About Me Interests Selected Projects My Experience Testimonials Miscellaneous Contact Resume

Not just AI strategist and builder: writer, dolphin language decoder, program management leader, problem-solver, unrepentant generalist.

Track Record

20+ years driving ambitious, cross-functional programs where the technology is novel and the ship date is non-negotiable.

Pattern

Stalled or ambiguous initiatives — thinking from the end and driving to the result. Bridging business and technical fluency.

Now

Building production AI applications with evals and safety scaffolding. Open-source security patterns for LLM apps.

Why

Two decades studying intelligent non-human systems, from dolphin cognition to language models. Drawn to powerful things, honest about their dangers.

Contact Me View Resume

Interests

AI Safety
Artificial Intelligence
Product Management
Bioacoustics
Animal Behavior
Model Welfare
AI Coding
Board Games

Selected Projects

Endlessly curious — I work on software and hardware projects, quickly learning new business domains and technologies as needed. Want new ideas and perspectives? Let's talk!

Lyynks Music Marketplace

Lyynks Music Marketplace

The Challenge

Create a streaming music app and desktop application that rivals iTunes but is targeted for Indie musicians.

The Solution
  • Create a highly performant, fault-tolerant system for uploading and converting audio and video.
  • Implement a credit purchase system to avoid paying app store fees.
  • Use CDN servers to optimize playback speed of media.
P90X Mobile App

P90X Mobile App

The Challenge

Take a huge health and wellness brand and deliver a mobile app that lives up to its reputation.

The Solution
  • Create app that delivers superior user experience.
  • Use novel video playback obfuscation process to protect intellectual property.
  • 100k downloads first month.
  • Received Apple's Best of Health & Fitness Award.
Fly Pentop Computer

Fly Pentop Computer

The Challenge

Develop software for novel hardware, UI, OS in short timeline. Project is key company offering with aggressive launch date.

The Solution
  • Transition to Agile, with teams (creative, development, QA) seated and working together.
  • Continuously refine scope as necessary to meet deadlines.
  • Coordinate regular status updates with executive team.
  • Collect children's handwriting samples to enable high accuracy handwriting recognition.
Hello Music Crowdsource

Hello Music Crowdsource

The Challenge

Create a crowdsourcing site on a short timeline. Required: 99.999% availability, scalability and secure storage of potentially irreplaceable music files.

The Solution
  • Use scrum development processes to meet launch date.
  • Use a hash-based, object-oriented DB to enable highly scalable storage.
  • Improve UI for music judges.

My Experience

Companies I've worked with include:

WildBlue Enterprises
WildBlue Enterprises LLC

Product and AI Strategist

Mission Viejo, CA | Jan 2024 – Present

Trivver
Trivver Inc.

Fractional Chief Product Officer

Remote | Nov 2022 – Present

Amazon
Amazon

Senior Technical Program Manager, Alexa Conversational AI SDK

Irvine, CA | Apr 2021 – Oct 2022

MFour Mobile Research
MFour Mobile Research

Senior Product Manager

Irvine, CA | Nov 2019 – Apr 2021

Saritasa
Saritasa

Director of Product/Project Management

Saritasa is a California-based mobile, web, software, AR/VR, and IoT technology solution provider.

Kantar
Kantar

Director of Software Development

Millward Brown Interactive was acquired by Kantar, a global data, insights and consulting company.

Beachbody
Beachbody

Senior Technical Project Manager/Scrum Master

Beachbody is a multinational health and wellness company that promotes fitness, weight loss, and muscle building via diet and exercise programs, including P90X.

LeapFrog Enterprises
LeapFrog Enterprises

Senior Product Manager, Software Manager

Leapfrog is an educational entertainment and electronics company based in the Bay Area.

Testimonials

What people are saying...

Cheryl has great communication skills and worked hard to meet budget and strict deadlines. We are beyond pleased with the finished product and very much enjoyed working with Cheryl!
Brandi Jones Vice Dean, Viterbi School of Engineering at University of Southern California
[Cheryl] has a good grasp of technology, and she comes up with innovative and practical solutions to seemingly hard problems. I would jump at the opportunity to work with her again.
Deepak Mittal CEO & Co-Founder, To the New
Cheryl understands business needs — ROI, logistics, the need for speed — on a deep level, and translates this understanding into superior products.
Greg Dawson Senior Sales Executive at Saritasa, Inc.

Miscellaneous

Patents

  1. Print media apparatus including stroke recognition. US Patent Application 20050266386. Co-Inventors: James Marggraff, Larry Lynch, Kenneth Brown, Peter Milford, Cheryl Aday.
  2. Injection training with modeled behavior. United States Patent Application 20170178540. Co-Inventors: Gabrielle Rios, Daniel Edney, Cheryl Aday, Jonathon Mosqueda.

Selected Publications

  1. 2010. The Dark Side of Dolphins. Master's Thesis. University of Southern California.
  2. 1993. Environmental Enrichment for Dolphins and Seals. Master's Thesis. San Francisco State University.
  3. 2006. Book by Authors. Aday, et al. Compilation of short fiction.

Ping Me

I respond fastest on LinkedIn.