Howard S. Lichtman President & Founder, Human Productivity Lab

Howard S. Lichtman (HSL) is a productivity-focused technologist and consultant with specialties in Telepresence and Visual Collaboration, Organizational & Personal Producivity and Sales Model Optimization. He is the author of Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light (2006) on the emerging telepresence industry and was a contributing author to Emerging Technologies for Teleconferencing and Telepresence (2005). Prior to starting the Human Productivity Lab, HSL was the former Vice President of Business Development at TeleSuite Corporation, the first commercially successful telepresence provider and an innovator in visual collaboration.

Prior to TeleSuite, HSL was a founder, President, and Chief Product Officer at Powwow Networks a visual collaboration start up looking to improve the human factors, effectiveness, reliability, and cost of both visual and data collaboration. Powwow Networks developed an Alpha product that combined IP video, web conferencing, and rear projection SMART Board interactive whiteboards into templated collaboration environments delivered as a flat-rate managed service with true QoS over disparate IP networks.

Before he developed his interest in telepresence and visual collaboration, HSL started and ran the financial vertical sales organization at Savvis Communications which specialized in managed networking and managed service solutions for trading floor technology and market data applications for Wall Street. Holding positions that included Regional Sales Manager, Director of Sales, and National Sales Manager at Savvis, HSL opened outside sales offices in New York, Boston, Herndon, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, & Miami and managed multiple sales forces running diverse sales models simultaneously.

During HSL’s tenure at Savvis he founded the original Human Productivity Lab, a skunkworks that tested and evaluated technologies and business process improvements with the potential to improve productivity, accelerate the sales cycle, or improve business communications within the organization. Some of the technologies the Lab rolled into production at Savvis were: Webconferencing, IP Videoconferencing, SMART Board Interactive Whiteboards, Blackberry Messaging, Franklin Covey, Collaboration Rooms, Cordless Headsets, and The Demonstrator, a trade show display designed by HSL to showcase SAVVIS’ solutions for financial industry connectivity.

Prior to Savvis HSL was a Senior Account Manager at DIGEX when the company was one of the first and fastest growing private Internet Service Providers in the world.

HSL has also held a variety of sales, sales management, marketing, consulting, and business development “gigs” at firms ranging from start-ups such as Spontaneous Networks, where the endeavor was to develop a wire-speed data center virtualization switch to Fortune 500 powerhouse SunGard, the global leader in information availability.

In his youth HSL served as campaign manager for a national 3rd party political campaign, helped shake the money tree at the The Cato Institute, spent time in the automotive aftermarket, taught swimming and sailing in the Catskills, and started his first business, The Green Home, (energy efficient lighting and water conservation for property management companies) as a college student at The University of Memphis among other pursuits.

Howard can be reached at:
hsl@humanproductivitylab.com