Experience

Northwestern University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Director of Business Intelligence

  • Sep 2021 - Present

  Promoted to grow data-culture and partnerships between innovation commercialization group and other units. • Leads strategic data architecture and integration to grow data asset value to the organization. • Leads high performance multi-functional team focused on analytics, data integration, data management, financial operations and contract lifecycle management. • Enables analytics across multiple areas, finding common strategic goals and leveraging analytics insights across multiple business verticals. • Collaborates with InfoSec and General Counsel Offices to ensure data security and privacy. • Established cross-functional and cross-platform data governance frameworks, reducing redundancy and increasing level of confidence in strategic KPIs and benchmarking data. • Defines analysis goals and coordinates complex information flows, articulating data-driven insights to inform strategic decision-making, maximize investments, and galvanize stakeholders. • Grows organization innovation value by leveraging APIs and web service integrations to automate and optimize cross-system enterprise data flows enabling collaboration between units, startups and established licensees • Growing value through fostering a data-driven culture at all levels of the organization. • Saved hundreds of hours in data management by consolidating data architecture into one central innovation content management system and by integrating it with HR system personnel data, PeopleSoft ERP Financials, sponsored research grant system, Docusign CLM and the EDW. • Recruited, mentored and retained data management and analyst talent; adapting to remote and hybrid operations. • Finding insights and communicating results, their causes and their implications to executive audiences including actionable recommendations. • Headed data pipeline redesigns and migration to Tableau Prep and Server; saved five months of manual yearly financial and KPI reporting time. Show less

• Director of Finance and Technology

  • Aug 2017 - Sep 2021

  Promoted to integrate cross-functional analytics, finance, and contract and license compliance data-driven teams responsible for high-priority University initiatives demonstrating vision and leadership. Analyzes and coordinates complex information, articulating data-based insights to inform strategic decision-making, maximize investments, and galvanize stakeholders. Defines policies and procedures for data quality standards. Collaborates university-wide with school units, the Offices of Research, Procurement, General Counsel, HR and Enterprise Data Analytics to support data sharing and innovation.• Grew value through fostering a data-driven culture at all levels of the organization, building trust in data, a commitment to using and sharing it, developing analytics talent, and leading and joining forces on projects related to agile data integration and development.• Employed data governance procedures to standardize data and led to recovery of more than $250,000 in aging fees and expense reimbursements while improving stakeholder relationships.• Recruited, onboarded, and mentored talent in alignment with NU’s values and data-driven culture.• Headed data transformation from third-party vendor to secure Tableau Desktop and Server platforms; saved five months of manual reporting time.Signature Success: Multi-Year Planning, Project Management, Leadership, and Data Management Collaboration Project• Led INVO/Office of Research/Northwestern IT (NUT) system evaluation committee, and project plan for innovation data management system aligned with NU and NUIT SPSA security requirements and data integration web service priorities to enhance enterprise-wide data sharing and collaboration. • Steered contract negotiation with the Offices of Procurement, General Counsel, InfoSec Office and NUIT to align vendor requirements with NU procurement/fiscal, cloud security, and data governance and data warehouse integration standards while minimizing risk for the Enterprise. Show less

• Web Applications / IT Manager

  • Feb 2012 - Jul 2017

  • Aligned business needs and technical requirements to remodel and migrate all unstructured financial transaction data from spreadsheet ledgers, PDF invoices, CUFS legacy, and NU Financials records to a database-driven system.• Saved more than 500 yearly hours of financial processing by replacing manual invoice processing with global law firm invoicing data standard LEDES and an automated financial reconciliation system. • Reduced reporting redundancy and mitigated operational and regulatory risk by developing business intelligence and analytics standards for compliance data management and data governance. Show less



University of Chicago

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Teaching Assistant

  • Oct 2014 - Jun 2017

  Assisting Databases course professor with instructional responsibilities in the Masters Program in Computer Science. Held office hours and study sessions on various database design and database driven project topics. Concepts covered: - Entity-Relationship model and design, database design - Relational model, functional dependencies, normal forms and normalization - Relational algebra - SQL: Schema definition, Simple queries, Subqueries, Aggregation, Modifications, Joins, Views, Indexing, Constraints - Triggers, stored procedures, database connectivity - Basic PHP web programming for database interaction - Data warehousing, big data, NoSQL Show less



