Work

20+ years of clearing the way.

From bringing GPUs to the cloud at AWS to building Emmy-winning interactive experiences and AI filmmaking pipelines, each role has been a mission to find the blockage, understand the system, and unlock value.

Genvid Entertainment

Chief Information Officer / EVP, Global Publishing
Emmy Award Winner
The Challenge

A pioneering interactive entertainment company with multiple titles in simultaneous production, seeking to concentrate resources and capitalize on its strongest creative and commercial opportunities.

I led a strategic consolidation from three concurrent titles to a single flagship, streamlining the organization and extending runway by 18 months to enable focused monetization testing. Simultaneously, I introduced generative AI as a production strategy, creating “Culver” — a complete agentic workflow for film production covering ideation, screenplay, lookdev, storyboarding, audio/video, and production management.

I instituted IT and cybersecurity governance that eliminated $4MM in annual wasteful spend, achieving COPPA, GDPR, and CPRA compliance while improving employee satisfaction and operational efficiency by 39%. Our team’s work on SILENT HILL: Ascension earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media, along with multiple Webby Awards.

87.5%
Cost Reduction via AI
$4MM
Waste Eliminated
1M+
Platform Users
99.995%
Reliability

ActZero.ai

Chief Technology Officer
Acquired by Watchguard
The Challenge

First executive hire at a pre-revenue cybersecurity startup needing to find product-market fit and scale rapidly.

I secured $40M Series A and $25M Series B funding by demonstrating strong product-market fit and accelerating customer adoption. By improving SOC processes, automating incident investigation and response, and eliminating false-positive alerts, I drove profit margins to 77%. I trained a small language model with RLHF for predicting ransomware and cloud attacks 24 hours sooner than leading EDRs — resulting in zero successful attacks during my tenure. I also led technical due diligence for the IntelliGO Networks acquisition, migrating them to AWS and improving uptime from 82% to 99.98%.

$65M
Funding Secured
77%
Profit Margins
0
Successful Attacks
12%
Attrition Rate

Nvidia

Director, Cloud
The Challenge

GPUs were financially unviable in the cloud. Nvidia needed someone to solve the real-time streaming cost problem and unlock their entire cloud strategy.

I launched compute.nvidia.com — Nvidia’s first cloud AI product, running AI workloads in Nvidia’s data centers and public cloud. By diversifying workloads and driving GPU hardware utilization to near 100%, I made GPUs financially viable in the cloud for the first time, unblocking Nvidia’s cloud strategy from games to professional visualization to artificial intelligence. I also initiated the GeForce NOW Developer Program, driving adoption of next-generation GPUs to over 75K game developers.

~100%
GPU Utilization
75K+
Developers
100M
End Users Served
12%
Cloud Cost Reduction

Tinder

VP, Engineering
The Challenge

Hypergrowth with no technical roadmap — the product was scaling exponentially but the engineering organization hadn’t kept pace.

Within 90 days, I restructured the development team and created the 2015+ product and tech roadmap, supporting continued exponential growth while reducing operating expenses by 76%. I established a values-driven, behavioral hiring process to scale the team efficiently and launched Tinder Plus — the company’s first monetization feature.

76%
OpEx Reduction
90
Days to Roadmap
1st
Monetization Feature
Train rounding Morant's Curve in snowy Banff mountains

Amazon Web Services

Sr. Manager, Advanced Gaming Technologies
Pioneered GPU Cloud Computing
The Challenge

No public cloud had GPUs. Real-time 3D graphics, game streaming, and GPU-accelerated computing simply didn’t exist in cloud infrastructure. AWS needed someone to make it happen.

