John M. Benker

Middletown, CT adtfx1@r.postjobfree.com 860-***-**** (cell)

OPERATIONS MANAGER - SENIOR IT LEADER

~ Service Management ~ Release Management ~ Best Practice & Process Improvement ~

Highly accomplished Senior IT Professional who drives increased levels of productivity and customer satisfaction through leveraging of world class best practices. A recognized change agent in the areas of change/release and problem management, utilizing Six Sigma, ITIL and Agile methodologies to consistently improve delivery times and service levels while reducing organizational costs. A goal oriented leader with technical, process and leadership skills across multiple core IT disciplines as well as, business processes and methodologies. Extensive knowledge in ITIL methods and practices and data center infrastructure operations. Highly adept at facilitating discussions and negotiations with stakeholders. Great success in people development, project management and cross matrixed team collaboration. Additional areas of expertise include:

Change & Risk Management

Release Planning/Trends/Budgets

Operational Readiness

SLA Management & Metrics

Production Availability Mgmt

Problem/Incident Mgmt

ITIL Methodology Implementation

Continual Service Improvement

M&A Integrations

Onshore/Offshore Models

Thought Leadership

High Performance Teams

Cross Functional Collaboration

Infrastructure Project Mgmt

Certified Scrum Master

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Voya Financial Services. April 2022 – Present

Senior Incident Management Consultant

Manage incoming call queues for Severe Incident Management. Prioritizing business impacts to internal constituents and external customers for Voya’s business applications.

Work closely with IT/Business representatives and technical teams to restore service to business applications/networks/tools supporting all of Voya business both on-shore/off-shore processing.

Ensure customer concerns are addressed and resolved real time, root cause is established and prevention of any recurrence is mitigated.

Worked with the project team to implement Major Incident module into the Swebice Now Tool.

Worked with metrics team in the creation and running of Tableau reports, for service enhancements and trending.

Manage diverse teams of process and technical experts and ensure cross functional support is engaged in all incidents brining closure to each and ensuring MTR results according to SLA requirements.

Leading teams to shift efficiency. Maintained a 98% availability factor for all business applications.

Provide leadership skills, organizational ability, sound judgment, and strong cross functional analytical ability.

Liaison between business, IT and operations ensuring that all teams maintain a cohesive relationship.

General Consulting 2021 – 2022

Harvard Partners, LLC, ITIL Best Practices - Prepare assessment, findings and reccomendations for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois Incident Managemennt process.

Hybrid Pathways, LLC, Best Practies Playbook Configuration - Generate cyber serurity protocols and document playbooks for identifying, resolving and preventing cyber hacks for clients.

Cigna, Windsor CT 2013 – 09/2020

Senior Technical Advisor; Severe Incident Management:

Manage incoming call queues for Severe Incident Management. Prioritizing business impacts to internal constituents and external customers for Cigna’s business applications.

Work closely with IT/Business representatives and technical teams to restore service to business applications/networks/tools supporting all of Cigna business both on-shore/off-shore processing.

Ensure customer concerns are addressed and resolved real time, root cause is established and prevention of any recurrence is mitigated.

Worked with the project team to implement Service Now and associated modules for Incident, Problem, change management.

Worked with metrics team in the creation and running of Tableau reports.

Manage diverse teams of process and technical experts and ensure cross functional support is engaged in all incidents brining closure to each and ensuring MTR results according to SLA requirements.

Leading teams to shift efficiency. Developed strategic problem reduction plan of 25% target yearly.

Provide leadership skills, organizational ability, sound judgment, and strong cross functional analytical ability.

Liaison between business, IT and operations ensuring that all teams maintain a cohesive relationship.

Aetna, Harford, CT

Senior Technical Support Services Manager; 2003 - 2012

Head of Enterprise Change Management

Managed team of 25 Change Managers supporting infrastructure/application and facility changes across

all environments/platforms for Aetna and affiliate data centers and field offices in US and internationally.

Responsible for integrity of 25K changes annually, ensuring 100% availability goals of all business applications, infrastructure/software/vendor components company wide.

Maintained/executed best practices and industry standards using ITIL framework and supporting controls for SAS 70, SSAE 16, SOC 1, KPMG and Department of Insurance audit reviews.

Facilitated successful Release of Code from Engineering to Production by proactively & reactively working with Executives, Product Management, Development, QA and Operations.

Created/improved Release processes to minimize customer impact during changes.

Lead cross-functional team to support each Release project plan and post Release/Change review.

Provided Release services for SDLC Waterfall and Agile/Scrum.

Concurrently managed multiple Releases and Changes, cconducted and influenced program development, management, testing along with operations on release and development processes.

Led acquisition and conversion of Change Management tool from Infoplex (IBM) to BMC (Remedy). Delivered the project ahead of schedule with additional $250K in annual cost savings.

Accountable for integration support of new Health Care Reform and Government programs compliance.

Initiated build of new Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) for all Production assets and design of Cloud configuration to improve service response model by 25%.

Senior Technical Support Services Manager;

Head of Enterprise Crisis Management

Managed team of 10 Sr Technical Problem Specialists supporting system recovery processes for more than 1K production/business applications, infrastructure, software, hardware, network, ensuring Six Sigma goals.

Developed ITIL based Crisis Management recovery methods, improving MTR (mean time to recover) for all

applications by 15% average and recognized by Gartner Consulting as Best-In Class model.

Drove process efficiencies in Problem/Incident areas, through tools, root cause analysis and prevention, delivering $1M in savings from system outage reductions.

Led a matrixed team managing the integration of Aetna M&A’s into the production environment,

including desktop builds, process standards and Data Center relocations, achieving $6M in cost reduction.

Senior Technical Support Services Manager;

Head of Testing Services, Desktop Release Management

Managed availability of all Development/QA/Stress environments, and supporting components,

ensuring 100% Six Sigma goals were met.

Accountable for business release, maintenance, capacity, performance, software and vendor testing,

supporting full cycle delivery both onshore and offshore. Improved resource efficiency by 25%

Managed all Desktop Release Management functions and code migrations for all Aetna business sites

and affiliates. Improved process efficiency 33%.

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Central Connecticut State University, Business Management Marketing; New Britain, CT.

Aetna Advanced Leadership Program

Aetna CIO Senior Management Training Curriculum

TapRoot Incident Investigation/ Root Cause Analysis

Apollo Associated Services Root Analysis

Society for Information Management, Northeast Regional Leadership Forum – Babson College, MA

ITIL V2/V3 Bridging Certification

Scrum Manager Certification

Agile Methodology Foundational training

Performance Management training

Managing Diversity

Managing Talent

Employee Performance training

Windows-7; Windows XP; M/S Office; Excel; Word; PowerPoint; Access; Vizio; BMC Remedy;

Working Knowledge - SharePoint; Websphere; UDB; Oracle, MQ; Sybase; SQL; TCP/IP; VPN; TSO.

COMMUNITY & CIVIC LEADERSHIP POSITIONS

President, Highland Hill Farms Assoc., Middletown, CT 2005 - 2010

Vice President, Highland Hill Farms Assoc., Middletown, CT. 2003 – 2005

Master Mason with Columbia Lodge #25 AF&AM, South Glastonbury, CT.

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