meet us

Focal Partners is headed by Trish Jones who has years of experience as a high-tech executive and consultant helping companies achieve their strategic goals and objectives. With offices on both the U.S. East and West Coast, Focal Partners is a consortium of consultants with operating experience at high-tech companies, including executive management, product management, product marketing, marketing communications, IT management, business development, and sales. We have expertise in a broad range of disciplines, including telecommunications, application infrastructure, back-office and front-office systems, database and middleware infrastructure, business intelligence, and operating systems.

Trish Jones,
Principal and Managing Partner
Trish Jones is the Principal and a Managing Partner of Focal Partners Consulting; she is an expert in competitive analysis and response with over 20 years of experience. As a co-founder of Focal Partners, Trish has worked with many major application infrastructure vendors, software vendors, security companies, systems integrators, and telecommunications providers, assisting them with competitive positioning and rapid response. Prior to Focal Partners, Trish held Director Level Product Management and Product Marketing at cutting edge companies including Red Hat and Digex. Trish's academic training includes an MBA from George Mason University in Strategic Marketing, finishing her degree at Oxford University, England.

Eric Kuhnen,
Managing Partner
Eric Kuhnen brings more than 18 years of experience in product research, development and management to Focal Partners.  Before joining Focal Partners, Eric was most recently responsible for competitive positioning, product marketing, and product management at Astoria Software, GoRemote (acquired by iPass), and Oracle Corporation. Since 1990, Eric has managed the launch of nine different software products across four different disciplines: on-demand, enterprise, equipment control, and government.  Products that Eric has launched have set sales records in the first years of their operation, and one was awarded 2002 Software Product of the Year by Semiconductor International magazine.  In addition to managing Focal Partner's west coast operations, Eric speaks and writes on a variety of product management topics including competitive intelligence and Agile Software Development.