karam abousharkh, Director of Business Development

karam abousharkh

Director of Business Development

Collabera, Inc

Location
United States
Education
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science
Experience
17 years, 5 Months

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Work Experience

Total years of experience :17 years, 5 Months

Director of Business Development at Collabera, Inc
  • United States
  • April 2012 to July 2014

• Lead business development initiatives by strategically identifying prospects, initiating contacts and presenting proposals.
• Built client relationships and assessed & identified new business opportunities with new and existing customer base.
• Acted as the clients’ Point-of-contact, within 18 months, months, doubled the number of deployed resources and increased billing by more than double ~500K/month to ~1M/month.
• Cultivated strong relationship with the clients by advocating commitment to customer, focusing on their needs and by taking proactive approach.
• Assisted in recruitment requirements and process by identifying the clients’ current technology needs and skills required.

Executive Project Manager at Dell
  • United States
  • April 2010 to February 2012

I was recruited to manage a troubled & off-plan project, ~$7.5M with multiple phases.
• Worked with both executive teams of AIG and Dell to assist in re-defining project objectives, requirements.
• Negotiated feature tradeoffs and product design choices with both internal team and client with succinct articulation to the impact of these decisions and choices.
• Created new statement of work with new project timelines along with new list of project risks.
• Managed a team of 35+ broken into 5 different functional teams, each team with a scrum master, business analysts, engineers & QA members.
• Worked with products owner on artifacts such as product catalog & sprint backlog
• Facilitated scrum of scrum meeting for executive management team to immediate identify issues and address any timeline slip, if any.
• Facilitated a monthly update to the project steering committee & stakeholders, composed of members from both Dell and AIG.

CTO & Co-Founder at VolksPedia
  • United States
  • January 2007 to August 2009

VP Of Engineering, Picostation 2006-2008
Picostation created consumer mobile application which extended blogging to the mobile world, making it easy for consumer to post and share their post/blogs/activities directly from the phone.

• Managed, lead and provided technical guidance and direction for entire development team.
• Drove the creation of the company product and managed the product release to consumers.
• Introduced agile development methodology into the group.
• Responsible for all IT activities, including strategy, planning and solution delivery to clients
• Fostered culture of innovation by leading product and technology brainstorming sessions.

VP of Technology at Qualifacts Health Systems
  • United States
  • September 2003 to December 2006

I was brought on board to revitalize innovation at Qualifacts, leading health-care software solution provider.

• Lead the successful transition of the company product offering from custom software development into SaaS provider.
• Lead the technology strategy and the IT organization with staff of ~75 across 2 locations.
• Worked with the clients’ executive teams with contract signing & negotiations for support and product updates.
• Created advance technology group and improved product development, project management, change control and assurance methods.
• Served as the ultimate delivery manager for all projects for every client, directly involve in all on-going projects.
• Raised visibility & essence of pilot partners and user experience group to enhance product
• Fostered culture of innovation by leading product and technology brainstorming sessions.

Senior IT Manager at Covansys
  • United States
  • April 1999 to June 2003

Senior IT Manager, Covansys 2000-2004
• Spearheaded the PRIMEDIA, Content Management, project, $4.5 million, which was spread over 3 phases.
• Established the communication procedure and all builds and deliverable drops between the offshore team and the local team.
• Developed ROI justifications to invest in the development of Covansys .Net (in C#) Framework to be used in cross the company in all future Microsoft projects.
• Active involvement in all aspects of client relationships, including the initial marketing and sales meetings complete through the design, programming, synchronizing, deployment and follow-up communications with the client.
• Directly involved in multiple assessment and gap analysis initiatives.

Senior Business Analyst at Blue Cross and Blue Shield
  • United States
  • May 1996 to March 1999

• Create technical standards and specifications to address the standardized methodology of achieving the interaction models and the globalization requirements.
• Part of 6 member’s team which was responsible to upgrade MFC 3.0 application to MFC 5.0.
• Acted as the liaison between business analysts and QA team and documented feedback and result.

Education

Bachelor's degree, Computer Science
  • at University of South Dakota
  • May 1995

Specialties & Skills

Full SDLC
P&L Management
Process Mapping
New Business Development
Business Strategy
ANNUITIES
ARCHITECTURAL
CLIENTS
ENGINEER

Languages

Arabic
Expert
English
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