Chief Strategy Officer, AscendAI
Craig Heile
Turning complex businesses into systems that work.
Craig connects economics, operations, technology, data, and intelligence to identify what matters, determine what the business should do next, and focus resources where they create the most value.
Experience across enterprise technology
Global Ecosystem Ownership
Revenue System Transformation
Americas Ecosystem Growth
Strategic Distribution Revenue Growth
Portfolio Company Revenue Growth
GTM Positioning for Acquisition
Foundational AI Model Training
About Craig
I see gaps others miss.
Turn intelligence into action.
“I keep it simple. Understand what really matters, be honest about what the business needs, and build something that creates real value.”
Craig sees how the pieces of a business connect and quickly identifies where they do not:
Critical information is disconnected from decisions that create value.
Patterns across customers, partners, operations, and economics reveal hidden growth or risk.
Better decisions, treatments, workflows, and resource allocation can materially improve cash flow.
For decades, Craig has used analytics, machine learning, predictive models, customer and partner economics, Partner Interaction Mapping, and operating systems to determine what matters, what should happen next, and where resources create the most value.
45,000
Poly Partner Program Transformation
$500M to $1B
Comstor Revenue Growth in 18 Months
60%
VOX Growth and Waterfield Acquisition
Selected experience
Built for scale.
Grounded in economics, operations, and technology.
Poly · 2019 to 2020
Two partner programs. One global operation.
As Senior Director of Global Partner Programs, Craig led the integration of the Polycom and Plantronics partner programs in 14 months. The combined program covered 45,000 partners, 135 distributors, and 135 countries, with a $120M annual budget.
His remit included partner economics, financial governance, analytics, reporting, systems, incentives, partner experience, and coordination across sales, finance, IT, and regional teams. The program was generating approximately $1.2B in revenue.
Greenfield b2b · 2009 to 2022
Turning connected intelligence into growth.
As President of Greenfield b2b, Craig built operating models and growth systems for technology companies navigating scale and change.
At Comstor, his Partner Interaction Mapping connected work across sales, marketing, product, vendors, finance, customers, and partners. The work supported growth from roughly $500M to $1B in 18 months and included analytics, predictive modeling, playbooks, workflow design, financial modeling, and training for approximately 190 professionals.
For CloudCherry, Craig built the Cisco and channel GTM strategy, orchestrated the technical integration into Cisco’s contact center architecture, presented the strategic case to Cisco leadership, and helped position the company for acquisition. Cisco subsequently acquired CloudCherry.
LaunchGTM · 2022 to 2025
Building intelligence into partner growth.
As Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Craig built partner growth systems for 35 Intel Capital portfolio companies and worked with CEOs, CROs, and CMOs on revenue strategy, economics, ownership, onboarding, and execution.
His work in partner-readying portfolio companies contributed to outcomes that included acquisitions by Intel and OpenAI.
Invisible
Established Invisible’s presence inside Meta’s AI research organization.
Craig and his team worked directly with leading Meta researchers to improve the quality of human-generated training data and help architect research models for advanced AI development.
The work focused on designing the human intelligence systems behind model improvement, including expert workflows, research structure, quality frameworks, reasoning tasks, evaluation methods, and scalable processes for generating higher-value training data.
Craig’s role was not simply supporting annotation. It was helping shape how expert human input was designed, organized, and used to improve model research and performance.
Craig’s work at AscendAI
AI that earns its place in the business
Craig has been part of the AI evolution for decades through analytics, machine learning, predictive intelligence, connected data, and decision systems. The focus remains the same: use better intelligence to make better decisions and create measurable business value.
Find the real problem for AI to solve
Identify the gaps, disconnects, and economic consequences that matter most before deciding where AI belongs.
Make the AI system work
Connect workflow, data, technology, governance, people, ownership, implementation, resources, and budget into something the business can actually operate.
Connect AI to cash flow
Trace AI-driven change through revenue, margin, capacity, cost, retention, working capital, EBITDA, cash flow, payback, and ROI.
Scale through AI
Apply AI across revenue, operations, finance, customer experience, procurement, service delivery, and resource allocation to help the business scale with better economics, stronger decisions, and more efficient use of capital.
Earlier chapters
People, economics,
and execution
McCann Worldgroup
As Vice President and Engagement Director, Craig led a 75-person team supporting Microsoft’s independent software vendor ecosystem across North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
Harte Hanks
As VP of Strategy for Tech Markets and VP of Business Development, Craig developed analytics-driven growth strategies, business-process solutions, and acquisition opportunities for technology companies.
Welch Global Consulting
As a Senior Consultant, Craig advised Cisco and its partner ecosystem on contact center and customer experience solutions, combining technology strategy, customer economics, and financial analysis for Fortune 100 and the world’s largest global bank leadership teams.
Based in Park City, Utah, Craig holds a BS in Psychology from the University of Cincinnati, with a focus on research psychology and statistics.
AI that earns its place in the business
AscendAI helps companies identify where AI can create measurable value, build the operating system required to make it work, and connect the result to cash flow.