I launched the first GPU-based EC2 instances (G2 with Nvidia GRID K340/K520) — AWS’s first successful virtual machines with GPUs for real-time 3D streaming. These instances paved the way for the deep learning and machine learning infrastructure that AWS is known for today. I also built Amazon AppStream, the cloud application streaming service announced at re:Invent 2013 and covered by TechCrunch and The Verge, and turned around Amazon Test Drive — the critically acclaimed try-before-you-buy feature covered by the Beacon Journal — improving conversion from 2% to 19% while reducing cost per demo by over 99%. Along the way, I co-founded Amazon Game Studios, served as an Amazon Bar Raiser, and mentored hundreds of interns.

1st
GPU Cloud Instances
2% → 19%
Conversion Improvement
99%+
Cost Reduction

GSI Commerce

Sr. Director, Multichannel and Marketplace
Now eBay Enterprise / Radial
The Challenge

Scale a white-label e-commerce platform serving 80+ major retailers with over $2B in annual sales, while managing a global team of 165.

I saved the $150M Toys-R-Us account by delivering the first localized and international version of GSI’s webstore. I implemented a Lean/Six Sigma program that reduced project costs by over 32% and established continuous build and automated deployment processes that saved an estimated $2.5M annually.

$2B+
Annual Sales
165
Team Members
32%
Cost Reduction
Brooklyn Bridge cables and tower from below

Advisory work.

In addition to my operating roles, I advise companies at the intersection of immersive technology and emerging platforms.

Landvault

Advisor · Acquired for $450M by Infinite Reality (Jul 2024)

Building immersive web3 and metaverse experiences for brands and governments. I advise on product strategy, engineering leadership, recruiting, and M&A.

Ball Metaverse Research Partners

Co-founder / Advisor

Launched the Ball Metaverse Index ($METV), a metaverse ETF with $500M AUM. Built proprietary methodology for compute and network rankings.

Patents & publications.

20+
Patents Granted
15+
Academic Publications

My patent portfolio spans cloud streaming, GPU virtualization, real-time rendering, video content generation, and AI-driven security. Academic work includes contributions to SCTP networking protocols published in IEEE, SIGCOMM, and other venues.

Cloud Streaming
GPU Virtualization
Real-Time Rendering
Video Content Generation
AI Security
Application Deployment
Network Protocols
User Interaction Analysis
Adaptive Content

In the press.

Animation Magazine
Emmy Winner Releases AI Animated Short ‘The Seeker’
Coverage of Genvid’s Studio-Grade AI Platform, crediting the agentic architecture built for scalable filmmaking.
2025


National CIO Review
Deep Dive: Jerry Heinz, CIO at Genvid
In-depth profile covering career arc from childhood curiosity to Emmy-winning interactive entertainment.
2024


GamesBeat
The Emerging Genre of Massive Interactive Live Events
Interview on Genvid’s pioneering MILEs format and the future of audience-driven entertainment.
2022


IEEE Spectrum
Is the Metaverse Even Feasible?
Quoted on latency challenges and infrastructure requirements for immersive real-time experiences.
2022


PocketGamer.biz
Genvid Entertainment Hires Jerry Heinz
Genvid CEO Jacob Navok on recruiting a leader with decades of cloud, AI, and infrastructure experience.
2022


The Digital Speaker Podcast
Technical Requirements to Make the Metaverse Possible
Guest interview on cloud gaming infrastructure, from launching GPU servers at AWS to building GeForce NOW at Nvidia.
2022


Forbes
The Metaverse: How to Build a Massive Virtual World
Guest on SamKnows Podcast discussing foundational infrastructure challenges for the metaverse.
2021


PR Newswire
Roundhill and Matthew Ball Launch Metaverse ETF
Named to the Expert Council for the first metaverse-focused exchange-traded fund ($METV).
2021


TechCrunch
Tinder Hires Amazon’s Jerry Heinz To Lead Engineering
Tinder CEO Sean Rad on why they recruited from AWS to tackle hypergrowth scale challenges.
2014


TechCrunch
Amazon Launches AppStream
Coverage of Amazon AppStream at re:Invent 2013, streaming GPU-rendered apps from the cloud to any device.
2013