transform things. When you have a business unit that isn't thriving, or an opportunity that you don't know how to chase, or a business/technology problem that your organization needs help with.

I have been in business and technology for more than 25 years, with leadership roles in technology, strategy, R&D, sales, and even marketing. That gives me a rare ability to synthesize solutions that actually incorporate what the business needs and to deliver the organizational change or technology solution to deliver the business result.

I speak Spanish, Dutch and French, started in engineering and have an MBA from INSEAD - one of the world's top business schools. Plus, I'm a serious technology geek.

(click for more)

I've worked with leading corporates, including Google, Hewlett Packard, Shell, LogMeIn, and a number of others. I've worked variously in technology, sales/marketing, customer success, large scale commercial operations, and in strategy roles.

I was also founder and CEO of a startup that won European and international awards for innovation. I have several global patents, and won awards for leadership while at Google.

These experiences give me an unusually wide perspective, both in terms of business and technology experience and international experience. I'm Irish, my brother is American, my wife is Dutch and my children are Spanish. I have worked in both large and small organizations, lived in several European countries, and worked widely around the world. See the "Past Projects" page for what I've been at.

In educational and/or technical terms, I'm up to date on cloud (Azure, AWS, GCP), on machine learning, on data analytics, organizational theory, and in several programming languages (Python, Go, Javascript (a bit rusty)) and have extensive experience with sales and customer management systems like Salesforce.

Less exotically, I have been making business models and budgets on Excel for a long time. From basic budgeting to complex financial and business forecasting, sales models, etc. Dull, but vital.

Education

MBA
INSEAD - Dean's List

INSEAD is one of the world's top business schools, consistently ranking in the top 3 in the world, alongside Harvard and Stanford.

I graduated on the Dean's List.

___________

Focus areas included Advanced Corporate Finance, Strategy, IT and Project Management.

Bachelor of Engineering
UCD

B.E. (Mech) - 1st Class Honours

It's been a while, but it was a solid foundation nonetheless!

__________________

My final year project was a computer analysis on the dynamics of a racing-yacht's rig.

The main conclusion at the time was that we needed much more computing power. We got results...the system worked...but the calculations were unstable under dynamic load.

We were doing all the analysis on a server with approximately 1/15 of the power of a Raspberry Pi2. Really! 1/15...maybe less.

Years later an America's Cup campaign tried the same thing and come to the same conclusion as we did.

Organizational Analysis
Stanford University

This course from Stanford University online was split into 10-modules over 5 months.

The material covered a lot of ground, including elements similar to things I learned at INSEAD under the guise of courses in Organizational Behaviour, but also in Strategy and even Decision Making.

Two things stuck out for me, from the whole course;

  1. The criticailty of keeping people with the "dark triad" of personality characteristics OUT of your organization.

  2. The reason so many people in so many organizations think change is difficult. When it really isn't. 😣

Stanford University

Certificate: Organizational Analysis

Machine Learning
Stanford University

A deeply mathematical course from Stanford University online, this was split into 11-modules.

These covered everything from basic linear regression models (which Excel can do) through to full on neural networks and machine learning at scale. The course is quite heavy on the mathematical aspects of machine learning. That's often interesting, particularly when combined with the applied aspects taught in the UofM course (below).

As with the other course, at the end of the day the question really is "What business insights do you need?" Most companies can't answer that one. It's the starting point.

Stanford University

Machine Learning

Specialization : Applied Data Science in Python
University of Michigan

A wonderfully practical course from the University of Michigan, this course was split into 5-modules - one per month.

These covered machine learning, text mining, social network analysis and data representation/visualization using the modern Python libraries. It is amazing how much the availability of the libraries in Python now make complex data analysis and presentation tasks almost trivial. There are libraries of code that do almost everything.

Even without a data team, it's possible to do predictive analytics, etc, "easily". It is astonishing.

At the end of the day the question really is "What business insights do you need?"

Most companies can't answer that one. It's the starting point.

University of Michigan

Specialization: Applied Data Science in Python

Specialization : Programming in Google Go
University of California, Irvine

A beautifully taught course from the University of California, this course was split into 3-modules - one per month.

While the main topic is the Go language with its simple structure and its excellent handling of concurrency, one of the main features of this course was the quality of the instruction.

Even though he was only doing it in passing, the Professor explained many often-confused computer topics with great examples and clarity of expression.

Plus, he did a great job explaining how Go simplifies things that Java (or many other languages) makes complicated; how Go allows massive concurrency better than anything except (probably) Erlang; and how to do complicated things simply.

