I'm Jake Headman, operator, strategist, builder. My career started packing boxes in an e-commerce shipping room and now runs through investor relations, capital markets, and enterprise transformation at a $10.5B global manufacturer. Same hands, bigger machines.
Every floor taught a different language: logistics, data, finance, markets, boardrooms. Fluency in all of them is the actual job.
Started at a ~$2M DTC e-commerce company packing orders. Four roles later I was Director of Operations, running inventory, fulfillment, vendors, and sales channels, and building the product platform that let ownership run the business remotely.
As VP of Operations at a high-SKU footwear distributor: implemented a WMS, re-engineered the floor layout, rebuilt pick-pack workflows, fewer stockouts, faster cycles, and tied fulfillment data upstream to a revenue plan targeting a 5% top-line lift.
Built the capital allocation model directing store-remodel investment across a 62-site convenience chain, shipped store-level P&L dashboards, and trained 62 managers to find margin. Then modeled sales-comp economics at a $15B Fortune 500.
At Clarios, $10.5B, PE-backed, consolidated global BI and cut reporting cycle time 50%, built 20-year technology-disruption models with DCF valuation for the PE sponsor, and shipped a self-serve intelligence platform used by commercial, product, and finance.
PMO lead for a dual-track M&A/IPO: S-1 filed with zero SEC comments. Co-led a $5B debt raise ($15B demand, 3× oversubscribed) saving $42M in annual interest. Now Chief of Staff to the VP/GM of Global OE, driving Performance+ across a $3B revenue organization shipping ~45M batteries a year.
Favorable market conditions, a holiday-compressed timeline, and a dual-track M&A/IPO in flight. Coordinated finance, legal, operations, and strategy to execute the moment the window opened.
Friction lives where functions hand off. Designed and orchestrated a cross-functional innovation program hunting cost across the full product lifecycle: design to distribution.
Where should a PE sponsor's long-term capital go? Built market and technology-disruption models with DCF valuation, then made the intelligence self-serve for every team that needed it.
A high-SKU operation running on tribal knowledge. Implemented a WMS, redrew the floor, rebuilt pick-pack flows, and wired fulfillment data upstream into brand strategy.
"Strategy only matters if it can be executed. I don't write plans I couldn't run myself."
The résumé is the elevator: this is who's riding it. Born in Florida, raised in Illinois, forged in Idaho. Six moves later, home is Wisconsin, and you'll still find me with my family, outdoors, or tinkering at the workbench, usually in that order on a good Saturday.
Hiking, fishing, camping: the full Idaho starter kit. The backcountry is where I do my best thinking; there's no better strategy review than a long climb with no cell service.
I build things to understand them: local LLM rigs, automations, weekend web tools like llm-releases.com. If a problem annoys me twice, it gets a build.
The foundation under everything else. Family and faith keep the ambition pointed at the right things, and keep the wins and losses both in perspective.
A release tracker for frontier and open-weight AI models: what's out, what's actually available, and what's worth testing locally. Built in an evening, kept because it's useful.
Visit ↗Something in the works at the intersection of operations, data, and strategy. Announced when it ships.
Coming soonHeld for the next thing worth building. The best ideas start where the friction lives.
Coming soonStalled transformation, a story investors need to hear, an operation that needs rebuilding: if it's a hard problem, I want to hear about it.