Profile by andre conceicao

Smooth Operator

By Andre Conceicao

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I met Kevin Moos through the MVLA Soccer Club, the local club where I’ve played soccer all my life. My father’s friend, Karl Motey, had been managing teams and programs in the club for a few years, and with the boom of youth soccer in the area the club was expanding rapidly in number of players and teams. The parents pay a hefty sum for their kids to play in the club, and there was growing dissatisfaction with how disorganized things were getting.

So Karl had the idea to ask a parent from each team to help out with registration, payments, scheduling, and other administrative activities.

Enter Kevin Moos: in a few months Kevin completely transformed the methods and tools used for managing teams, enabling a single person to manage much larger groups, thus providing managerial bandwidth for the MVLA Soccer Club to grow.

Kevin started as a parent volunteer for one of Karl’s teams. Com-

munication between parents and manager was mostly over email, which is not always very efficient.

If parents weren’t compulsively checking their emails, they would miss field reassignments and last minute schedule changes.. Some of the email systems would not open file attachments. There was also a

team, and an online database for uploading pictures, registration forms, and all other documents required by the leagues. Urgent communications were now sent via both email and text directly from the online application, field locations tied directly to Google Maps, and all other information

“To me, Kevin Moos proves that a person can in fact ‘do it all’: sustain a demanding executive career, have a leadership role in the community, and be actively present for his family.” lot of paperwork being exchanged: registration documents, waivers, and pictures. Kevin had the idea of automating things and using the internet as the primary means of communication. He implemented an online payment system, an online app that contains everything required to manage a youth sports

available real time online. The improvement in efficiencies was staggering, such that one single manager could now easily own a program of up to five teams playing in several leagues at once, with complex training arrangements involving practices, one-on-one clinics, and other customizations

in the program. As for the parents, the stress was gone: they now had all of the information they needed at their fingertips. To make sure the parents were heard throughout this process, Kevin sought their input with automated surveys, using software tools available online. He held parent meetings to make sure they felt heard and understood the program’s priorities. Today, Kevin’s process is utilized throughout the club, whose membership has more than doubled and parent satisfation improed greatly.

To me, Kevin Moos proves that a person can in fact “do it all”: sustain a demanding executive career, have a leadership role in the community, and be actively present for his family. His ability to juggle the things that matter most in life is evident to everyone who knows him, as I was repeatedly told by his peers and family alike that he relentlessly delivers on all of his commitments. His oldest son, Kenan, told me, “I barely can manage my schoolwork, and I see him working hours doing a whole bunch of different things. He’s constantly on phone calls, on the computer, and still spending time with his family.” Kevin’s family, by the way, consists of his wife Toni, plus four kids. Aside from being the current Chairman of the MVLA Soccer Club, Kevin’s day job is COO of a high-tech consulting and services company…how’s that for a full plate?

In soccer, there is the tradition of the central midfielder who is the heart and soul of the team--muscles the ball forward to initiate the attack and is the first one back to defend. When my Dad was growing up, they called this kind of midfielder the team’s “piano carrier.” This image has stuck with me.

With his smarts, impeccable work ethic, and passion, Kevin is able to deliver in life a level of performance similar to the piano carriers of my Dad’s soccer youth.

Kevin grew up in Los Altos, California, about a half mile from where he now lives. An avid sports fan, he passionately followed all the Bay Area teams through good and bad. “I’ve mellowed out hopefully since then, but the passion is still there” he told me. Seeing that he wakes up at the crack of dawn to watch his favorite team, Liverpool, play every weekend (sometimes as early as 4:00 in the morning) it’s safe to say that this is true.

As an undergrad at Stanford University in California, Kevin studied Math and Computer Science. His field of choice, Kevin said, prepared him “with a good background to learn, observe, listen and solve problems more than anything else”.

After spending 10 years at Anderson Consulting, he moved on to Primitive Logic, where he has been for the past 15 years. Primitive Logic is a “solution-driven business consulting and technology services firm,” and Kevin has played many roles from Senior Consultant to Vice President, to Chief Operating Officer. “As COO, a lot of my role is to make sure that we are delivering successfully to our clients. It’s really important to make sure we are taking care of our customers,” Kevin told me.

Kevin first got involved with youth soccer in 2004 when his oldest son, Kenan, was 5. Kenan enrolled in the area’s AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) and Kevin

signed up as a coach. As Kenan got older and developed his skills, he joined MVLA, and began to play in the much more competitive CYSA league. In the beginning Kevin didn’t do much besides sit back and watch his son play, but soon he was offering to help out. Looking back on his first interactions with Kevin, Karl Motey (currently Co-Chairman of the MVLA the board) recalled how having Kevin there to help him manage his team was a vital piece to the puzzle.

“The pressure and expectations on the team were really high and I let the pressure get to me a lot ot the time,” Karl explained. “Kevin did an amazing job of just keeping a smile on his face and managing all this stuff and keep the team going. And the team did really well. I couldn’t have managed the program without him.” A few years later Kevin was managing an astonishing nine teams. Shortly after that, he was elected club Chairman, a position he has held for 3 years now.

