Project Manager Management

Location:

North York, ON, Canada

Posted:

August 02, 2013

Contact this candidate

Resume:

Background

As a seasoned Project Manager, I possess over 13 years of experience in the

Retail Banking, Wealth Management, Technology, and Retail Services sectors

with a focus on Project Management in operational and IT driven

initiatives. I have effectively managed projects of both a business and

technical nature, including credit card and prepaid card product launches,

systems and application development, network and infrastructure upgrades,

business process redesign, product development, call center, and platform

conversion projects.

I hold a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the

Project Management Institute (PMI) and an Information Technology

Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundations certification from the

Examination Institute for Information Science (EXIN). I am presently

pursuing a Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB) certification from the American

Society for Quality (ASQ).

Profile

- Proven track record of delivering projects on time and on budget,

within the agreed to scope and with the expected level of quality

- Excellent ability to work in high pressure, high volume environments

and to work through ambiguity

- Capable of managing multiple mid-sized projects of 20+ resources with

budgets ranging from 500k to 2.5M

- Able to conduct in-depth risk discovery sessions with stakeholders to

uncover project and business risks, conduct risk response planning,

and apply appropriate mitigating activities

- Experience managing large cross-functional teams in matrix

organizations

- Able to track and monitor project progress and escalate issues to

upper management using appropriate channels

- Over 36 months experience relating to the Canadian migration of Credit

& Debit Cards and Point-of-Sale Terminals to the global EMV/Chip & PIN

standard

- 10 years of proposal writing, business case preparation, developing

project strategy documents, and Statement of Work documents

- Excellent ability to work with and communicate to senior and C-level

management

Recent Work Experience

Jan '12 - Present

Sr. Project Manager, Credit Cards (Contract)

RBC Royal Bank, Card Operations

From January 2012 to present I have worked as a Senior Project Manager with

RBC Royal Bank as part of the Card Operations Project Management Office. As

a Project Manager within Card Operations, I am responsible for establishing

and leading enterprise-wide, cross functional strategic initiatives for

credit cards. I manage projects related to retail credit origination

application development, client conversions, new product launches, and gift

card product changes.

My duties include:

- Managing complex projects involving multiple internal and external

stakeholders

- Integrating people, process, and technology to deliver a robust and

holistic solution meeting the needs of all parties

- Rigorously managing project scope to ensure commitments are achieved

within agreed time, cost, and quality parameters

- Managing the deliverables of external vendors including TSYS, Gemalto,

FIS, iGate, and Symcor

- Defining and tracking project milestones through a well developed,

maintained, and integrated schedule

Past Work Experience

Mar '11 - Dec '11

Project Manager, Infrastructure (Contract)

Macquarie Group, SDD - Service Design & Development

From March 2011 to December 2011 I worked as a Project Manager with the

Macquarie Group, a global provider of banking, financial, advisory,

investment and funds management services. As Project Manager within the

Service Design & Development team, I was responsible for managing multiple

concurrent infrastructure projects including new facility builds, facility

renovations, and Data Center migrations.

My responsibilities included managing the Networks, Windows Engineering,

Telephony, Desktop, Data Center Management, UNIX, Storage, and Backup Team

resources for the project. The projects I managed required the successful

planning and implementation of WAN/LAN networks, IPC turret systems,

communication/LAN room relocations, and workstation deployment for business

locations across Canada and the US.

My duties included:

- Conducting detailed analysis and planning to obtain accurate estimates

and minimize late stage changes to scope, costs, and resource

requirements

- Working with Service Transition and Service Operations to effectively

promote new services into production

- Managing critical dependencies and constraints to ensure the project

meets planned dates

- Communicating regularly with stakeholders via appropriate channels

- Using Earned Value analysis to track and monitor project progress

against plan

Sept '10 - Feb '11

Project Manager, Systems Conversion (Contract)

American Express, AET - American Express Technology

From September 2010 to February 2011 I worked as a Project Manager within

American Express Technology as part of International Consumer Card and

Small Business Services. As Project Manager, I was responsible for managing

a large national credit card platform conversion. I was responsible for

managing a large project team of global and regional business and

technology partners, sub-project Project Managers, Business Systems

Analysts, System Architects, and developers. This initiative was a top

priority project requiring development on over 30 sub-systems and the

conversion of an entire consumer charge card portfolio.

