Senior Manager, Technology Planning, Crisis Management and Business Continuity.
Ontario Health
Total years of experience :28 years, 2 Months
Business Continuity and Crisis Management, BCP Event Management and IT Service Continuity
• Tasked with the creation of an overarching BC/DR Plan for the 21 separate agencies that have recently been merged into the larger Ontario Health. Leverage the expertise within the team to draw a high level plan of attack, collecting current state information, plan of integration, establishing coordinators in each department, and evaluating DR capabilities and cloud integration.
• Develop the overall Ontario Health CM program by creating a new BC/DR policy and standards in close collaboration with Legal, HR, Communications and other SME’s across levels of the Agency.
• Partner with teams from across the Agency, such as HR, Communications, ITSM, Facilities and others to create, implement and facilitate a coordinated response to crisis and cybersecurity events, bridging communication gaps and expediting event resolution.
• Support the business unit executive in the delivery and presentation of tabletop tests and results to the senior management committee highlighting risk exposures, propose and implement remediation efforts.
• Review and update all Security policies, standards and procedures to meet strict guidelines of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario for a Prescribed Organization, to implement Agency wide once approved.
• Participate in periodic meetings with an external network of contacts from other Crown Agencies to exchange ideas, enhance processes and coordinate response to broader and wider reaching crises.
Capacity and Currency Management, Technology Planning
• Lead a senior team of IT Planning professionals to provide currency and capacity planning and reporting on the Agency’s infrastructure, switches, routers, firewalls, all kinds of appliances, server and software versions and end of life, through to project and release management.
• Create a three-year Infrastructure and Product Technology Roadmaps for senior management’s review, approval, budgeting and implementation, using various tools such as Cognos, PowerBI, Tivoli among others.
• Implement automation solutions to the Risk and CM program by overseeing development and customization to third party tools, through UAT and final release to production.
• Maintain vendor relationships under stringent public sector procurement methodologies.
Direct all aspects of business development and operations, including strategic project planning, implementation, and ongoing performance improvements. Oversee full-scale delivery in customer service, human resources, information technology, accounting and taxation, and employee relations.
• Established and managed a coffee shop from a vision to successful operation. This involved creating the business plan, securing financing, selecting contractors and trades to manage the build, and ensuring the project is completing on time, on budget, consistent with regulatory requirements, initial vision and design plans.
• Forecasted and acquired resources for future skills needed to provide an outstanding customer experience and effectively and reliably run the business to achieve business objectives.
• Built a culture of superior service delivery and efficiency in the face of stiff competition. Enhanced policies and procedures, established KPIs and conducted comprehensive market research, securing best-in-class suppliers.
• Managed all aspects of the business including budgeting, procurement, marketing and social media presence, employee relations and coaching among others to drive business performance and bottom-line results. Eliminated financial guessing by implementing fully automated systems to monitor accounts, daily sales figures, P & L, staff hours, wages and taxation. Integrated IT infrastructure for collecting key customer data, tracking of metrics and simplifying business decisions.
Aligned Finance wide BCP plans with corporate and regulatory policies and expectations and managed key relationships with senior leaders in a highly matrixed environment to implement new initiatives and executive direction. Expanded capabilities to include subsidiaries while monitoring risk assessment and exposure minimization across projects and eliminating audit exposure.
• Supported the VP in acting as the key point of contact for OSFI and EBCM for BCP and DR related matters and audit reviews. Presented regular status updates identifying all shortcomings and remediation timelines, as well as keeping the VP in the loop on all undertaken project milestones or deficiencies.
• Played a leadership role in establishing communication with to-be-managed LOB’s. Secured buy-ins from each team’s senior management, gathered all plans and reviewed internal structures and criticality, pending issues and deliverables plotting all information in an executive summary document.
• Developed guidelines for coordinators across supported LOB’s detailing mandate strategies, policies and procedures, individual roles and responsibilities, testing and sign-off timelines and set escalation mechanisms to ensure proper accountability, facilitate and streamline reporting and management of all deliverables.