Walking up to Kevin’s house prior to our first interview, I couldn’t help but think I was out of place.

A high school kid sitting down with a COO to talk about soccer?

I started to get nervous and worried.. But my fears were quickly dispelled as Kevin opened the door with a big smile before I even had a chance to ring the doorbell. The consideration he showed by waiting for me demonstrated that he took my work seriously, putting me instanuly at ease As I entered his house, I noticed immediately that the decoration was very functional and non-ostentatious: carpeted floors,

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lots of pillows on the couches, with a clear focus on comfort versus trying to impress visitors with luxury or expensive decorations.

During the interview process, Kevin showed me just how knowledgeable he was, answering question after question without hesitation. I had previously gotten a taste of how organized he was by his incredibly rapid email responses, but I was blown away by the thought he had obviously put into describing the framework of the organization for me, breaking it down into understandable pieces that compirsed a club serving nearly a thousand kids. His attention to detail was remarkable: he had even selected a very fitting location for our interview, in front of the giant soccer net in his backyard.

Like the interior of his house, his backyard was clearly designed with function in mind--large soccer net, soccer balls all over the place.

It was very different from other backyards I’ve been in the area, ones with fire pits, ponds, and fountains--backyards clearly designed for entertainment, or to show off. It became obvious to me that this was a practical, family oriented man, who valued comfort and family life over

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luxury and pretentiousness.

The average person will come home from a long day of work and wind down by watching some TV, but not Kevin. He comes home and transitions from COO to soccerholic. He handles communication for his nine teams: juggling game and practice schedules, addressing parent concerns, dealing with coaching issues.

Then, if one of his four children has an activity, he becomes their driver, shuttling them to and from practices, play-dates, and games. Once everybody is home for the night, he relaxes as a caring, interested dad, talking to his kids about their days, helping them with homework, and eating dinner together as a family.

On the weekends, Kevin bounces around the Bay Area from game to game. “Drives are a good time to connect and have good conversations. My wife goes and sometimes we take other kids. It’s a good time to talk. And then I get to relax at the games,” he told me. At the games, Kevin will help the team set up and make sure that everything is in place. “At Kenan’s games, since they are an academy team, there are lots of strict rules and I make sure we follow them. Strict substitution rules, tents need to be set up well, making sure there’s water and Gatorade for the players.” Aside from setting up, he plays a key role in making sure the players are ready for the game. From warm-up to kick-off, he is constantly talking to players and coaches and making sure everybody is on the same page. He warms up the goalkeeper while the other players do their drills, keeps the parents calm by talking to them and cracking jokes, and communicates with the coach so they keep straight all the various rules across the many

leagues they play in. At his son Kai’s game, Savio, the team’s head coach was wondering what the rules were for substitution. He immediately turned to Kevin and asked, “We are playing NorCal right? Can we sub on the other team’s throw in or do we have to wait until we have the ball?” Kevin immediately responded, “We have to wait until we have the ball. The referee won’t look at us until we have the ball.” This simple encounter surprised nobody, as Kevin always knows the rules for all of leagues—very impressive if you consider that Kevin has teams in three different leagues.

The MVLA club has done exceptionally well over the last five years, with several of its teams winning prestigious competitions. But as members of the club’s board, Karl Motey and Kevin Moos are always looking towards the future. “I really think that in the next five years you will start to see some top tier boys teams. In the past we’ve had a lot good girl’s teams that have won Districts, State Cup, and Nationals, but I think we will start having some top boys players,” Motey told me.

Kevin agreed with this statement, stressing that this will be due to recent focus on developing players’ skills as an individual and as team players. “It’s all about quality, we will start to see better development of the tactical and technical skills.

Individual skills are important so the kids can dribble around and be more comfortable with that,” he said. It is clear that MVLA is making an effort to ensure that the younger teams are desirable destinations for players all around the area, as opposed to merely a starting ground for players who later turn to the powerhouse academies like Juventus and DeAnza Force to fur-

ther enhance their game. “I think that with the recent development of our own academy on the boy’s side, you will see more and more players coming to our club as opposed to leaving it,” Karl Motey explained.

As for Primitive Logic, Kevin said that they are working towards doubling the size of the company. “Currently we have about a hundred employees and about sixty contractors who work with us on different projects to give us kind of a different skill set than we have. Our goal is to double the size in the next two years and we are well on our way to getting to those numbers.”

Kevin stresses the importance of balancing all of the roles that he has to play in his life. “I enjoy working at Primitive Logic, I enjoy volunteering at MVLA, I enjoy managing the teams. I just need to find the time to do it all. I like to relax at the games, I’m there to watch my kids play and it’s all about them and making sure they are having fun. Any moment you get where you can watch them play is a fun moment. Work can be stressful, the board meetings can be stressful, but it’s really about realizing why I’m here. I’m here to help out with the club and help my kids have a good experience and enjoy the Beautiful Game.”

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