Stephen Lawton
mailto:steve@lawton.net |
 |
Steve Lawton brings 20 years of private-sector experience to the management of the Community Development function for a California municipal government.
Mr. Lawton's management experience includes leading teams of operations consultants and software engineers on innovative projects for senior-level clients at large financial-services and transportation firms. Steve is effective in roles ranging from operational management, to senior-level advisor, to team leader, to individual contributor. Driving innovation through organizations, and developing new operational processes, are two of Mr. Lawton's career themes.
In the Director role with the City of Hercules, Mr. Lawton oversees the daily operations of Planning, Engineering and Public Works. A member of the senior leadership team reporting to the City Manager, he fills an important roles as a business-development officer for this fast-growing Bay Area city.
A third-generation Californian, Mr. Lawton's passion for great public places led to a career re-focus on urban design and the complex processes of city-building. In 1997 he joined the Congress for the New Urbanism, a national movement that advocates the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the restoration of existing urban centers and towns within coherent metropolitan regions. In 1999-2000, as Chair of the Planning Commission. he led the effort to create the Central Hercules Plan. This result of this effort became the first design-centered typological plan to be adopted into the law of a California city.
Concurrently, his experience in the enterprise systems integration business qualified Mr. Lawton for a business-development role in 2000 with the management-consulting unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
Previously, through 1999, Mr. Lawton was Director of Business Development for a unit of TRW Inc. In that role, he was responsible for creating new business opportunities, including technology partnerships and customer alliances. As a member of the senior leadership team of this $40 million systems engineering and integration group, he championed and managed a software engineering practice specializing in high-performance enterprise middleware.
Earlier, at this TRW unit, he was a founding member of a boutique management consultancy. The consulting practice advised senior executives of global firms on the potential for new technologies to drive organizational change and enable new business strategies. As Senior Consultant, Mr. Lawton led numerous, complex, client-funded consulting and systems engineering projects.
His experience as a management consultant and systems analyst includes serving such client firms as Goldman Sachs, Federal Express, Bank of America, HongkongBank, United States Postal Service and Burlington Northern Railroad. He contributed to more than 20 major engagements worth $12 million in billings and $166 million in client decision value. He personally managed six engagements worth $4.5 million in billings and $89 million in client decision value. He was responsible for managing individual projects and budgets of up to $1.1 million.
Through these engagements, Steve has served clients in the roles of business analyst, strategic consultant, technical team leader, inventor, salesman, speaker, facilitator and trainer. In 1992, he co-invented an image-based electronic commerce system, and was awarded US Patent 5832100.
In 1982, Steve joined a unit of Teknekron, a pioneering technology greenhouse. Consultants and engineers at the several Teknekron companies applied advanced technologies, such as the then-new Internet protocols and image processing, to the business problems of large corporations. For this entrepreneurial firm, Mr. Lawton conducted several market studies and pricing assessments for railroads and energy companies. In 1986, he was recruited as the first employee of Teknekron Software, a unit now publicly traded as Tibco Software (TIBX), which installed the first Unix workstations on Wall Street.. Steve then joined the Teknekron Financial unit, which was acquired by TRW Inc., a $12 billion technology and services company.
Steve began his career in 1977 at the Southern Pacific Railroad, where he held successive positions as brakeman, traffic analyst, economic forecaster and market development manager. Mr. Lawton then joined a unit of DHL Airways in charge of strategic projects.
Mr. Lawton earned a BA degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976. He and his wife reside in a historic district adjacent to the San Francisco Bay.