Project Manager Program Management

Barbara A. Geller, PMP, MPM, CSM

*** ***** **** **. *********, WI 53185

Mobile: 414-***-**** ********@*****.***

Professional Summary

Management professional with over 35 years of progressive business, management, and consulting experience. Successful project implementations to Organizations in the Utility, Insurance, Medical, and Manufacturing fields. Over fifteen-year tenure as an instructor of Project and Program Management courses at UOP online part-time. Ability to learn new technologies quickly.

Professional Experience

Northwestern Mutual - Milwaukee, WI May 2023 to Present

Senior Business Project Manager – Talent Management Department

Project Manager for:

oBAU (Business As Usual) project Manager for various projects, Career Conversations, Talent Review and Succession planning, and Caliper Assessments.

oCompletion of high profile company projects for Performance Reviews, Employee Goal setting and Career Conversations for managers to have with employees.

oEnterprise Learning and Development – various projects.

oCoordinated and managed regular project meetings with stakeholders to ensure timely and effective execution of project deliverables, clear roadblocks, and address risks. (CDJ)

oDeveloped a new set of Tiger Team meetings for any workstreams that need to develop deliverables and timelines for 2023. (CDJ)

oBuilt and managed a new CDJ project schedule with multiple workstreams in Wrike.

oCoordination of CDJ working session meetings and agenda topics. (CDJ)

oCoordinated meetings for 10-16-23 CDJ Go-Live along with creating Risk and Issue log to track items that came up post Go-Live. (CDJ)

oImplemented new Status Meetings and deck which included a Wrike 2-Week Look ahead and milestone by Workstream. (CDJ)

oUpdated Status deck and meeting format based on input from TMD leaders.

oResearch and Business Case developed for using Jira to manage projects which is the software used organizational wide. This was not implemented due to reorganization and creation of the HR-PMO.

oHelped in developing TMD PMO processes and procedures.

Creation of a Vendor Management Program for HR to track all vendor SOWs and MSA’s.

Creation of TMD PMO Standard Operating Procedures including a detailed SOP for Wrike Project management tool procedure and a Decision tracker to track decisions made in meetings for the various CDJ workstreams.

Provide updates to Program Level HR IS report, HR CEE Newsletter, and EX PMT. I provided my input to the CDJ Workstream leads and asked them for input and feedback before submitting the reports.

Learned the Wrike software while creating CDJ schedule and preparing detailed SOP for Wrike

Senior Program Manager – Field Career July 2021 to April 2023

Program Management for Ctrl-F (Operational Excellence) project being worked on in 2022 and 2023. Responsible for successful implementation for the Enterprise Service Delivery business area. Worked with ESD leaders and senior leaders to ensure their teams were part of the Ctrl-F

Interviewing and screening candidates for Project Scrum team and the Field Career Tech Initiatives team

Scrum master for multiple Contract License and Registration (CLR) teams working on various technologies.

Tech Initiatives Forecast (TIF) – Coordinator for multiple teams. TIF work involved becoming familiar with multiple technologies and the ability to gather information on each TIF to assess the impact the TIF would have on the CLR area.

SCRUM team manager of Earth Team working with various technologies within Field Career and managing internal and external resources both onshore and offshore.

Program Management Consultant – Risk Client Services February 2019 to July 2021

Project/Program management working with various business areas to coordinate work that is needed from the AMO BRT team to ensure that resources are available and there is a balance between daily support work and project work needing to be done. Working closely with Stakeholders, Product Owners and Engineering/ Information Technology leadership to prioritize and schedule project work.

Management of project work for the AMO BRT team ensuring sign off is completed in a timely manager. Set up and manage a Jira board for the AMO Team and maintain a resource sheet with yearly projects of work and update Senior Leadership’s quarterly projections for the team.

Project Funded member of the Readiness Adoption team for Universal Life Platform (ULP) which successfully went live on 11-11-19.

Development and Validation of Future State Process Flows for impact to Universal Life going live on the UL platform on 11-11-19.

Identification and Development of training needs for 11-11-19 ULP readiness.

Working closely with Benefits Business Partners and Information Technology to ensure readiness for 11-11-19.

Working with Information Technology (IT) and various Business Partners to ensure any manual processing has a smooth hand off and hand back after completion between IT and Business Partners. Worked with IT to ensure SLAs continue to be met with additional manual processing until Day 2 work is completed.

Identification of UL Platform communication needs to Field, Clients, and Home office

Identifying and preparing a Disaster Plan if there are spikes or downtrends in Life policy sales after 11-11-19.

Senior Engineer /Scrum Master – Field Career January 2017 to February 2019

Developed MS Project schedule for BPM Upgrade project as it was not a good fit to be run as a SCRUM project.

Removing impediments that each team faces so they can meet their PI and Sprint Objectives

Facilitation of SAFe and Scrum team ceremonies

Communicating and working with other teams within the train on Dependencies

Preparation and Presentation of Sprint Reviews with Business Partners and Stakeholders

Facilitation of Sprint Retro to encourage team to look for continuous improvements.

Identification of resource needs

Main point of contact for moving stories from TFS to JIRA.

Management of Vendor Invoices, approvals, and Budgets of the 2 Scrum teams I am managing.

Coaching the team on improving the use of Scrum principles, best practices and delivering the highest business value to our business partners

Providing leadership to the teams of on and offshore resources

Working closely with the RTE, PO, and PM to ensure the highest priority work is being delivered with the highest business value.

Senior Project Manager - Enterprise Projects & Support December 2015 to January 2017

Involved in SRC Program Intake process gathering Level 0 estimates with various SRC, Brokered Teams, and other Business areas.

