Program Manager

• Jun 2016 - Present

Vice President of Digital Solutions and Technology (Ret)

• Dec 2013 - Aug 2015

Led a team of technology professionals responsible for day-to-day technology operations, as well as lead a team of product strategists and developers responsible for the evolution of software solutions that were key to the company's growth. Key Accomplishments: - Assessed the organization and implemented a remediation plan to overcome substantial issues with the technology infrastructure, ERP implementation, and team structure. These areas were negatively impacting the company's core business functions, and had runaway costs. - Evaluated and re-architected the company's network infrastructure across the company four geographically dispersed locations. This effort led to a substantial increase in availability, and ultimately lowered operational costs. - Initiated and led a complete overhaul of the company's security practices to align with a strict focus on requirements driven by required FERP, PCI, and HIPAA. Complete policies and practices were an outcome of this effort. - Eliminated four internally developed systems and moved the functionality to available cloud-based services. This reduced annual application support expenses by 27%, eliminated solution downtime, and provided greater agility for enhanced services. - Directly after joining, redirected a Microsoft Dynamics AX ERP implementation project with the goals of eliminating a substantial runaway cost structure (more than 400% over three years), and achieving a scalable support structure. - Evaluated the company?s current solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure. Revised architecture to substantially lower ongoing operational costs (48%), and simplify ongoing administration of the services. - As a part of a 60% workforce reduction, and ultimate downsizing of the company's core business, re-architected all systems to cloud-based solutions. Show less

Vice President of Technology

• Jul 2011 - Dec 2013

Selected to lead a team of IT professionals located throughout the United States and the U.K. These teams included operations, development, project management, and technical support. Provided leadership to align IT with business objectives, resulting in improved agility, improved service levels, and robust solutions. Key Accomplishments: - Immediately set business-focused IT strategy; refocused IT team to create and implement solutions that mapped directly to business unit strategies. - Completed an evaluation of the overall technology infrastructure, and executed a plan to remediate several items that placed the organization at significant risk of business interruptions; reduced the number of technologies utilized for similar functions, resulting in overall operational savings, and focused expertise for remaining technologies. - Evaluated and right-sized private data network, which reduced overall costs, and created a much more robust architecture that could easily scale to ongoing business needs. - Championed new collaboration between IT development and operational teams, resulting in improved product delivery time and quality, and improved issue resolution time. - Created and formalized a project management office (PMO), inclusive of tools and processes that fit the business and IT objectives. - Implemented a formalized software development lifecycle (SDL) for the purpose of implementing new solutions for internal and external business needs. - Implemented monitoring tools to support KPIs across the technology teams. This significantly reduced system outages by brining proactive awareness. - Implemented an asset management tool (KACE) for all internal systems, with the end goal of building a self-service portal to bring improved capabilities to internal colleagues. - Designed and implemented a security plan for all technology systems and solutions. This plan included the necessary architectural components, policies, procedures, and documentation. Show less

Leader, Partner Support, IT and Network Operations

• Oct 2002 - Jul 2011

Recruited to rebuild teams and implement changes that would help move the company from a start-up mode to an operationally scalable organization. Led Software Engineering, Network Operations, Project Management, and Customer Support teams. Key Accomplishments: - Successfully restructured the software engineering, quality assurance, project management, and support teams to align with the organization's strategic goals, defined a scalable application architecture, and encouraged cross-functional collaboration across international locations. - Moved teams from a legacy "waterfall" development cycle to Agile (SCRUM), resulting in quicker product cycles, and fewer defects. - Conceptualized, designed, and implemented a set of systems that ultimately improved service delivery by reducing error rates from 57% to 3% in a six-month period of time. - Reduced the service delivery cycle from seven days to one. - Integrated an offshore production, software development, project management, and technical support unit, which resulted in enhanced capacity and "time-shift" benefits that ultimately reduced software development and support costs, and improved ?go to market* time. - Implemented customer services tactical and strategic support by building a high-performing team in a six-month period of time. Improved delivery to customers, which was key to ensuring contract renewals in the range of $100,000 to $5M per year. - Designed and executed an initiative to provide centralized technical support for customers. This resulted in enhanced delivery for the customer, and reduced costs for the organization. Conservative estimated savings are $3M over a period of five years. - Designed and led initiatives to support European data privacy requirements for the global customer-facing solutions. (Safe Harbor) Show less

Executive Director, Application Development

• Apr 2000 - Jan 2002

Selected by new CTO to restructure and lead technology teams responsible for the creation and delivery of all customer systems. Key Accomplishments: - Orchestrated the technical direction for wireless data measurement solution (Wireless DNA) - Achieved $720,000 in annual savings by bringing external software development projects in-house. - Implemented a development lifecycle that spanned the enterprise development, production, and operations teams. This effort immediately resulted in quality improvements as well as short and long-term cost savings for the organization. - Optimized the number of database technologies, hardware, and operating systems in use by creating a long-term architectural migration and operational plan that focused on technology standardization, scalability, and operational cost reductions. (Est. $250,000 savings per year.) - Managed all aspects (vendor selection, software development, technology operations) for a new strategic initiative to expand the core offering from statistical call analysis to wireless data and text messaging statistical analysis. Show less

