Jim Poage Bio
James Poage is the President and CEO of the Startech Network Foundation. Prior to joining Startech, Poage was the CEO of H2O Advisors providing investment advice to selected companies seeking funding.He has also been active as a founder and investor in early stage companies and provided senior management consulting services to companies in need of leadership, during mergers and acquisitions and in times of crisis.
Poage was previously the Chief Marketing Officer of TradeMC, joining them in March 2000 as their second employee.TradeMC is a business-to-business procurement company formed as a result of a 50/50 joint venture between Fluor Corporation and IBM.Fluor is one of the world’s largest publicly owned engineering, construction and maintenance firms.TradeMC sales in the first 8 months of operations exceeded $100 million.TradeMC was spun back into Fluor in late 2001
At TradeMC he was responsible for business strategy, marketing communications, brand management, public relations and market research.He has over 30 years of senior management positions in information technology, most recently as senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Sabre, Inc.At Sabre, a $3 billion IT provider to the travel industry, Poage led corporate marketing and business unit strategy, brand management, regulatory affairs and public relations.During his tenure at Sabre, Poage also served as senior vice president of customer marketing where he managed the $1.2 billion global electronic travel distribution P & L.It was consistently the largest profit contributor of the company.During this time he managed the global relationships with over 700 airlines, 40,000 hotel properties, 65 car rental companies and many other travel service providers.
Prior to Sabre, Poage spent 12 years at Texas Instruments (TI) in several top marketing and operations management positions in the software and advanced systems divisions.He managed TI’s Artificial Intelligence third party applications group and was the Asian division manager during his three years in Singapore.He was director of marketing in the U.S. upon his return.He also has held TI management posts in Europe during his residence in Amsterdam.
Before joining Texas Instruments for the second time in 1984, Poage served in various marketing management positions with Bausch & Lomb and Intel in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.At Bausch & Lomb, Poage established the marketing and sales organizations for a division startup that manufactured computer aided drafting systems.Poage also created the marketing, distribution and customer support functions for the Intel Systems division in Asia.
Poage earned a Master’s of Business Administration and a Bachelor’s of Electrical Engineering from the University of Wyoming.He has served on a number of international boards and advisory panels including being elected to the Marble Falls City Council in mid 2005.He is the past Chairman of the Engineering National Advisory Board at the University of Wyoming.He has made hundreds of speeches to audiences of all sizes (up to 5,000 people), and has appeared as a guest on a multitude of radio talk shows and all major U.S. television networks.
Long Bio (PDF)
