Biographies

Meet Our Professionals

Tom Cocotis

Tom is a Project Scientist at RTConfidence, Inc., is a co-founder, and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. He helps highly productive Agile and Scrum Teams create realistic product development schedules for high-value programs in his consulting work. He uses statistical probabilistic scheduling techniques proven to deliver the best possible timelines that businesses can rely on.

Before founding the company, he worked in Agile Engineering Management at Western Digital Corporation (WDC), where he created the Enterprise SSD Agile Firmware Project Management Office (Agile PMO). At WDC, his teams built and launched industry-leading enterprise SSD products resulting in over $1 billion in sales.

Additionally, Tom has led product development as a director or executive for multiple start-up companies for over 20 years, including SRS Imaging, where he was the Founder and President and raised over $5 million in venture capital. His products ranged from cloud-based SaaS software products to embedded R.F. networking products to laser imaging products. He is an inventor on eight U.S. patents issued on remote storage data security, imaging, wireless printing, secure network transactions, and R.F. signal networking. Tom has worked for over 15 years within Agile and Scrum environments as an Agile Coach, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. He holds a B.S. in Information and Computer Science from UC Irvine and an M.S. in Management and Leadership from Pepperdine University.

Michael M. Bissonette

Mike is a seasoned business executive, entrepreneur, adjunct professor, author, and corporate consultant. His career includes over 40 years of Product Development within several industries (i.e., aerospace & defense, consumer electronics, industrial equipment and services, clean technology, and software as a service). He has held executive-level positions in numerous functional disciplines, notably in the areas of project, program, PMO (project/program management office) management, and portfolio management. His diverse background has afforded Mike the opportunity to personally experience those practices which are considered “best” within the various industries and disciplines – ergo, the genesis of his publications and RTConfidence products.

Before forming RTConfidence, Mike was a Division General Manager and Officer of AeroVironment, Inc. He was also an executive at Western Digital, where he led many successful organizational transformation initiatives to get the company through a difficult era within the extremely competitive HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and SSD (Solid State Devices) industries. He started his career as a radar system engineer (specializing in digital signal processing, phased array antenna design, and modeling and simulation) in the aerospace & defense industry, and rapidly entered the program management world, where he successfully managed the development of several new products and services. He eventually became a valued organizational change master. Mike holds BSEE, MSEE, and MBA degrees and is PMI® certified as a PfMP® (Portfolio Management Professional). Please preview my introductory video below.

Donna Chiacchia

Donna is a principal at RTConfidence, Inc. She joined the team in 2020 as chief brand ambassador and demand generator. Since 1986, Donna has made significant contributions to the information technology, healthcare, bio-med pharma, and financial services industries by applying her exceptional skills in the disciplines of business process engineering, organization development, cultural change design, and strategic planning. She has distinguished herself as a high-impact, passionate player, consistently delivering millions of dollars in savings and high percentage productivity improvements for a wide variety of Fortune 500 clients.

Payson Hall

Payson is a Project Scientist at RTConfidence, Inc., a former U.S. Army Ranger, and consulting project manager for Catalysis Group, Inc. in Sacramento. Formally trained as a software engineer, his early career included software development and hardware/software system integration. As his career progressed, his role shifted to include increasing project management responsibilities.

Today, he coaches project managers, teaches project management skills, consults, and performs project reviews in various fields, including transportation, communication, software development, hardware development, education, financial services, social services, and healthcare.

Payson has consulted on various projects in both the public and private sectors throughout North America and Europe during his 40-year professional career. He has published over 100 project management articles, developed numerous project management and problem-solving classes, and wrote a book on project sponsorship. Payson is sought after as a conference speaker specializing in demystifying project management topics and communicating important ideas entertaining audiences. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science.

David Maeschen

David is a principal at RTConfidence, Inc. who joined the team in 2017. He has spent a decade in defense research, including five years focusing on physical oceanography and hydrodynamics at Dynamics Technology and five years focusing on electromagnetics from radar to X-ray at SRS Technologies. His research also included analysis, modeling, and simulation of sensors, scattering, and systems. Moreover, he has extensive computer graphics development experience for scientific visualization.

David spent another decade in commercial printers and systems developing software, firmware, and drivers at SRS Imaging, CalComp, and Toshiba Computer Systems. He has studied economics and finance and holds a B.A. in Physics from the University of Chicago.

John Newton

John is a principal at RTConfidence, Inc. who joined the team in 2018. Throughout his career, he has lent his development, troubleshooting, and overall strategic thinking to various corporations and start-ups in multiple industries. Solving systemic problems comes from John’s background in working on all types of technology, including low-level hardware programming, embedded systems, web technologies, database optimization, network performance, and user interface. John holds an MBA from The University of California Irvine and a B.S. in Engineering from the University of Texas.