Director, Systems and Infrastructure

• Jan 2000 - Apr 2000

Brought aboard to build the core customer systems, and develop a comprehensive, long-term technology strategic plan for this Internet startup. Key Accomplishments: - Recruited systems and infrastructure teams in a highly-competitive technology environment. - Worked with executive leadership team to refine ongoing business goals and provide technical and financial input for presentations to investors. - Implemented company?s Internet presence, well under budget while facing significant time constraints; built internal IT infrastructure to handle growth from 12 to 63 people within six months. - Established critical vendor relationships with key technology suppliers, ensuring a steady supply pipeline in a constrained market; negotiated discounts of up to 60%, providing almost immediate savings of $3 million and projected savings of $12 million over the span of the project. - Facilitated design and implementation of 24/7 data center with a high-availability, fully redundant infrastructure, utilizing Cisco, EMC, HP UX, and Oracle technologies; hardened systems for a highly-secure online transactional system. Show less

Systems Director

• Aug 1998 - Jan 2000

Selected for the company?s top strategic project to overhaul distributed computing team, with full authority for budgeting, planning, staffing, and ongoing operational efforts of all distributed computing, voice, and data communication functions. Key Accomplishments: - Directed team of 52 professionals with oversight for all operational data networking, network design, infrastructure implementation and maintenance, second and third tier technical support, and general IT administration. - Led a strategic effort to transform the organization?s IT infrastructure from an IBM mainframe-based set of solutions using a proprietary delivery model, to a distributed computing-based set of solutions using an Internet delivery model. This opened up direct consumer contact, and improved interactions for claims, and other information that formerly relied on a captive agent model. - Designed and implemented organization?s first inbound call center, servicing more than fifteen million policyholders. Brought project in at two-thirds of projected cost ($8M), and on schedule. - Rebuilt teams through supplemental training, and on-boarded-mentors to position the teams for success working with new technologies and solutions that resulted from the technology transformation initiative. - Strengthened collaboration with the business units and IT, which reduced implementation time, and ensured that solutions delivered met the underlying business objectives. - Restructured vendor relationships to improve operational efficiencies and ongoing operational costs; prepared for convergence of two dissimilar network infrastructures. - Created a single-stop solution for data networking issues by consolidating the SNA networking and IP networking support groups. Show less

Manager of IT - Southwest Region

• Oct 1995 - Aug 1998

Planned, implemented and supported information systems for the first territory established by Nextel. Key Accomplishments: - Coordinated IT services for 700 employees located across three states. - Supervised team of 13 professionals tasked with maintaining all voice, local and wide area networks. - Established strategic direction and led standardization for IT policies throughout the organization. - Improved infrastructure?s uptime from 63% to 99.97% through a complete re-architecting effort. - Instituted tools that resulted in a reduction in problem/inquiry resolution time from eight days to four hours. - Reduced communication charges 58% through a system re-engineering project. - Conceived, designed, and implemented a salesforce automation application, which reduced customer fulfillment times from two weeks to two days. Estimated savings at $1M per year, and revenue gain of $20M per year. - Prepared the data infrastructure for the convergence of customer-facing systems and internal network systems. Show less

Consulting Systems Engineer (CSE)

• Mar 1993 - Oct 1995

Coordinated relationships between technology and business units, while simultaneously directing all technology projects for several business units, including California Retail Banking, Credit Services, Legal, Southern California Executive Offices, Southern California BASE functions, and Wholesale. Key Accomplishments: - Managed the resources and project for a solution that helped reduce checking fraud (?kiting?) by $3 million annually. This solution encompassed a custom fraud prevention application, DDA event tracking, and business unit consolidations. - Refined and rolled out a project management methodology, resulting in shorter implementation times, and increased alignment with the overall banking requirements. - Assisted assigned business units with ongoing, regulated, banking security requirements. - Served as the primary interface between senior executives (EVP-level) and Bank of America?s technology teams. - Led a portfolio of simultaneous projects that ranged from business unit relocations (?re-stacks?) to multi-million dollar technology solution implementations and changes. - Recognized, with award, as one of a handful of new employees to achieve a ?far exceeds- performance rating during first year of employment. Show less

Director of MIS

• Jun 1988 - Mar 1993

Progressed rapidly within startup company (employee #12), playing integral role in design and implementation of IT infrastructure. Recruited as network analyst and promoted in quick succession to MIS director. Accountable for budgeting, recruitment, policy development, strategic planning, and vendor management. Key Accomplishments: - Supported growth from 40 to 600 employees over five years, ensuring ongoing evolution and operation of voice, data networking, desktop solutions. Defined functions, responsibilities, reporting structures and internal processes that would meet the needs of this fast-growing organization. - Developed internal software applications for customer service, asset tracking, message tracking, and customer relationship management (CRM). - Implemented two geographically dispersed call centers, while reducing costs for voice services by 35%. - Designed and implemented a corporate information technology security policy, which was a necessary component to move forward with a critical partnership with IBM. - Worked closely with the customer solution development teams to ensure requirements for the technology infrastructure and systems solutions were calibrated with their unique needs. - Prepared the organization, from an IT perspective, for a successfully executed initial public offering (IPO). This effort required detailed documentation for technology processes, architecture, and solutions. Show less

Microcomputer Support Specialist

• Feb 1986 - Jun 1988

One of the first two team members for a group that supported the hospital's PC users with all software and hardware issues. One of the first two team members for a group that supported the hospital's PC users with all software and hardware issues.

Programmer

• Jul 1984 - Sep 1987

Provided complete turnkey solutions for small and medium sized business. Created a custom customer relationship management system for the automatic assignment of attorneys for prospective clients. Provided complete turnkey solutions for small and medium sized business. Created a custom customer relationship management system for the automatic assignment of attorneys for prospective clients.