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Triple threat: designer, engineer, and founder — building software that works beautifully…
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared thisMichael Gifford-Santos shared thisAlexey Navalny just posted a Twitter thread addressing the Russian people. Even it sounds counterintuitive or paradox, but I think we need to stand also united behind the Russian people because they – hopefully – stand up in Russia and fight for their freedom, peace and democracy! 1/12 We - Russia - want to be a nation of peace. Alas, few people would call us that now 2/12 But let's at least not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar. 3/12 I cannot, do not want and will not remain silent watching how pseudo-historical nonsense about the events of 100 years ago has become an excuse for Russians to kill Ukrainians, and for Ukrainians to kill Russians while defending themselves. 4/12 It's the third decade of the 21st century, and we are watching news about people burning down in tanks and bombed houses. We are watching real threats to start a nuclear war on our TVs. 5/12 I am from the USSR myself. I was born there. And the main phrase from there - from my childhood - was "fight for peace." I call on everyone to take to the streets and fight for peace. 6/12 Putin is not Russia. And if there is anything in Russia right now that you can be most proud of, it is those 6824 people who were detained because - without any call - they took to the streets with placards saying "No War". 7/12 They say that someone who cannot attend a rally and does not risk being arrested for it cannot call for it. I'm already in prison, so I think I can. 8/12 We cannot wait any longer. Wherever you are, in Russia, Belarus or on the other side of the planet, go to the main square of your city every weekday and at 2 pm on weekends and holidays. 9/12 If you are abroad, come to the Russian embassy. If you can organise a demonstration, do so on the weekend. Yes, maybe only a few people will take to the streets on the first day. And in the second - even less. 10/12 But we must, gritting our teeth and overcoming fear, come out and demand an end to the war. Each arrested person must be replaced by two newcomers. 11/12 If in order to stop the war we have to fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves, we will fill prisons and paddy wagons with ourselves. 12/12 Everything has a price, and now, in the spring of 2022, we must pay this price. There's no one to do it for us. Let's not "be against the war." Let's fight against the war.
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared thisMichael Gifford-Santos shared thisRendezView.io got featured on #producthunt! https://lnkd.in/gtZBXsa Check us out today on Product Hunt and leave a comment/feedback. Let us know what you think! #startups #collaborationtools #remoteoffice #remoteworktools #remotecollaboration #digitalworkspace #digitalworkplaces #productmanagment #productmanagers #googledocs #jitsi
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared thisMichael Gifford-Santos shared thisReal-time isn't just a buzzword--it's a whole different way of managing expenses, one that's faster, more accurate, and efficient. https://bit.ly/3fqV2Hy #expensemanagement #real-time #financeleaders
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared thisMichael Gifford-Santos shared thisReady for a better way to manage expenses? Center makes it easy to switch--you'll be up and running in days. https://bit.ly/2XAzClv #expensemanagement #financeleadersMaking the Switch from Expensify to Center - Center®Making the Switch from Expensify to Center - Center®
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared thisMichael Gifford-Santos shared thisCenter is hosting a webinar for finance leaders on Staying Nimble in Economic Uncertainty. Sign up here: https://bit.ly/2RgdgC6 #financeleaders #cfos #controllers #accounting
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared this🚀 Get real-time expensing and more with Center’s software suite and at _no cost_ with rebates based on spend volume. Most companies and organizations will save tens of thousands of dollars from their current processes and get far better insights and analysis of their spend. Also, we’re hiring! https://lnkd.in/gjHq7mRMichael Gifford-Santos shared thisOur very own Naveen Singh caught up with GeekWire to discuss Center’s new integrated solution aimed at streamlining the #expensemanagement process, from start to finish. Check out the full article: http://bit.ly/39H4OT2Backed by Concur co-founder, Seattle startup Center unveils expense management softwareBacked by Concur co-founder, Seattle startup Center unveils expense management software