My duties included:

- Building strong, cross-functional relationships with leaders in other

key functional groups

- Ensuring compliant business processes are followed

- Serving as the single point of contact for all business and technology

partners

- Conducting due diligence sessions with business groups

- Ensuring legacy and regional platforms and technologies were

decommissioned

- Coordinating the activities of multiple technology and development

groups

- Coordinating a globally distributed project team (North America,

Europe, Latin America)

Aug '09 - July '10

Project Manager, Solutions Delivery (Contract)

President's Choice Financial

From August 2009 to July 2010 I worked as a Project Manager with

President's Choice Financial, managing projects related to the PC Financial

MasterCard line of business. As Project Manager I was ultimately

responsible for the delivery of projects to the business partner, meeting

the approved scope, cost, schedule, and quality expectations for the

project.

During my time at President's Choice Financial I successfully managed the

development, testing, and certification of EMV Chip cards. This project was

a high priority initiative at the bank and we delivered the project in 6

months and under budget. The migration to chip technology required the

coordinated participation of multiple partners and vendors including First

Data (host processing), Giesecke & Devrient (card production) and

MasterCard Worldwide (Network certification, CPV and ETED card

certification, production BIN changes). This project was critical to

meeting the MasterCard 2010 liability shift date.

Key responsibilities as Project Manager included:

- Working with the business partner to deliver to the expectations

outlined in the business case

- Conducting risk discovery sessions with stakeholders and Enterprise

Risk

- Assessing ambiguous situations and providing clarity to the team and

stakeholders as required

- Recommending best solutions to upper management

- Resolving issues and barriers through negotiation and control

processes

- Managing external vendors and third parties through integrated

delivery management and change management practices

Sept '07 - March '09

Project Manager, IT Infrastructure (Contract)

Shoppers Drug Mart

From September 2007 to March 2009 I worked as a Project Manager with

Shoppers Drug Mart, reporting jointly between the IT Management Services

division and Enterprise Infrastructure Engineering. As part of my duties, I

managed the end-to-end delivery of IT projects to deliver fully production

ready solutions. I managed cross-functional teams of IT and business

resources and worked regularly with Director and Executive level management

to manage road-blocks and gain overall project acceptance.

As Project Manager at Shoppers Drug Mart, I worked on several key

initiatives including the construction of several new office floors and the

re-construction of a facility for operational and disaster recovery use.

The facility reconstruction project had very aggressive timelines in order

to support a 65+ person project team which would be located at the site

working on a top priority project. I managed the design and installation of

server rooms, site cabling for voice and data, HVAC, network switches, AV

installation, and PC installation and set-up. Also, as part of this

project, I managed the adoption and installation of a secure Network Access

Server (NAS) in order to segregate staff and vendors based on access

credentials.

Key accountabilities included:

- Coordinating the activities of the Enterprise Infrastructure

Engineering, Solution Architecture, IT Security, Database,

Communications/Telephony, LAN/Networking, Corporate Application, Store

Systems, Desktop support groups, IT Help Desk, and customer service

center

- Developing, planning, analyzing, evaluating and assigning priorities

to deliverables and requirements

- Managing the acquisition and utilization of resources by working with

resource managers to secure the resources required for the project

Feb '07 - Aug '07

Project Manager, Systems (Contract)

American Express, AET - American Express Technology, Canadian Solution

Centre

From February 2007 to August 2007 I worked as a Project Manager within the

American Express Technology Canadian Solutions Centre. I worked on

contract, operating virtually from my home-office, with American Express as

Project Manager for the World Wide Credit Authorization Systems (WWCAS)

based out of the United States. As part of my mandate with American

Express, I was responsible for the management of multiple projects relating

to system development for the credit authorization systems.

