Senior Program Operations & Strategy Leader

APEKSHA CHAVAN PMP Senior Program Operations & Strategy Leader

Program & Portfolio Management Workforce & Resource Strategy Strategy & Operations India • *****************@*****.*** • +91-908******* • LinkedIn • Portfolio PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Strategic Operations & Program Leadership executive with a PMP (Above Target) & a proven record of building high-performance delivery ecosystems across 6-region global portfolios (India, EMEA, Americas, Indonesia, Brazil, Africa). Currently sole owner of workforce operations across 26 active projects & 13+ BD pipelines, governing ~90 resources (51 FTE + 39 contractors) & acting as the strategic bridge between leadership, delivery, & hiring. At Purpose Global, sustained 90%+ global timesheet compliance, drove an estimated 15-25% reduction in workforce cost leakage, & reduced over-allocation exposure by 15-20%, while maintaining delivery continuity across 40+ concurrent projects. Maersk's track record includes $2M in revenue leakage prevention & a 35% NPS improvement. Known for operating effectively within complex organizational realities, translating ambiguous, incomplete, & politically layered inputs into cost-aware execution strategies that protect margins, prevent mis-hiring, & sustain delivery quality at scale.

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Workforce & Resource Strategy: FTE + contractor workforce governance across 6 regions

• Capacity Planning & Forecasting: 12-week rolling forecasts integrating delivery demand & BD pipeline

• Contractor Lifecycle Management: Scoping, onboarding, performance tracking, cost-to-skill fit, offboarding

• End-to-End Hiring & Talent Ops: Role validation, screening, multi-round coordination, decision advisory

• Delivery Risk Management: Dependency mapping, early risk identification, trade-off advisory to leadership

• Program & Portfolio Management: PMP certified; concurrent multi-program portfolio oversight

• Process Improvement & Governance: Workflow redesign, systems architecture, reporting automation

• Stakeholder Advisory: Structured recommendations to mid-to-senior leadership across delivery, hiring & resourcing

• Cross-Cultural Leadership: Multi-geography teams; India, Indonesia, EMEA, North America, Brazil, Africa

• People Sustainability: Burnout prevention, workload rebalancing, over-allocation monitoring PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Program Operations & Workforce Strategy Lead Purpose Global Dec 2024 - May 2026 Sole owner of workforce strategy & operational decision-making across a 90-resource global portfolio, spanning internal resourcing, contractor management, end-to-end hiring, & budget-driven cost optimization across 6 regions. Workforce Strategy & Capacity Planning

• Maintained a 12-week rolling capacity forecasting system integrating delivery demand & pipeline activity across 26 active projects & 13 BD pipelines, reducing reactive last-minute staffing decisions by an estimated 30-40%.

• Served as decision-support partner to leadership, synthesizing operational inputs into structured cost-vs-risk-vs-speed options, contributing to an estimated 15-25% reduction in workforce cost leakage.

• Managed the full internal resource lifecycle, onboarding readiness, allocation changes, PTO/long-leave coverage, exit planning, & deliverable handovers, ensuring zero delivery disruption across all people movements. People Sustainability & Risk Management

• Proactively monitored workload intensity, role complexity, & cross-project load to identify over-allocation & burnout risk early - rebalancing assignments & reducing sustained over-allocation exposure by an estimated 15-20%.

• Sustained 90%+ global timesheet compliance through the Timesheet Governance Model, structured cadences, weekly compliance tracking, manager accountability layers, & behavior-based interventions, materially improving data reliability for planning & forecasting across all regions. Contractor Ecosystem Management

• Managed full lifecycle operations for 39+ global contractors (part-time, full-time, & deliverable-based), covering onboarding, scope alignment, deliverable tracking, & offboarding, while maintaining internal team stability.

• Brought contractors fully into the planning ecosystem, syncing utilization data with core capacity forecasts to eliminate blind spots & enable one unified view of total workforce availability. Hiring Strategy & Talent Operations

• Owned end-to-end hiring from role definition to final decision, including resume screening, fit assessment, interview coordination, multi-round candidate communication, & stakeholder consultation.