VIM Ventures

• Advisory Board Member

  • Feb 2014 - Aug 2016

  VIM Ventures is a “virtual incubator” that connects with innovative entrepreneurs and promising business opportunities and helps them grow through teaching, coaching, consulting and venturing. Our vision is to unlock and support potential creative energy around the globe- from Boulder to Prague. The VIM Ventures approach is built on a collective, collaborative methodology that allows individuals to work one-on-one with experienced, successful entrepreneurs in a personal, pragmatic and experiential milieu. Our participative process reduces geographic and time barriers, providing a defined sense of immediacy, and allows the entrepreneur to maintain a voice in the ownership of their valuable creation. Learn more at http://vimventures.com/ Show less



DePaul University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Adjunct Faculty

  • Sep 2015 - Jun 2016

  Taught and mentored more than 150 graduate students while adapting database design, system design and security, and Python programming course materials to focus on business needs and make them relevant to various industry sectors for the database processing for large-scale analytics course. The Database Processing for Large Scale-Analytics course covers core concepts of database systems design with focus on applications in large-scale analytics at DePaul's College of Computing and Digital Media, Masters of Science in Predictive Analytics program. Specific topics covered include: - Relational Database Model - Structured Query Language (SQL) - Database Design and Normalization - Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) using Python - Processing data structures and data analysis with tools like Pandas and NumPy - Materialized views and clustered indexes - Nontraditional database systems for unstructured data, NoSQL - Three 10-week quarters of teaching both in-class and online data science students - Each class had over 52 students and was usually 60/40 split between in-class and online students spanning a variety of industry backgrounds Show less



University of Denver

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Web Services Manager

  • Sep 2005 - Feb 2012

  - Created staffing and budgetary efficiencies, reduced part-time staff non-exemption legal risk, reduced customer service dissatisfaction and boosted staff morale by consolidating decentralized spreadsheet-based payroll planning of tens of programs staffing over 500 part-time staff per year. - Designed and developed the web-based payroll management system which processed over 75,000 shifts per year, and which saw 100% system adoption across the Division programs. - Designed and developed website content management system and custom CRM, full and promotion-specific websites to serve over 64,000 people including faculty, staff, students, alumni, sponsors, local businesses and the general public. - Grew the Division programs' social media presence and interaction from none to over 30 properties within two years and engaged thousands of community members. - Created a sustainable and customized social engagement strategy for varied products and audiences increasing sales by 10% to 25% for some programs and supporting client retention for others depending on budget and strategic needs. - Managed or assisted with hundreds of social and marketing campaigns by building and mentoring a team of 18 marketing, graphic and web design associates. - Increased customer e-newsletter open and click-through rates by 25% by prototyping communications, A/B testing, user research, and custom development. - Increased new and returning website visitors by 30% and dropped bounce rates by 25% across four different sites by analyzing user behavior, optimizing content for search engine traffic while aligning web properties and content with leadership strategy for customer engagement. Show less



Plus Concepts, Inc.

• Chicago, Denver, Global

• Interactive Marketing & Design Consultant, Founder

  • Sep 2003 - Jun 2011

  - Interactive media strategy & execution - Social Media listening, monitoring, measurement & interaction - Digital content management - Usability consulting - User interface design - Information architecture, usability testing - Technology strategy - Interactive media strategy & execution - Social Media listening, monitoring, measurement & interaction - Digital content management - Usability consulting - User interface design - Information architecture, usability testing - Technology strategy



DePaul University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Web Developer

  • Jun 2004 - Jun 2005

  - Theatre School web design and development - Web content management and design - CMS development - Design and development vendor liaison - Theatre School web design and development - Web content management and design - CMS development - Design and development vendor liaison



PERL Mortgage Inc.

• United States
• Financial Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Funding/Post-Closing Coordinator

  • Sep 2001 - Jun 2004

  - Post-closing document management - Employee training: database, software management, lender relations - Digital imaging & document storage - Search engine optimization - Post-closing document management - Employee training: database, software management, lender relations - Digital imaging & document storage - Search engine optimization