University of California

Specialization: Programming in Google Go

Achievements

This came about during my time in Frog2Frog (see the 'Past Projects' page, startups section)

Sadly, by the time the awards were finally published we were pretty much dead.

Yes, the wrong customer can kill a business. Ask me how I know!

European Seal of e-Excellence
Silver Award 2008

Awarded annually at the Cebit exhibition in Germany by the Brussels-based European Multimedia Forum, we received a Silver Seal Award for Innovation with Frog2Frog (see the 'Past Projects' page, startups section) in February 2008.

The awards were issued annually to Europe's most innovative companies from 2003 through to 2012.

Leadership
Google

The Google "All-Stars" were an award run annually.

I received the "One Google" award for leadership of multi-national teams and creating an excellent culture alongside delivery.

2011, I think. There's a certificate somewhere too.

Patents
Oil Industry

I invented these during my time in the oil industry.

Click on the images to go to the corresponding patent in the online patent database.

Certifications/Training

Over the years, I have done more training courses and certificates than anyone could remember.

From early HTML courses when the web was new, through "Crossing the Chasm" strategy courses at HP, long-ago courses in multi-cultural working, etc.

Recently it's become far easier to do courses online and to share certifications....and it's nice to "formalize" things that I've been working with for years. Some are small courses, others more significant. If you're in the tech world you've probably done similar courses over the years.

Crossing the Chasm

GoToMarket Strategy


Applied Text Mining in Python

University of Michigan


Multi-Cultural Working

KIT Royal Tropical Institute

AWS Well-Architected


Applied Social Network Analysis in Python

University of Michigan


Applied Machine Learning in Python

University of Michigan

AWS Architect

AWS Architect - Udemy - Hugh Sheehy


Introduction to Flutter Development Using Dart (Google)


MS Azure Architect


Google Search Ads 360

Google


Flutter Development

(in collaboration with Google)


Google Analytics

Google

Databases

Over the years I've done dozens (hundreds?) of smaller courses/classes. Often about technology of one sort of another, but often also about marketing strategy, sales strategy, etc.. I'm NOT going to try to list them all.

These are a few recent courses on data systems including MS courses on Azure data storage and analysis options. SQL Server, Cosmo DB, Database Solution Selection, and a few from AWS too. These are generally fairly high-level courses, and a proper DBA would smile at them.


AWS - PostgreSQL Fundamentals

AWS - PostgreSQL Architecture

Azure SQL

Azure Core Cloud Data Services

Introduction to Airflow in Python

Azure Cosmos DB

Design a Data Warehouse

Ongoing Learning

  • Salesforce

    • Salesforce Trailhead, an ongoing activity, covering both Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud.

    • While I've never gotten formally certified on Salesforce, I've worked with it pretty extensively and am at the 5th of the 7 available levels on the Salesforce Trailhead system.

  • VAEX

    • VAEX is a data analytics system that works within Python. It makes analysis of very large data sets actually easy, even on home PCs or laptops.

    • Its capabilities allow even large organizations to do arbitrarily large data analytics cheaply.

    • See here for an example

  • Apache Superset

    • Superset is an open-source business intelligence tool. While it's easy to use Tableau or PowerBI or Spotfire, they can be VERY expensive in a large organization.

    • Open source tools can be powerful alternatives.

  • Apache Airflow

    • Apache Airflow is an open-source workflow management platform. It allows automation of complex data flows and tasks. It's also now been launched as a service by Google.

    • This can be hugely important in complex enterprise contexts. And much safer than what many businesses do, which is to use Excel macros or to do things by hand. 😨 Airflow is ALMOST easy, at least for basic use cases.

  • RPA (UI Path)

    • Robotic process automation has been around for a while, but has seen huge strides recently.

    • Systems like UI Path are leading the way in terms of functionality. It's in wide use in financial institutions. While I used robotic automation years ago at Google, I'm just getting started on this specific tool.

General Technical Knowledge

It's hard to be comprehensive about technology and how much anyone knows about any language or system. So this is just a sample of languages and systems that I've had contact with over the years;

J2ME, Java, Linux, PHP, Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, SugarCRM, Siebel (long ago), Fortran, C, C++, WAP, i-Mode, Erlang (not a lot), MS Dynamics, Wordpress, Apache, Pentaho, Tableau, VMware, Windows IIS, MySQL, PostgresQL, MS SQL Server, BigTable, FreeBSD, etc... And, of course, MS Office.

Favoured technologies come and go. The fundamentals remain the same.

In addition, my Excel skills are pretty solid and I have built both simple and complex financial models over the years.

Online Profiles

See my various online personas here.

And my ORCID here.

Weekends

Here's some of what I get up to at the weekend, in case you're interested.