Omar Essader

Program Manager/ PMO Advisor / Program Portfolio Manager

Management Profile

Omar Essader is a senior executive with 25years’ experience in operations and information technology, a proven track record in leading teams in the training, development and implementation of major technology solutions to align with business goals. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated an outstanding blend of expertise in Project Management, Critical Account Management, Hardware and Software IT implementations, and state-of-the-art information systems. Omar is highly-proficient as a strategic decision-maker and business planner to maximize profitability. He is able to effectively lead cross-functional teams with diverse technical and cultural backgrounds to enable performance excellence and results. Omar is an effective communicator and experienced trainer who conducted several project management trainings customized specifically to the audience level and complexity.

Summary of Qualifications and Attributes

Managed projects +10 million USD

Managed critical customer’s accounts Such as AT&T, Morgan Stanley, Wal-Mart and Wachovia.

Formation of Project Management Office from start-up to high performance

Masters in Project Management Certificate

Project management experience including resources allocation, conflict resolution, and issue mitigation

A Master trainer for Project Management and IBM troubleshooting

Managing distributed matrix teams with on- and off-shore resources.

Managed all phases of software development life cycle (SDLC)

Excel in a fast-paced and high stakes environment and manages multiple demands concurrently

Effective communicator and trainer

Vendor evaluation and selection

Proven managerial skills

Self-motivated and self-manager; able to set effective priorities to achieve immediate and long-term goals while meeting operational deadlines

Highly developed interpersonal skills, mobilizing and motivating a diverse group of professionals, clients, and staff members

Certifications

EIT.

MPM

PMPc

Technical Skills

Software: Operating Systems: (VM/MVS, Dec VAX/VMS Sun Solaris, UNIX/AIX, Win 2000, XP, Vista, AS/400, LINUX, HP, Windows7) MS suite, MS Projects, MS PowerPoint, MS Visio, MS Outlook, MQ-Series, Lotus Suite, Word, Excel, WordPerfect, Oracle, Remedy, DB2, SQL, Web-Sphere.

Hardware: IBM, HP Systems

Professional Experience

Feb ’17 – PresentProgram Manager -- MetLife

Cary, North Carolina

Leads multiple teams and parallel work streams in delivery of quality software and technology solutions, working

closely with technical teams to develop and track release milestones and schedules.

Coordinates with partners to deliver value and realization of clear business benefits.

Builds relationships with business and technology executives and user/customer base.

Develops and manages program plans, work process investment plan, demand and project staging plans with

business partners and shared services.

Accountable for large program or portfolio of projects upwards of $10 million including IBM Watson, BZFlowBizFlowworkflow for NIGO, and Cogito.

Successfully shepherded the IT portion of the Master Services Agreement (MSA) with IT Procurement for

Cogito, negotiating Data Privacy, Security, Cloud Connectivity and overall End-to-End technical support/

maintenance details through various detailed discussions and reviews, and SIPREC testing.

Firmly manages teams of senior project managers, vendors, and technical leads in a highly matrixed organization

with potential overall program team size from 40 to greater than 100 resources.

Identifies and coordinates heavy interdependencies to ensure timing and alignment of releases, hardware, and

resources.

Ensures communication, coordination of activities, and issue resolution amongst core team members, senior

management and other stakeholders.

Manages focused project recovery activities including quick situational analysis, needs assessment, and hands-on collaboration to bring in distressed projects and teams back on track.

Manages project plan structuring, scheduling and leveling, tracks resource allocation, budget forecasting, dependency and milestones in MS Project and CA Clarity PPM.

May ’14 – Jan ‘17PMO Consultant / Advisor Self-Employed

Durham, North Carolina

Providing project management (PM) advisory services that focus on the program, project, and PMO optimization.

Providing pre-designed solutions for designing/creating/operating project management office (PMO), developing custom PM training, performing project risk mitigation including project evaluation audits, and rescuing failing projects.

Oct ‘12 - Feb ‘14 PMO Project Portfolio Manager/Program Manager--Cisco Systems,Inc

Morrisville, North Carolina

Managed and coordinated IT teams through the entire agile project lifecycle including requirements, development, QA testing/quality assurance and Enterprise Release Management Office requirements for release deployment.

Managed 3 Revenue programs and Revenue Business Intelligence teams consisting of 6 IT project managers, 3 business architects, 5 business analysts and business intelligence professionals

Effectively played many roles including Technical Mentor, Resource Manager (staff and budget) and Project/Program Manager.

Managed scope, the process to collect change requests, risk and issue management.

Participated/overseen proof of concepts and pilots for system solutions and or other activities to support validation through the project life-cycle.

Worked cross functionally across geographies representing local teams, with subject matter experts to define and develop requirements.

Worked with the local IT teams in the resolution of country specific needs/ issues.