Project oversight of various teams working under SRC funding to ensure that Budgets were met.

Helped with the Development of the SRC Visual Management Board and scheduling and running SAFe Planning events.

Worked closely with RTE’s to get the SAFe framework implemented within SRC.

Budget management of $2 million dollars of additional funding SRC received from other business areas for work to be done in 2016. Management included projections of resources and funds to meet expected budgets and ensuring that resources were logging their time accurately in Trackview.

System Software Engineer Consultant May 2015 to December 2015

Infrastructure Lead coordinating brokered resources for NM Connect (NMC) working with many business areas and multiple technologies.

Learning various new technologies and able to come up to speed quickly with AWS web services and various other technologies.

Coordination of brokered resources for several small projects within the NM Connect program.

Management of Backlog of work items for Engineering for NMC.

Participation in planning events and budget estimations for brokered resources.

Senior Project Manager / Scrum Master – Enterprise Projects & Support December 2014 to May 2015

Started new SRC Delivery team and coached team to work in a Scrum environment – team increased Sprint Velocity very quickly although they were new to Scrum and NM to implement Authorized Rep.

Daily project management of backlog, team meetings, brokered team coordination and communications, coordination with offshore teams, and resource needs.

HTC Global (On-site at State Farm Insurance) – Bloomington IL November 2012 to December 2014

Project Manager / Scrum Master

Managing Customer Agent Selection project of 25+ resources and Budget $3,000,000+ with multiple implementations in 2014 and 2015. Managed project presentations to Governance and review boards and Project checkpoints to obtain additional funding.

Managing Multi-Office Agent project to be implemented in the US and Canada. Negotiation’s and monitoring of Vendor work order. Management of 30+ onsite and offshore project resources. Budget management of $2,000,000 plus Vendor work order management.

Daily project management of risks, issues, budget, schedule, scope, resources, and communication.

ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) – Decatur IL January 2011 to November 2012

Project Manager II

Program Management Office (PMO) Lead included developing policies and procedures and managing a program Budget of $42,000,000+ and 100+ internal and vendor project resources globally.

Program/Project management for Global Financial Reporting project in North and South America.

COUNTRY Financial May 2010 to December 2010

ITS Project Manager

Managing project and developing Analysis and Testing Methodology process improvement to clearly define Requirements Gathering through Testing for Business Analysts.

Closely worked with International Institute of Business Analysts (IIBA) to create reusable templates and processes for Business Analysts consistency with projects. Trained in Six Sigma Yellow Belt.

Memorial Health Systems November 2008 to May 2010

IT Project Manager

•Project Manager on 2-year Electronic Health Record program implementation with budget of $4+ million dollars. Successful implementation at 5 locations without impacting patient care and wait times.

•Extensive Contributor in PMO start-up and develop standardized processes and procedures and training to promote Project Management across the organization. Start-up of 2 Urgent Care Facilities.

TEK Systems, Bloomington, IL (at State Farm Insurance) 2005 to November 2008

Project Planner / TEK Systems On-site Team Lead

•Planning and scheduling of projects from initiation through closure including scope, schedule, resources (internal and offshore), communication, budget, risks, issues, and lessons learned.

•On-site Team Lead responsibilities included mentoring and monitoring performance of TEK Systems consultants along with working with TEK Systems Management on yearly contract negotiations.

Projects:

Business Process Improvement making changes to various life, auto, heath, or fire policies to improve efficiency and compliance. Over 200 resources with a budget of $1,800,000+.

SFPP and Inbound Performance Report Enhancements allowing Managers and Supervisors to run Rep. performance reports on demand and develop ad-hoc reports. Over 50 on-site, off-site, and offshore resources with a budget of $800,000.

Agency Credit Card allowing Agents to accept Credit Card payments in their office. Resources of 125 including on-site and offshore with a budget of $2,500,000.

Consultant – Lead Project Business Analyst

•Project requirements gathering, planning, estimating, and managing other Business Analysts.

•Preparing training and documentation of current complex systems and procedures along with new systems and procedures.

Projects:

Combining 2 separate Mainframe Policy Payment Systems into 1 Mainframe system created efficiency of using 1 system and ease of use by users.

WE Energies, Milwaukee, WI January 1980 to November 2004

Functional Consultant (Project Manager) – Customer IT Services 1999 to 2004

•Liaison between business units and IT for projects and service work

Team Leader Customer Contact Center 1996 to 1999

•Manager of 35+ employees in a 250 seat 24/7 Call center. Duties included: performance reviews, call quality compliance, team building, employee advancement, hiring, release of employees, and training.

Senior Cust. Acct. Rep. / Cust. Consultant 1980 to 1996

•Taking customer payments and move orders. Created call scripts for use on various phone calls.

Projects:

Customer Service Solution (CSS) system Conversion (2001) Merging of billing systems for We Energies and Wisconsin Gas. Successful implementation on 6 months accelerated timeline.

Credit and Collection Process Redesign / Process Improvement – Successfully managed a team of 25 resources to reduce Uncollectible revenue by over $2m and increase field collections by 75%.

EDUCATION

MPM (Masters Project Management) with Honors, Keller Graduate School of 03/2006

BA, Accounting Specialization with Computer Studies Minor, Alverno College, Milwaukee, WI 12/1996

TRAINING

Online Instructor part-time for University of Phoenix for Project and Program Management since 2008

Informatica, Six Sigma Yellow Belt, and various Management and Skills enhancement trainings

SAFe for Teams, PM and PO

Advanced Scrum Master / NM DOJO

CERTIFICATIONS

SCRUM Master Certified (Agile Development)

PMP Certified Project Manager with PMI

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