Pablo

Pablo is now in doggie heaven with 20/20 vision after spending more than 12 dog years (84  human years) attending meetings, lunches and beta testing with our pet tech clients. Before joining A.J. Duran Consulting, Pablo spent some time at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter where he developed his street cred and sales skills peddling cigarettes and other contraband.   Pablo lost his sight at age 7, however throughout his blind tenure he taught us that life is defined by small pockets of wonder that are embedded in the mundane routine -  a walk to the beach, the smell of bacon, the warmth of the sun.  It was an honor to be his companion and we all at A.J. Duran Consulting are better people today for knowing him. 

Moe

Moe now has big paws to fill after acting as Pablo's understudy for a few seasons. Moe's name was changed from Shorty or "El Choppo", the name given to him by the authorities at the Monterey Peninsula Animal Shelter, as it probably wasn't a good idea to be associated with both"Pablo" and "El Choppo".   Moe is full of ideas, charm and energy (juice).  He acts as a muse for the team, generating mo' better business planning, mo' better channel marketing strategies and mo' better creative thought. 

Aaron Duran


With over 30 years of sales, marketing and business development experience in the technology industry, Aaron Duran has delivered successful high-tech products and services to consumers, businesses and multi-national corporations. Aaron has held a variety of senior sales and marketing positions at Apple, Claris, Hewlett-Packard, Sling Media and Ooma both in the U.S. and Europe.

Aaron has successfully introduced a number of technologies and services into domestic and international markets for over 150 clients in a number of categories including consumer electronics, robotics, tech toys, kitchen appliances, computers, MP3 players, storage, productivity software, audio/video products, operating systems, wireless devices, internet enabled devices and telephony products.

Bob Kron


Bob has over 30 years experience creating channel sales programs and managing channel retail partners.  Bob has held senior sales and channel management positions at Looxcie, NVIDIA, Adaptec, Apple, and Plantronics. Bob’s consultative approach helped achieve record market share for NVIDIA graphics cards in retail and e-commerce. He previously served as Director of Channel Marketing at Plantronics, where he improved market execution and ROI measurement to help drive the company’s success in retail and wireless carrier channels. He also held various positions at Apple for 12 years, pioneering the company’s catalog/mail order channel, which ultimately led to more than $450 million in annual revenue.

Angela Tang

With 15 years of sales and account management experience across fashion, beauty and tech, Angela brings a unique perspective to the consumer electronics space. Her experience in product marketing, education, visual merchandising, inventory planning, and operations, makes her a strong systematic thinker and a quick problem solver. Angela is responsible for re-launching an exclusive partnership with BareMinerals and Sephora Canada, executing numerous 360 degree product launch campaigns, and developing channel differentiation plans to increase total sales. Her passion is keeping up with trends in technology and lifestyle products and developing unique channel marketing partnerships to increase overall brand awareness and engagement.

Steven Susko

Steve has over 20 years experience in technology retail including being a key member of Apple Retail from its inception in 2001. He helped grow Apple Retail to over $18B in sales in 14 countries. He held senior positions leading various teams for Apple Retail including Senior Director of Merchandising, Store Operations and Technology teams. Prior to Apple Retail, he worked in Finance for Apple's US Channel sales team. Steve's experience also includes positions at 3Com and IBM.

Jeff Chanley

Jeff acts an advisor to start-ups regarding sales operations strategy. In doing so which has seen him working directly in Channel Sales, Operations, Business Development, Marketing, and Accounting capacities. He has always taken a personal interest in the products and services he has chosen to represent in the retail channel and strived to be an asset to the company whenever a need arose. Jeff’s work for Sling Media and Eye-Fi saw him do work ranging from in-store trainer and representative to account manager for the East Coast. The scale of his responsibilities were rarely linear and it was not uncommon for him to be speaking with the buyer for a retailer on the same day that he would spend twelve hours in the store interacting directly with customers. He participated in launch activities for fifteen hardware devices and numerous software solutions. Jeff has a MFA in film production from USC which has allowed him to use his creative skills to develop vendor marketing and sales videos in cost effective manner.

Michelle Schetter

Michelle brings with her nearly ten years of marketing and sales experience with a deep understanding of international business development, product evangelism, global event activation, training program development and deployment, and partnership cultivation. She has demonstrated success in leading complex projects and has a proven track record of decisive and solution oriented thinking. Michelle has experience ranging from international business at Benefit Cosmetics, where she managed the South East Asia and Oceania markets, to sports and entertainment marketing for Sling Media. Her breath of experience provides Michelle with valuable insights in developing strategic and innovative business initiatives.

Jeff Morgan

Jeff has more than 35 years of retail channel experience. including 20 years of consulting experience.  Jeff's retail channel experience includes key merchandising positions with office superstores, regional computer specialty stores and department stores.  Jeff has worked on a wide variety of projects for more than 70 hardware, peripheral, accessory and software vendors as well as service providers for companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.  Jeff leverages his strong relationships with the retail and vendor community to gather real-time feedback.  These discussions include formal and informal surveys for product feedback, customer satisfaction and competitive benchmarking.

Dirk Wyckoff

Dirk Shark Tanked his way to VP of Sales and Marketing at UniKey. He utilized his experience in channel and B2B to bring strategic partnerships and sales leadership to the UniKey launch of the first mass smart lock, Kevo.  Dirk led Kevo PR strategy to be the third most talked about connected home product in 2013 worldwide media behind Nest and Philips Hue, and initiated messaging, branding, go-to-market strategy and partner acquisition. 

A CE sales and marketing veteran, Dirk is an expert at building strategy behind a product, taking it to market and driving sales. Prior to joining the UniKey team, Dirk worked as Director of Sales at National leading brands such as Digi International, Creative Labs, U.S. Robotics, Palm Pilot and was part of the Slingbox launch team.

JJ Gray


JJ advises clients as a copywriter and creative director with more than 14 years of experience developing messaging, creative concepts, and strategy for some of the world’s most well-known brands including Apple, Visa, Nestlé, and AT&T. He excels at distilling complex concepts into simple, consumer-friendly messages that resonate and get remembered. Some of JJ’s career highlights included helping to build Apple’s first in-house DM creative group, listening to Magic Johnson speak his words in a keynote, and even twice being paid in food. Really good food. His work has won awards and has been seen around the world.

Bob Fidrych


Bob is on the Advisory Board and has been working in Channel Sales, Channel Operations, and Channel Marketing for more than 20 years. Bob’s background includes a variety of channel sales and operations roles at Claris, Apple’s Software subsidiary. When the Apple branded software was transferred from Claris back under the Apple umbrella, Bob lead the transition team and was responsible for all Apple software sales in North America. After Apple, Bob helped lead Adobe Systems over the $1 Billion revenue mark by hiring, training and leading the Adobe North American Channel Sales team.

Bob’s experience also includes senior management roles at Scansoft (now Nuance), Phoenix Technologies, and Covad Communications. His consulting client roster includes Zone Labs, Intellisync, Vertical.com and VMware.