Thrivent will present

Platform as a Business Model

Please join us with our hosts, Michael Dockham, Dan Bryant, and Garrett Gleason from Thrivent Financial, for our May session.
The next generation of the Internet is moving to a distributed platform model – from systems to discrete services through a distributed network. The geometry of business is changing due to the influence of digital. Learn what is changing and why you should care. Unlike typical supply chains a Platform rely on external parties and ecosystems for value creation and digital is expediting the shift. Don’t be left out of the biggest change since the introduction of the Internet.

Michael Dockham
Michael’s career as an Enterprise Architect spans more than fifteen years. In the last two years Michael has been involved in starting a new business area within the context of a Fortune 500 firm to further our organization’s mission of helping people be wise with money and live generous lives. Providing expertise to architect and build out a growth journey platform that enables our mission to come to life. Using Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas, JTBD and the business model of Platform leveraging cloud-based solutions to test and learn.
Michael is a Solution & Enterprise Architect with a passion for taking on the toughest most ambiguous challenges with a proven ability to define, establish and deploy IT strategies that drives top-line growth, innovation while taking costs out of the business.

Garrett Gleason
As a business-technology executive, Garrett Gleason sees himself as a curious-learner, a design-thinker, and a
passionate solution provider. These core attributes have shown up throughout his career, having led several innovative and transformative changes in large and small organizations.
Garrett is actively creating a new team entitled Rapid Innovation and Business Solutions within Thrivent Financials’ new Christian Engagement Division. In this capacity, Garrett and the team will support the business-technology needs of this new division to directly serve into some of Thrivent’s critical strategic initiatives and new ventures, while also applying Thrivent’s innovations frameworks and lean-start-up processes.
Garrett has been a strategic business and technology leader at Thrivent Financial for 19 years and has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry overall. Before his civilian career, Garrett was an officer in the United States Air Force, serving tours of duty at the Pentagon and Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
Garrett has a Master of Science Degree, Computer Science, from the University of Florida, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree, Quantitative Methods, from the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota.

Dan Bryant
Dan has over 20 years in executive leadership and individual contributor roles as an attorney in private practice, in-house counsel, investment banker, venture capitalist and CEO of businesses inside Fortune 500 enterprises and venture backed companies. His experience includes leading two international financing unites within Fortune 50 companies (GMAC and Lehman Brothers), executing upon new product and business line strategies within highly regulated industries and leading global new growth initiatives across matrix and decentralized entities.
He has a proven ability to create and contribute to dynamic cross-functional teams focused upon operational excellence within large and small organizations, specifically in the execution of new business models that leverage emergent platform technologies. Representative industries include financial services, health IT, ecommerce, insurance, software, and a variety of service and technology companies.
Dan holds a BA degree in Humanities, an MBA in Business and a JD in Law