Taska Harnischfeger


Languages: English (Native), German (Bilingual Fluent) Almstadtstr. 35, 10119 Berlin

Citizenship: USA & Germany +1 49 177 4667046

taska@taska.org


Personal Statement

Customer Success senior lead, support manager, technical account manager in software organizations. I’ve worked in tiny startups and huge corporations, across the entire software development life cycle from requirements definition through roll-out and support, drawing upon my experience with open source development teams, agile methodologies, intent-based leadership, and my own strong technical background. My passion is helping build strong, customer-focused organizations which scale and adapt to change.



Work Experience

Qumulo

Principal Customer Success Manager

Berlin (home based), 2019 - Present

Senior lead of a team of CSMs in EMEA. Continuous optimization of processes and tools; mentoring of junior CSMs and Customer Success Engineers; escalation management; coordination with CSM and CSE teams in APAC and the Americas. Key stakeholder, including setting business requirements, testing, and assisting roll-out, for engineering projects with interfaces to the Customer Success team. Leading a project to formally redefine the roles and responsibilities of CSMs worldwide.


Technical account management of enterprise and strategic scale-out file storage customers in EMEA from proofs of concept through implementation, ongoing support, renewals and expansions. Close collaboration with sales teams.

Technologies: Ubuntu, VMWare, AWS, GCP, Azure, HPE Greenlake, Jira, Salesforce, ZenDesk, Slack

Customers include: Shell, Bosch, Nokia, Turkcell


taro Consulting

Consultant, President

Berlin, 2008 - Present

taro consulting is a consulting group focusing on intellectual property development, software development and IT management.

2008 – Present: President. Finances, annual reports, preparing corporate tax returns.

2015 - 2019: Consultant supporting private and corporate clients with software projects. Patent development; product management; supervision of development and design teams; ScrumMaster and agile development coach; software testing; business infrastructure administration.

Technologies: Linux, iOS, HTML5, Python

Customers included: termbase.com, vidimetrics.com


IT4IPM (Information Technology for Intellectual Property Management), GEMA

Team Lead for Sustaining Engineering and Support (“Fachgebietsbetreuerin”),

Technical Project Manager

Berlin, 2011-2015

Led a 10-person team providing technical support and maintenance of internal software application for ingestion of playlists and matching of song usages to the national composer database for the purpose of royalty distribution. Ongoing account management for internal customers of the solution (and later external customers, as the IT organization was spun off into its own company). Managed ongoing dependencies with other internal software teams. Initiated and rolled out process optimization projects. Supported ITIL service management implementation across the organization.


Technical project manager for a multi-year software development project to replace existing application, with 10+ developers and 30+ project members, employing agile development methodologies.

Technologies: Linux, Oracle, PL/SQL, Java, JavaScript, JIRA, TIBCO EAI, UC4, Confluence, Cherwell

Partners: Thoughtworks, Capgemini, Adesso


Sabbatical

Maternity Leave

Berlin, 2009 - 2010


Self-Employed

Freelance English Trainer

Berlin, 2008 – 2009

Provided Business English training to corporate and private clients, including technical terminology for software developers, engineers and other specialized fields.

Customers included: David Berry Languages, Die Neue Schule, Rückenzentrum Berlin


Sabbatical

University (see Education, below)

Munich, 2006 - 2008


IBM

Team Lead, EMEA Enterprise Technical Support

Berlin, Munich, 2004 - 2006

Built completely new EMEA enterprise software support team for IBM Websphere Product Center, a highly customizable master data management solution (formerly Trigo Product Center). Recruited, trained and coached team members in technical skills, customer service skills, business English, and international social and business usage. Managed relationship between the EMEA software support team and development teams in the USA and India, and with US management. Represented key customers in internal feature and bug-fix prioritization meetings. Escalation manager for entire portfolio of support requests in crisis situations for customers worldwide.