My responsibilities included:

- Managing and delivering multiple simultaneous projects on budget and

on schedule

- Coordinating the activities of multiple technology and development

groups

- Working closely with clients to ensure changing resource and project

requirements are met and understood

- Managing technical software development projects relating to Credit

Authorization Systems

- Managing projects in accordance with the project governance and

project management methodology

- Ensuring SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) compliance

- Ensuring stakeholder buy-in on criteria for successful project

delivery

- Communicating effectively with all stakeholders to ensure awareness of

project objectives, needs and status

- Controlling changes to ensure any requested change supports the goals

of the project

- Coordinating resources distributed world-wide across multiple time-

zones (North America, Asia, Europe, Latin America)

Dec '05 - March '06

Project Manager, Client Integration (Contract)

American Express, Travelers Cheques and Prepaid Services Division

During my time with American Express I worked as a Project Manager within

the Travelers Cheques and Prepaid Services Division (TCPS), responsible for

Systems Automation and Implementation for Canada and the Northern United

States. My position was home-office based reporting in to the US office.

As part of my mandate with American Express, I was responsible for the

management of multiple projects relating to automation upgrades and service

delivery. I managed projects relating to MICR-line encoded products, pre-

paid products, Virtual Systems, and Embedded Systems.

I worked on implementations with major Canadian Banks and Credit Unions.

Among the system implementations I managed was ExpressPASS, a browser based

application that provides interactive transactions for selling, buying,

refunding, and exchanging all American Express products. Additionally, I

managed projects related to the Reader/ Sorter system, allowing the capture

of sales information with Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) item

processing equipment and the reporting of this information via electronic

transmission.

My responsibilities within the Travelers Cheques and Prepaid Services

Division included:

- Ensuring assigned projects are delivered on time, on scope and on

budget

- Creating proposals for projects and initiatives

- Working with multiple business units to facilitate communication and

resolution of issues and assigned tasks

- Conducting information analysis to determine target accounts and

market opportunity

- Managing critical tasks and issues to ensure resolution in a timely

fashion and to minimize project impact

- Reporting regularly to management on project status and progress

- Preparing project timelines based on the defined scope and with input

from work package owners

Sept '05 - Dec '05

Project Manager, EMV Acquirer Migration (contract)

F d ration des caisses Desjardins du Qu bec (Desjardins Credit Union)

Between September 2005 and December 2005 I worked on contract with the

F d ration des caisses Desjardins du Qu bec (Desjardins Credit Union) as

Project Manager for the Acquirer component of the Visa and Interac EMV Chip

Migration Project. Within the EMV Chip Migration Project at the F d ration

des caisses Desjardins du Qu bec, I was responsible for the readiness of

the Acquirer business side, specifically the Point-of-sale solutions.

My responsibilities as Project Manager included:

- Managing the POS Acquirer Migration Project

- Preparing detailed training and reference material on EMV, Visa Chip

Migration, and Best Practice Implementation guidelines

- Recommending solutions that are technically feasible and that address

business needs and meet Association requirements

- Identifying EMV business and technical requirements for the

development of Point-of-sale systems

- Ensuring Operational impacts and best practices are considered,

understood, and implemented

June '01 - Aug '05

Project Manager, Operational Initiatives & Service Delivery (Permanent)

Moneris Solutions (Royal Bank/Bank of Montreal)

In my role as Project Manager, I was responsible for project managing the

implementation of small and medium-size projects. Coordinating the

activities of several different groups within the Operations division, as

well as Marketing, IT, Sales, Telecom and external partners, I worked to

roll out new or enhanced products and services to achieve planned business

goals.

As part of my duties, I was responsible for:

- Managing multiple cross-functional project teams of Project

Leaders, Team Leaders, and Subject Matter Experts throughout the

project lifecycle

- Preparing proposal documents, RFP/RFI's, detailed statement of work

documents

- Preparing Project Charters, Implementation Plans, and other project