St Paul, Minnesota, United States
Retired - Technology leader with extensive IT experience with a Fortune 500 financial services company. Proven ability and success with developing and executing strategic technology roadmaps while effectively communicating with executive stakeholders. History of building high performance teams and leading challenging software implementation projects at an enterprise level as a Product Manager. Described as a technology leader with an architectural mindset. Professional Certifications: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner | ChFC / Chartered Financial Consultant | CLU / Chartered Life Underwriter | FLMI / Fellow, Life Management Institute Skills & Expertise: • Technology strategy creation and execution– Influences decision-making with senior leaders through effective presentation skills, critical and creative thinking using matrix and remote team management to implement technology solutions • Project Leadership and People Leadership – Known for building alignment and high performance project teams • Software engineering - Cloud Computing | Building Big Data solutions on AWS | Agile and DevOps experience | Custom software build and support | Cloud SaaS selection, implementation and support • Vendor Relationship Management and Contractor Management – onshore & offshore
Managed an annual multi-million dollar program budget and ensured ongoing alignment and support from executive sponsors: • Strategic Enterprise Program: Contributed actuarial and financial technology strategy leadership to enhance processes, data, and technologies associated with finance and actuarial platforms. • Big Data solutions: Led a matrixed project team consisting of global software engineers and data engineers to architect and build Big Data solutions on the AWS / Amazon Web Services platform, which was on track to achieve key metrics and KPIs such as 20% savings in associate time and elimination of thousands of spreadsheets. • Large Cloud Financial SaaS solutions: Selected and planned implementation of SAP S/4Hana financial solutions.
Responsibilities regularly expanded to increasingly complex organization-wide projects. Led a team of 33 software engineers and 4 leaders delivering high quality application development services. Transformed teams to realign with supported business departments and technology platforms: • Enterprise Document Management Services Team – Executed a current state analysis that led to revamping of team operational procedures to improve efficiency and customer service. • Large Cloud HR SaaS solutions: Selected and assisted with implementation of Workday Cloud solutions for HR or Human Capital Management. • Affiliate Acquisition Technology: Developed and executed a technology strategy to on-board acquired Canadian insurance companies to Securian’s technology environment, including repurposing existing systems and implementing a new Microsoft cloud based general ledger solution. • IT R&D Tax Credit: Advanced IT department effectiveness by leading initiatives to establish a program for collecting annual IT R&D Tax Credit information, resulting in annual tax credits of $1M+. Led a team of 22 software engineers and 2 leaders: • Enterprise LMS / Learning Management System and compliance systems for Identity and Access Management: Oversaw implementation and support. • Facilitated establishment of an IT department code reuse program to institutionalize microservices and common web service developments across multiple teams resulting in efficiency gains. • Technology Strategy Development and Execution: Partnered with affiliate Personal Finance Company to realize increased annual sales and profits through technology enhancements. • Application Portfolio Management process: Championed creating this process for the IT department including: application health assessment processes to identify technical debt and manage risk.
Led a team of 6 software developers to support HR, Finance, Treasury and Compliance functions: • Led the evaluation of several large ERP finance platform vendors resulting in the selection of PeopleSoft. • Spearheaded a large multi-year Oracle PeopleSoft HR employee self-service platform implementation, realizing >$1.5M cost savings while advancing benefits functionality and enabling employee self-service. • Managed a multi-year ERP financial system platform implementation consisting of Oracle PeopleSoft Financials and Hyperion Essbase modules. Matrix managed a large team of developers, DBAs and contractors. Reduced time to close the books and report earnings by several days.