Technologies: Websphere, Java, Linux, XML

Customers included: El Corte Ingles, Carrefour, Kraft


Trigo Technologies

Senior Enterprise Technical Support Engineer

Silicon Valley (Brisbane), Berlin, 2003 - 2004

Post-sales support for worldwide enterprise clients of Trigo Product Center, a master data management solution. Managed long-term customer relationships with key clients across the US, EMEA and APAC throughout the customer lifecycle.

Technologies: Java, Apache Tomcat, Linux, XML

Customers included: Sony, Unilever, Hewlett-Packard


CollabNet

Senior Technical Support Engineer, Support Account Manager

Silicon Valley (Brisbane), 2001 - 2002

Post-sales support and account management for major enterprise clients of SourceCast (now TeamForge), a web-based software development management tool, including escalation management and support of sales teams during contract negotiations.


Designed and optimized issue escalation and resolution processes for constantly changing support department needs. Trained junior team members on customer support and technical topics; provided 24x7 on-call support for all customers.

Technologies: CVS/Subversion, Bugzilla, Perl, Linux

Customers included: Sun Microsystems (NetBeans.org, OpenOffice.org), Hewlett-Packard, Motorola


Eazel

Technical Support Manager

Silicon Valley (Mountain View), 2000 - 2001

Managed staff and outsourcing services and sourced and implemented tools to provide technical support for the GNOME Nautilus file manager and associated services.


Linuxcare

Technical Support Manager

Silicon Valley (San Francisco), 1999 - 2000

Built a 7-person technical support team into a 27-person, 24x7, three-tier revenue-generating call center to handle an overnight hundred-fold support load increase.

Mann Consulting

IT Consultant

Silicon Valley (San Francisco), 1998 – 1999

Onsite and remote system administration and help desk support for firms of 5 to 200 employees running Macintosh and Windows.


University of Chicago Humanities Department

Help Desk Manager

Chicago, 1997 - 1998

Managed IT help desk for 200+ faculty and employees in a highly heterogeneous Macintosh and Windows technology environment. Ran a program to replace all faculty and staff desktop machines.


University of Chicago Computer Labs

Macintosh Tech Lead, Help Desk Assistant

Chicago, 1995 – 1997

Installed and maintained hundreds of desktops and multiple servers in three major campus computer labs. Interviewed, scheduled, trained, and evaluated help desk staff supporting lab users using Windows, MacOS and IRIX.



Volunteer Work

Welcome Mamas e.V.

Board Member, Administrative Coordinator

Berlin, 2017 - Present

Welcome Mamas e.V. is a non-profit organization supporting refugees who are pregnant or mothers of small children in navigating medical services and bureaucracy in Berlin.

2017 – Present: Board member. (2018 2020: Treasurer; 2020 – Present: Vice Chair). Updating by-laws, communication with government agencies, planning and attending members’ and board meetings, finances, tax returns, budget oversight.

2022 – Present: Administrative coordinator. Coordination of requests from midwives and social workers, recruiting volunteers, planning and running online information sessions, matching volunteers with refugees, hiring and overseeing admin support.


Saturday Club e.V.

Board Chair, Administrative Coordinator

Berlin, 2016 - Present

Saturday Club e.V. is a non-profit organization supporting the education and integration of bilingual and multilingual families in Berlin. Among our services are activity sessions on Saturdays for English-speaking children ages 1 to 15 to strengthen their English skills.

2018 – Present: Board Chair. Writing and updating by-laws, planning and running members’ and board meetings, writing annual reports, coordination with board and club members, finances, tax returns, etc.

2016 – Present: Administrative coordinator. Scheduling of classes, marketing, sales, curriculum creation, communication with students and families, hiring and management of English teachers, budget management, venue management, physical supplies management.


Education and Certifications

ScrumAlliance

Certified ScrumMaster

Berlin, 2011


ITIL Training Zone

ITIL v3 Foundation

Berlin, 2010


Berlin School of English Teacher Training Centre

Cambridge ESOL CELTA B

Berlin, 2008


Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Intermediate Examination (Zwischenprüfung), Near Eastern Archaeology

Munich, 2008


University of Chicago

Bachelor of Arts, Biological Sciences

Chicago, 1997