• Applied seniority calibration, role-scope validation, & delivery-risk advisory to prevent over-hiring & mis-hiring, improving hire quality, reducing unnecessary compensation spend, & ensuring hires served both immediate & long-term program needs.

Budget Management & Workforce Cost Optimization

• Evaluated project budgets against hiring requirements to validate cost-to-skill fit, presenting structured trade-offs between skill level, employment type, & geography to inform leadership decisions.

• Applied regional talent analysis to staffing decisions, evaluating lower-cost geographies (India/Indonesia) for cost-equivalent talent, driving an estimated 20-25% workforce cost reduction while protecting margins & delivery quality.

• Introduced BD Estimator Validation, mandating PM involvement, role-hour alignment checks, & scope-vs-budget trade-off visibility before project sign-off, reducing under-scoped project risk & improving margin protection on new engagements.

Operational Excellence & Governance

• Overhauled the Global Utilisation Report, improving decision clarity by ~60-70%, reducing report preparation time by ~40-50%, & shifting leadership engagement from reactive data review to proactive planning.

• Redesigned previously fragmented resourcing & utilization processes, establishing clear ownership, reporting standards, & decision workflows that improved governance clarity & cross-functional coordination.

• Designed an Estimator Tier Matrix defining effort benchmarks by seniority level, standardizing hour allocation logic from Junior to Senior Manager, reducing estimation variance across BD & delivery planning.

• Drove capability-building through BD shadowing models & informal mentorship, strengthening commercial understanding & capacity utilization across delivery teams. Process Analyst, Risk Mitigation & Process Optimization Maersk GSC, Pune Dec 2022 - Nov 2024 Led customer experience, operational improvement, & performance reporting across India & EMEA.

• Achieved highest team NPS score in Q4, a 35% improvement over the prior period, through proactive account management & personalized service delivery across 30+ key accounts.

• Reduced shipment delays by 15% & average resolution time by 30% through structured risk mitigation frameworks & targeted process improvements.

• Improved CSAT by 20% by introducing proactive scheduling & tailored advisories using Maersk legacy systems. Project Analyst, IMEA Site CI & GSC Projects Maersk GSC, Pune

• Reduced outstanding unbilled orders by 35% YoY, directly contributing to $2M in revenue leakage prevention through SOP implementation, improved reporting discipline, & automated validation logic.

• Improved operational visibility by 40% by designing senior leadership dashboards tracking shipping cycle times & regional KPIs, enabling data-driven strategic decisions across IMEA.

• Designed 25+ custom SAP BI queries & upskilled 20+ focal points on CI methodologies, strengthening analytical capability & execution consistency.

Business Performance Analyst, IMEA Maersk GSC, Pune

• Drove a 15% reduction in workforce management overhead costs by redesigning IMEA reporting frameworks, improving resource visibility & enabling more informed operational decisions across regional leadership.

• Automated Power BI reporting infrastructure across 4+ dashboards & 10+ performance trackers, increasing KPI visibility by 30% & improving strategic engagement by 15%. Analyst Merkle, Inc., Mumbai Jan - Nov 2022

• Delivered data infrastructure migration & system optimization projects under tight timelines, improving database performance by 25% & reducing system downtime by 20% through disciplined planning & structured execution across 5+ TB of live data.

Sales Executive Corporate Infocom Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai May 2017 - Apr 2018

• Managed an end-to-end client acquisition pipeline, achieving a 35% increase in IT product sales & a 30% conversion rate through consultative engagement & disciplined follow-through. TOOLS & SYSTEMS

Mavenlink (Kantata) • Notion • Salesforce • Slack • SAP • Power BI • Excel / Google Sheets • HiBob PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & EDUCATION

• Project Management Professional (PMP) Project Management Institute (PMI) Nov 2025 - Present Performance: Above Target, People & Process Domains Target, Business Environment

• Mastering Program Management Cohort Rethink Systems Feb - Apr 2024 Intensive leadership cohort, led a 10-member cross-functional team across 7 concurrent programs spanning FinTech, SaaS, EdTech, & Healthcare, delivering unified program execution with structured governance, GTM strategy integration, & measurable success frameworks.

• B.Tech: Computer Engineering Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai 2017 - 2022

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