Stephen Sopko

Leader, Innovator, Entrepreneur

Stephen delivers over 20 years experience leading organizations across legal, finance, procurement, operations and sales.

Until recently, he was the practice leader for Contracts & Sourcing at UnitedLex, the leading Legal Process Outsourcing firm based in Atlanta and New Delhi. He founded the practice as one of the initial team of executives, and was instrumental in leading successful relationships with clients such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Marathon Oil and other Fortune 250 firms. He departed UnitedLex in Q1, 2009 to complete a book on high-level outsourcing of judgment-based functions.

During his tenure with Dell, Stephen globalized delivery of high-level knowledge services. He successfully launched teams supporting executive-level initiatives in legal, sourcing, sales, marketing, and finance. As a sales operations executive at Dell, Stephen implemented business development practices to reinvent a struggling contracts organization. He led teams of people delivering cradle-to-grave support for contracts valued over $35B TCV, supporting 700+ sales people and over 42,000 Dell commercial and public sector customers.

His prior experience includes tenure as a C-level executive in a consulting firm; dual reporting to CIO & CPO as a technology procurement manager at a Fortune 500 oil & gas company; and ten years as a procuring and R&D contract manager for the US Air Force in North America and Europe.

Stephen's significant accomplishments include pioneering offshore delivery of contracts & sourcing services; opening Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to US R&D contracting; managing contracts with Nobel-prize winning scientists; increasing Dell's contracting efficiency by 300%; and leading groundbreaking negotiations for outsourcing and data management.

Stephen holds a B.S. in information technology from the State University of New York, he lives in Austin, Texas. He is a member of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management, where he served as an Advisory Board member from 2005-7. He is also a member of Bootstrap Austin, the Game Manufacturer's Association, Theodore Roosevelt Association and the Society for Industrial Archaeology.