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared thisWe’re building the future at Center. #expensemanagement #spendops #buildingthefuture #centercard #expensereport #innovation #ai #financemanager #cfo #controller
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Michael Gifford-Santos shared this[X] Cool, diverse team [X] Great culture [X] Booming #FinTech space [X] Interesting problems to solve [X] Brilliant business model [X] Han Solo carbonite office pieceMichael Gifford-Santos shared thishttps://lnkd.in/g29Ejgt #productmanagers #productownerJob opening: Agile Product Owner / Product Manager at Center IDJob opening: Agile Product Owner / Product Manager at Center ID
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisGrad school taught me one thing above everything else: keep engaging with the "new." I'd been skeptical. Lazy. Maybe a little scared. But this past week I finally took the plunge with AI, and it's been a blast. Custom Pokémon cards for my kiddo. A productivity tracker with automatic calendar reminders. The creativity it unlocks is genuinely thrilling. Huge mahalo to Jessica Serrano, whose post connected me to Aaron Newton. I only made it to one of his classes, but that was all I needed to be inspired. And Chris Burzminski — your tips got me complaining then creating! If you've been on the fence: just give it a go. 🤙
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisOn April 28th, we are taking the Startup Grind Conference stage in Silicon Valley to pitch Gametime Hero. Brittany Bell, MBA and I have told this story in coffee shops, on flights, to skeptics, to believers. It keeps getting sharper because the work underneath it keeps getting more real. What we're building: an all-in-one platform for the organizers that everyone else overlooked. The coaches, the program leads, the community organizers running pickleball nights, volleyball programs, and adult soccer leagues with five different tools and not enough time in a day. We're giving them their time back. Let's go. It's gametime! #StartupGrind #Founders #CommunityFirst
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisI left All Things AI 2026 with a signed pre-release copy of The Human Signal book by Mark Hinkle. And that perfectly summed up the day and the whole conference. I went in not knowing exactly what to expect and left overwhelmed with things to think about, a handful of great contacts and genuinely fired up. Huge thank you to Mark Hinkle and Todd Lewis for organizing this amazing event. I wish I could clone myself and attend more sessions — it was so hard to decide! So I ended up using Claude to help me select the sessions that best align to my goals. Here’s what stuck with me: ***Don't think in tools. Think in systems. The tools will change every 3-6 months — and they are changing, dramatically. ChatGPT from a year ago is a different animal. So is Claude. If you're attached to a specific tool, you'll keep scrambling. If you understand the flows, the relationships, the architecture of what you're building — you can pick up whatever's available and run. ***Prompt engineering -> Context engineering. It's not about writing better prompts. It's about managing memory and curating the information environment so the model can't help but succeed. Too little context and it guesses. Too much and the signal drowns. The job is finding the right architecture — not tweaking wording. ***Human on the loop, not in the loop. Human-in-the-loop creates a bottleneck. Human-on-the-loop means you review and approve, but you're not a required step inside every workflow. Erkang Zheng shared in his keynote that his startup runs almost entirely on agents — 4,000 customers, human intervention basically reserved for legal and financial sign-off. ***Three tools that really stood out to me: Obot (MCP Gateway), Neo4j (Graph RAG), ToolHive (MCP Orchestration). All three showed up as demos and all three are now on my list. ***The happy hour conversation that got me: Someone with multiple startup exits told me this is the best time in history to be a solopreneur. You don't need to find a co-founder, to raise money, to hire engineers to build your MVP. You can bootstrap, build an MVP on your own with Claude Code or Codex, validate it, then raise if you need to. ***And then this: One of the recurring threads across sessions — said by multiple speakers, not as a soft landing but as an actual observation — was that the more we automate, the more we'll crave human connection and belonging to communities. And they're going to matter more, not less. Looking back at that room of 3000+ people, that feels about right.