Worked closely with product designers, business stakeholders, other systems teams and analysts to implement solutions and to synchronize plans and resources.

Proactively resolved barriers and issues that inhibited short and long-term goals.

Utilized strong technical experience and project management skills to ensure software product development is delivered on time and of the highest quality.

Committed to working in a team environment and facilitated work done in multiple locations including off-shore.

Responsible for the high-level governance of a collection of projects / programs, which may or may not be interdependent.

Managed a collection of projects selected to secure the achievement of organization's overall vision and strategies.

Managed the project life-cycle in support for several key initiatives for Advanced Services accountable for end–to-end project management activities.

Worked with PMO Leader to manage a team of Project Managers, with the support of the PMO in order to deliver a number of clearly defined projects, within timescales, budget and to the quality expected.

Assisted the PMO Leader to structuring and daily management of the PMO, looking to continuously improve and implement best practice.

May ‘10 - Aug ‘11

Head of PMO -- HBH Corporation

Durham, North Carolina

Formulated the Project Management Office for HBH which included the creation of PMO policies, procedures, processes, templates and forms to enable project ownership and successful implementation to minimize project risk.

Staffing, training, coaching and mentoring for the project management team and engineers by creating a full orientation and training program to include project implementation from conception to closure

Created shared libraries to hold the different project management methodologies to promote learning

Evaluated training and accreditation to maintain accreditation with major partner technologies

Acted as an organization-wide advocate for project management processes within the business

Evaluated project implementation deficiencies and implement corrective measures by establishing methodologies to account for improvements and best practices

Tracked project status information and created consolidated project audit reports with metrics for management

Evaluated customer feedback and concern while insuring the highest level of customer satisfaction

Tracked organization-wide metrics on the state of project management, project delivery, and the value being provided to the business by assessing the general project delivery environment on an ongoing basis to determine the result of improvement initiatives

Ensured timely and accurate invoicing, and monitors receivables for projects

Built a knowledge base of each client's business, organization and objectives

Built the strategy for the implementation division to align with the company objectives, developed annual budget, goals and KPIs to measure effectiveness

Provided recruitment, staffing and management of the Project Management office

Assisted in devising business plans including potential acquisition/outsource opportunities, process improvements, and optimization of Human Resources structure

Built monthly business reporting framework for management showing project implementation status, revenue recognition and resource utilization

Created a governance model for the implementation division to include the technical as well as the project management team

Led and managed a team of professionals including 4 PMO project managers.

Implemented process changes to improve on customer satisfaction based on PMI methodology

Managed supply chain/warehousing to minimize cost and delivery risks

Aug ‘06 - Feb‘10

Sr. Project Manager -- CDI / CNS

Abu Dhabi, UAE

Strong project management, technical and leadership skills; Proven ability to excel in a team environment; Results- Driven, Excels in Challenges, Dedicated, Energetic, Flexible, Reliable, Responsive, Excellent Work Ethic. SDLC project management experience. Demonstrated excellence as an Infrastructure, Transition, Delivery, Software, Application, IT Project Manager for CDI’s Outsourcing division. Led and managed multiple projects at a customer site to up-grade their current environment to the state of the art systems to improve performance, system enhancements, functionality and disaster recovery. Worked with multiple customer organizations, led, managed and coordinated the effort to complete a number of successful projects on time and within budget. Facilitated effective communication between account teams and customers. Utilized Microsoft Office Suite, Project, Excel, Word PowerPoint, Remedy, Change Management, Lotus Notes. Rational Portfolio Manager (RPM) to track projects, provide status, risk, issue, change control and management reports Accomplishments/Experience.

Successfully Managed Large Infrastructure projects, delivered On-Time and within budget.

Managed all phases of software development life cycle (SDLC) including the requirements analysis, architecture design, development, testing, deployment and ongoing support for all web-based applications and services.

Trained project teams on project reporting

Negotiated deadlines and ensured stakeholder satisfaction

Successfully Managed complex enterprise wide initiatives, covering various platforms utilizing distributed matrix teams with on- and off-shore resources.

Proactively developed and presented training on PM processes and tools

Successfully mentored/trained new and experienced team members

Engagement Review Project Manager responsibilities include single-point-of-contact for CDI/CNS Internal eBusiness accounts for projects assigned for those deployments requiring dedicated hardware

Personal Management of 21 Direct reports consisting of a team of professionals including 6 project managers and 15 engineers covering different technologies; DATA and IP and Voice; HP and Sun Systems, Datacenters design and implementation as well as structured cabling.

Additionally, responsible for hiring, terminating, and conducting performance reviews for new and existing employees.

Developed new hire training plans to ensure new employees were productive as soon as possible, across all areas.

