Aaron Cole Smith
AI Product Leader · Data & Analytics · Portland, OR
I build AI-powered products, data platforms, and the teams behind them. Over 12 years across Fortune 100 companies and high-growth startups, I've turned complex operational problems into scalable products — from a GenAI analytics agent at Nike to the process mining platform that helped Olive reach a multi-billion-dollar valuation. I'm most energized when something doesn't exist yet and needs to be created.
Career Highlights
- →Built AI-driven platforms that supported companies scaling to multibillion-dollar valuations and successful acquisitions
- →Created the Inbound Intelligence Agent at Nike — a GenAI system enabling natural language exploration of supply chain data across a global logistics network
- →Designed a supply chain diagnostics platform uncovering $7.5M+ in annual savings by surfacing inefficiencies in 15% of inbound orders
- →Built Olive's data organization from 1 to 10 analysts and engineers, establishing KPI-driven decision making adopted by every department
- →Developed facial recognition access control at Openpath, contributing to the company's $300M acquisition
Featured Work
Inbound Intelligence Agent
Business users needed answers from complex supply chain data but were bottlenecked by dashboards and analyst queues. Built an AI agent that converts natural language questions into SQL, runs automated analysis, and generates insights and visualizations — instantly. A user asks "Why are delays increasing in Vietnam?" and gets data, charts, and recommendations in seconds. Became a cornerstone of Nike's emerging AI-driven business intelligence strategy.
Supply Chain Diagnostics Platform
Built end-to-end visibility across inbound logistics, measuring transportation performance and surfacing operational issues that were invisible in static dashboards. Identified problems in 15% of inbound orders and generated $7.5M+ in annual supply chain savings. Delivered governed datasets, semantic data layers, and executive reporting used by transportation leadership.
Pupil — Process Mining Platform
Healthcare organizations struggled to understand their processes before automating them, creating high discovery costs and poor automation ROI. Built Pupil: a process mining and discovery platform with process visualization, workflow analysis, bottleneck detection, and opportunity identification. Dramatically reduced pre-automation analysis time and created the scalable entry point for all of Olive's automation engagements.
Video Intercom & Facial Recognition
Led development of Openpath's Video Intercom Reader — competing directly with ButterflyMX — managing hardware/software integration, facial recognition access control, smart call routing, and cross-vendor video integration. Also introduced conversational AI into the security platform. These products contributed to platform differentiation ahead of the company's $300M acquisition.
Side Projects
Weekly PGA pool with DraftKings-backed odds tiers, magic-link auth, live leaderboard, and commissioner tools.
NBA analytics platform with PCA clustering, career trajectory analysis, and player similarity scoring.
Multiplayer Euchre with 6 AI bot personalities, Daily Challenge mode, real-time sync, and deep per-player analytics.
LLM sports betting model, NBA/Soccer clustering, Bovada odds visualization, soccer match prediction, and more.
Experience
Lead Product Manager — Data Science & Analytics
- Created the Inbound Intelligence Agent — a GenAI analytics product converting natural language into SQL and auto-generating insights across inbound transportation datasets.
- Led Nike's transportation analytics evolution from static dashboards to AI-assisted data exploration and decision support.
- Built a supply chain diagnostics platform identifying inefficiencies in 15% of inbound orders, generating $7.5M+ in annual savings.
- Developed semantic data layers and analytics products that transformed raw ERP planning data into actionable insights for supply chain leadership.
Senior Product Manager — AI & Advanced Concepts
- Led the Advanced Concepts team launching AI-powered security capabilities that opened new market opportunities before acquisition.
- Developed and launched facial recognition access control, introducing biometric authentication to the platform.
- Built a conversational AI interface and cross-vendor video integration, creating a unified security monitoring experience.
Product Manager
- Built a platform enabling end-to-end patient transportation across health plans, health networks, NEMT providers, and ridesharing solutions.
- Developed route optimization algorithms that reduced daily vehicle scheduling creation time by over 90%.
Director, Data & Analytics | Lead PM, AI Platform
- Built the internal data organization from scratch — 1 to 10 analysts and engineers — owning BI, data engineering, forecasting, and executive reporting.
- Partnered directly with the CEO to deliver strategic analytics that guided major company decisions during rapid growth, including analysis that shaped the focus on automation.
- Designed and launched Olive's AI automation platform (RPA, computer vision, OCR, machine learning) and Pupil, the process mining platform.
- Implemented KPI frameworks adopted by 100% of departments; reduced automation deployment time by 50%.
Senior Consultant — Agile Product Services
- Served as Product Owner and Business Analyst for large-scale digital products using Agile/Scrum.
- Pioneered data-driven instructional recommendations that increased product revenue by 15% and contributed to ~$1B in sales.
Management Consultant | Demand Planning Team Lead
- Led ERP enhancements (SAP ECC 6.0, JDA/Manugistics) for the Defense Logistics Agency's supply chain planning systems.
- Served as JDA Demand Planning subject matter expert, leading the planning team across resource allocation and data integration.
Skills
Education
The Ohio State University
BS Information Systems · Fisher College of Business