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisWe don't just build Gametime Hero. We use it. Every day. We run our own communities on GTH Communities. We create and manage events in GTH Events. We build onboarding tools for organizers in GTH Pages. We use GTH Projects as our project management tool. We manage internal workflows through the same tools our organizers use. Why? Because the fastest way to know if something works is to feel the friction yourself. When we hit a clunky step, we fix it. When a form doesn't flow right, we rebuild it. When our own community page doesn't look the way we'd want as organizers, we go back to the drawing board. Dogfooding isn't a buzzword for us. It's how we build. Every product decision at Gametime Hero runs through one filter: would we want to use this ourselves? The answer has to be yes. Every time. If you're building a product and you're not your own most demanding user, you're guessing. We don't guess. We organize, we test, we feel it, and then we make it better. #Dogfooding #BuildingInPublic #ProductDevelopment
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisI joined the AIUC-1 Consortium. A few weeks ago I wrote about E015.3 — the tamper-evident logging control inside AIUC-1. The requirement that AI logs need to be independently verifiable. That post resonated because people are feeling the gap between governance on paper and governance in practice. As a contributor to AIUC-1's Accountability principles, this is personal for me. The system I've been building — AgentSystems Notary — is designed to make controls like E015 enforceable through code. Standards set the bar. Technology enforces it. That's what drives me.
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisProud to see our founder Brandon Bennett contributing to the accountability principles behind AIUC-1. #AIAccountability #AIInfrastructure #AIStandardsMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisI joined the AIUC-1 Consortium. A few weeks ago I wrote about E015.3 — the tamper-evident logging control inside AIUC-1. The requirement that AI logs need to be independently verifiable. That post resonated because people are feeling the gap between governance on paper and governance in practice. As a contributor to AIUC-1's Accountability principles, this is personal for me. The system I've been building — AgentSystems Notary — is designed to make controls like E015 enforceable through code. Standards set the bar. Technology enforces it. That's what drives me.
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisi was told constantly that i wasn't trying hard enough. i did zero professional clubs in college. my one internship had nothing to do with my major. but here's what i actually did instead: i had FUN!! i let myself be lazy. i was out every other day. i rested when i needed to. i built friendships that still matter. i made mistakes! there's this narrative on linkedin that if you didn't have the right internship, the right clubs, the right projects by 20, you're already behind. you're lazy. you didn't try hard enough. not that's not true at all. college is literally the only time in your life where your job is to figure out who you are, not who you think you should be. some of the most interesting people i know didn't internshipmaxx every semester. they just chilled. if you're reading this and feeling behind because you didn't get the internship everyone talks about, or you didn't join the right clubs, or you spent time doing things that didn't "advance your career" you're not behind. the competitive space is loud. it's designed to make you feel like you're not doing enough. so take the rest when you need it. explore the things that don't fit on a resume. go out with your friends. that's not wasted time. that's just living life :,) heres a pic of me randomly going to japan during my senior year. did i miss a few lectures? yea. was it worth it? YES!!
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Michael Gifford-Santos liked thisMichael Gifford-Santos liked thisDone with Day 1 of All Things AI 2026. So much great information and such a great vibe! Getting ready for Day 2 - with a personalized day plan optimized to my goals that Claude helped me to build. And Art Deco Carolina Theater is just beautiful.
Experience & Education
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WunderGuide
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Volunteer Experience
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Board Member
Hawaii Island HIV/AIDS Foundation
- 2 years 1 month
Health
Create Ho‘okupu magazine to tell story of HIHAF, generating an additional $17,000 in revenue
• Redesign brand identity that honors legacy logo
• Update collateral documents, including stationery, forms, brochures, and signage
• Serve on ad hoc executive hiring committee to recruit and select new executive director
• Collaborate on organization’s first-ever strategic plan
• Update collateral documents, including stationery, forms, brochures, and signage
• Implement…Create Ho‘okupu magazine to tell story of HIHAF, generating an additional $17,000 in revenue
• Redesign brand identity that honors legacy logo
• Update collateral documents, including stationery, forms, brochures, and signage
• Serve on ad hoc executive hiring committee to recruit and select new executive director
• Collaborate on organization’s first-ever strategic plan
• Update collateral documents, including stationery, forms, brochures, and signage
• Implement OpenAtrium groupware system as board and staff intranet systems
Languages
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English
Native or bilingual proficiency
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Mandarin
Elementary proficiency
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