• Directed day-to-day activities such as plan updates, process mappings, gaps and workarounds, compliance in a manner consistent with the Bank’s risk culture and appetite throughout the LOB, tailoring communication and level of participation from each coordinator; junior analysts to directors for the different departments.
• Performed external hazards/threats assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of existing business continuity plans and exercises, and to inform any proposed changes to business processes, applications and systems in order to ensure operational resilience.
• Demonstrated leadership through expert technical knowledge and understanding of the Bank’s IT back-office, such as server DR capabilities, data replication latency et al. to assist business and technology teams in meeting business continuity requirements while in compliance with Bank’s policies and standards.
• Designed, developed and implemented training and education for the BCP program and BCP/DR industry best practices, and maintained awareness of industry recovery standards and potential issues specific to Finance to ensure employee awareness of their specific business continuity responsibilities.
• Led all testing activities of critical processes and linkages between different teams for all supported LOB’s, recording successes and challenges, and resolving gaps or shortcomings timely. Gathered results and recorded in EBCM’s SharePoint site along with all related criticalities, associated staff, resolutions and workarounds.
• Led yearly refresh of Business Impact Analysis (BIA) documents to assist business units with determining acceptable recovery time periods, required resources to maintain continuity of essential functions including all processes, criticalities and financial impact from regulatory fines to cost of downtime and recovery.
• Successfully implemented BCP on three separate occasions where the business was inaccessible, and staff’s wellbeing was at stake such as the G20 riots. Served in a formal capacity on the crisis management team to provide support by holding war rooms for executives and senior management and distributing periodic updates along to staff, ensuring all processes went ahead without a hitch, naysayers proven wrong.
• Led the execution of change requests for new regulatory requirements, department software needs and hardware/OS upgrades under strict SOX guidelines, including developing plans and templates and securing buy-ins and funding.
Starting out as a network support analyst and quickly gaining management’s trust to handle projects of higher criticality, reaching the highest security clearance and third level of support for hundreds of global servers while conducting comprehensive analysis and leadership of up to 50-member team using ITIL methodologies and expert technical savvy.
• Following a widely successful Y2K performance, achieved success as Finance LOB’s subject matter expert for all contingency planning, technical requirements, key projects, and audits while recommending comprehensive business solutions.
• Provided direct leadership to the IT team by setting, communicating and modeling high standards of performance and professionalism, developing and maintaining a high level of personal credibility and work ethic with IT management and staff and demonstrating consistent sound judgment
• Built a high performing environment and implemented a people strategy attracting top talent, retaining, developing and motivating team by fostering an inclusive work environment; communicating vision/values/business strategy and managing succession and development planning.
• Collaborated with senior executives on budgets and scheduling by generating comprehensive health and hardware/OS currency assessment reports; drove performance of SLAs for resolution.
• As a signatory to non-disclosure and trading restrictions policy, ensured the tightest security under highest level of controls for both data access and malware protection in accordance with internal and external audit policies to eliminate unauthorized access and protect all Financial data.
• Maintained currency of technology platforms, managed server relocation projects, systems updates and automated infrastructure support and repetitive tasks.
Professionally handled customer calls and inquiries regarding Canon products, providing third level phone technical support to fix problems with equipment and assist customers in getting the best our of their equipment.
Acted as the team lead upon manager’s absence to field support staff’s inquiries and handle difficult calls where a higher authority is required.
Managed a small team of IT analysts for all IT related issues, nightly classroom refreshes, equipment and software ordering and inventory tracking. Worked closely with the owner to implement strategies aimed at furthering IT services of the company, linking all machines to an automated fax solution and enabling “online” connections.
Study included leadership techniques, performance management, compensation and diversity,
Study included Project management, team building, conflict resolution, Risk – Time – Cost management
Study included NetWare 3.x Administration, Advanced Administration, Installation & Configuration, Networking Technologies, Service & Support, NetWare 3.x to 4.x Update
Analysis of unidentified substances using different Chemical methods like gas chromatography, spectrometry, and direct chemical analysis.