Ryan Donovan, Principal
Ryan Donovan is Principal and founder of Soul of Design where he works with clients to optimize their product development process and to efficiently integrate their CAD and PDM/PLM Systems.
Ryan’s career has involved every level of product development. Early on, after working at PTC, he worked as a mechanical design engineer using Pro/Engineer and Solidworks and developed products for diverse industries including biomedical, semiconductor, and capital equipment. His responsibilities typically went beyond design to include administering CAD and PDM.
After earning his MBA, he managed product development projects for high-tech industries and government programs. Ryan’s experience managing product development projects involved every aspect of product development including design, marketing, procurement, manufacturing and sales. It was these experiences that provided the insights used at Soul of Design to develop optimized design processes for leading technology companies.
Ryan extended his skill base by updating and implementing PDM/PLM systems (Dassault’s 3DX Experience, Enterprise PDM, and PTC’s Windchill) and CAD (Solidworks and Creo) at leading technology companies in the Boston area. Ryan has a B.S. in Mechanical and Assembly from the University of Rhode Island, and an M.B.A. from Babson College.
Dr. Donald M. Baskin, Sr. Consultant
Dr. Baskin worked in the International Automotive Industry where he spent time at the Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) Materials Research Lab in Ulm, Germany, and in Body Engineering Release at Chrysler LLC in Auburn Hills, MI, USA. During this time, he held positions in every aspect of automotive body structure development including structural optimization, finite element analysis, structural materials development, product design release, tolerance strategy, and manufacturing. This culminated in him attaining a supervisory rank, launching 7 vehicles into high-volume series production, publishing several articles and later a book chapter on body structure lightweighting.
Dr. Baskin holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Irvine. His graduate dissertation focused on toughening and fracture mechanics of brittle-materials such as high temperature ceramics for heat engine applications and steel alloy development. As an undergraduate, Dr. Baskin conducted research in the field of spray atomization processing of refractory structural alloys.
In addition to his work at Soul of Design, Baskin is the Founder and Principal Materials Engineer for Spectrum Materials Engineering LLC. and a lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dave Buck, Sr. Consultant
Dave has over twenty-five years of experience managing Information Technology projects, including ERP/PLM software selection and enterprise solutions design, implementation and integration. His extensive experience includes managing large IT projects for IBM, Deliotte, Symbolics, and NeXT Computer. He has led several projects for the US Government where he designed and managed the development of nine custom PLM software solutions.
During the 1990s, David was a pioneer at delivering business solutions via the Internet. He founded Advis, an early Internet and web solutions company where he delivered over 50 object-oriented web-based applications for large corporations.
In addition to being a Sr. Consultant at Soul of Design, David is CEO of Zweave and manages Zweave’s PLM products and professional services.
Maria Paz Ramirez, Marketing and Operations
As Marketing and Operations Manager at Soul of Design, Maria Paz Ramirez focuses on making sure that the right clients find their Soul of Design Consultants.
Maria began her career engaging in all aspects of Marketing initiatives primarily in the Life Sciences sector. She then moved on to the Healthcare IT sector where she focused on the client story and communicating that story through collateral and web outlets.
She then spent the next 5 years as an entrepreneur in private practice, managing all aspects of the business, while also supporting the marketing efforts of a small doctor’s office. During this time she saw the need to help small businesses with the overwhelming task of marketing their services so that the business owners could focus on what they do best.
Today, Maria focuses her time developing strategic marketing initiatives for small businesses, determining their inbound and outbound marketing needs, to ensure client engagement.
