Cherie Ve Ard // cherie@twostepsbeyond.com // +1-415-680-3473
Cherie has been a small business owner and software industry entrepreneur for nearly fifteen years, focusing on application development for a wide variety of client industries - including medical, military, insurance, financial, industrial and retail. She grew up with computers, playing with her father’s Wang 2200 before she could walk, programming by age 7, and doing full scale application development in her early teens. Since 1994 she has been managing her family’s software development company - VeArd Computer Research (VCR), founded in 1978 by her father.
Cherie has an uncanny ability to listen to the needs of her clients, quickly grasp business models from multiple angles, and intuit how technology best fits within an organization. With training in personality and psychology, she strives to bring a human element to technology - and she is an effective communication bridge between engineers, geeks, end users, managers, marketing personnel, medical professionals and legal counsel.
She has been involved at all levels of the development process in several full scale database driven applications used by medium to large sized organizations. She is extremely detail oriented and efficient, and she excels at managing even the most complex projects.
Some of the most significant projects she has managed include:
- United States Army Medical Command - VCR created and maintains a budget and resource management application used by all Army hospitals worldwide.
- Lifespire.org - VCR created a case management system for Lifespire to assist mentally challenged adults throughout the New York City region.
- The Maine Health Alliance - VCR created a critical care case management application used by several rural hospitals throughout the state of Maine.
- Local 1564 Health and Welfare Fund - VCR created a custom system running the business logic within a Union run medical facility.
- Segal-McCambridge Singer & Mahoney - VCR created an asbestos litigation case management system.
- DeckLog.com - VCR created and hosts a free naval veteran locater website which assists veterans in finding each other and planning reunions.
Cherie has extensive experience in the full cycle of software development and integrating in technology into business structures; from project management, client interface, business consultation and technology strategy planning, user interface design, database design and management, training, technical documentation, testing, quality assurance, programming and report design.
Prior to VCR, she was a senior editor of the Basic-2 Report, an industry niche magazine for the Basic-2 programming language which was the foundation of many Wang computers, KCML, and Niakwa’s NPL environments. She wrote, solicited and edited content, generated advertising revenue, did desktop publishing layout and oversaw the full production of the magazine.
Outside of her work life, Cherie is a certified SCUBA diver, mobile technology enthusiast, new experience seeker, and she has been known to jump out of the occasional perfectly good airplane.
In 2007, she partnered with Chris Dunphy in creating Two Steps Beyond, a small boutique consultancy that combines their unique skills and interests. The two of them now travel the country while living and working in a small solar powered Internet equipped RV.