Developed account strategies

Responsible for cost control processes

Collect and analyze metrics

Make continuous improvement of the internal operations process and procedure

Report operations performance

Communicate policy, technical and personnel changes to employees

Perform impact analysis of current operations

Process customer requests for additional work

Support the development and maintenance of the project control process

Responsible for customer strategic planning

Developed on-shore solutions to staffing challenges

Developed working processes and metrics as appropriate and manage to these metrics

Developed new hire training plans to ensure new employees are productive as soon as possible.

Negotiated contracts and Statements of Work (SOW).

Reviewed/developed working processes to ensure maximum efficiency in work efforts.

Managed communication with employees, peers, and upper management of customer (Director and VP level)

Facilitated positive relationships between customer/stakeholders and CDI personnel.

Interfaced with clients to secure application and software project details, negotiated deadlines and ensured customer satisfaction

June ‘98 – Jun ‘06

Software Engineer/Team Leader -- IBM,

Research Triangle Park, NC

Supported fast-growing IBM e-business tool MQSeries, working with message routing systems to set up queues and message transformation.

As a third shift Team Lead, I supervised a group of 7 Software engineers supporting different platforms.

Software defining data inputs, outputs, and transformation rules on different platforms.

Recognized as subject matter expert on MQSeries.

Managed many rollout of software architecture and system integration applications.

Managed critical customer’s accounts Such as AT&T, Morgan Stanley, Wal-Mart and Wachovia.

Driven customer requirements for Technical support

Assumed the role of primary point of contact both internally and externally.

Established communication and reporting capabilities to enable complete visibility of issue resolution and status to the leadership team, stakeholders, and all customer contacts.

Provided awareness and visibility of issues to internal and external customers, secured account team and/or executive sponsorship, and acted as an advocate for the customer to ensure service delivery and performance.

Trained first and second level support on problem analysis methods

Created manuals for problem troubleshooting

Evaluated and tested potential new tools.

Contributed to the growth of MQ Support WEB content and knowledge base via DCF (Document Central Facility).

Trained and mentored new employees.

Superior support for World Trade (Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, others) and US resulted in MQ team achieving all key MQ Support metrics targets and goals for both queues.

Demonstrated a strong commitment to customer satisfaction and support for team by continuously improving personal skills base.

In-depth problem determination skills across Windows and UNIX-based platforms

Proactively identified and eliminated barriers that can interfere with best practices and mean-time-to-resolution.

Provided thought leadership for requirements and provide guidance for issue resolution.

Proactively engaged with local teams that will ensure smooth operation and adoption within IBM and with external customers/partners.

Expedited 3rd tier developer resolution if problem required escalation.

Timely follow-up assured customer satisfaction with proposed solutions.

Regardless of technical level or country, collaborated and consulted with all support

team members to provide seamless and excellent customer support.

Frequently traveled to customer locations to diffuse and resolve critical issues in a manner that increased customer loyalty to IBM products.

Demonstrated leadership skills by taking on additional responsibilities including those requiring project management, providing team and performance metrics.

Jan ‘94 - May ‘98

Sr. System Analyst/ Technical Consultant / Team Leader --IBM,

Research Triangle Park, NC

Responsibilities included running Function Verification Tests (FVT) on ISPF, OS/2 full screens, REXX and C programs to ensure that modifications and enhancements made to Dialog Manager met product functional specifications.

Provided technical support to end users of IT products Lotus Notes, Lotus Smartsuite, Win95, WinNT, OS2, TCP/IP, PComm, VM, MVS, Lan Access, DOS, and Internet.

Resolved user problems consulting with multiple databases to retrieve essential information.

Trained consultants on CPMA, (MVS problem tracking tool) and new employees, as team leader. SME on national marketing program used for IBM revenue forecasting and tracking.

Aug ‘90 - May ‘93

Teaching Assistant-- NC State University, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Trained and certified about 100 seniors per semester in practical, hands-on machine shop fabrication. Teaching encompassed all aspects of design process including problem definition, establishing objectives, preliminary and detailed design, to fabrication and testing of prototypes. Advised students on individual projects and consistently met stringent deadlines for certification.

Education

MS in Mechanical Engineering

North Carolina State University. Raleigh, NC

BS in Mechanical Engineering

North Carolina State University. Raleigh, NC

Master's Certificate in Project Management

George Washington University, Washington, DC,

Certified to manage projects of medium complexity with up to 40 team members

Relevant Coursework included:

Project Management Fundamentals, Financial Management for Project Managers,

Leadership in a Project Team Environment, Advanced Leadership, Contracting for Project Managers, Applied Scheduling, CA SuperProject& MS Project,

Applied Management and Execution Using PM Tool Suite: BMWB, Applied Project

Management in a Customer Environment

1 Lynnwood Valley Court Durham, NC 27703

919 : 822 : 2879Home

919 :904 : 8030Cell

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