resume.

mission

The success of our ventures today depends on quality software. But quality software doesn't just happen; it needs a team that has skills, strategies, and clarity of purpose to deliver. My mission as a technology leader is:

• to identify the opportunities and risks to the business posed by the digital revolution
• to ensure that the right portfolio of digital transformation projects is in progress
• to defend the organization in terms of security, reliability, and compliance

ways of working

I work with three-year plans, and by establishing matrix organizations for project accountability. I find and eliminate those inefficient processes, technologies, and rules that deplete productivity and engagement. I develop architectural direction to strengthen day-to-day decisions.

employment history

Nationale-Nederlanden (2020.03—present)

Tokyo, Japan

Division Manager (2021.02 – present)

The "Technology Foundation" division of eighty-plus personnel is responsible for infrastructure, operations, automation, and architecture.

• Initiated annual disaster recovery tests and opened NN’s first IT-DR site in Fukuoka.
• Instituted automated monitoring &alerting and normalized 7x24 operations.
• Negotiated service contract with Group IT that led to a large-scale improvement program.
• Revitalized the response to audit findings, ending prior chaotic, stressful, and low-value efforts. Some 16 outstanding findings were closed within two years by “projectizing” everything.
• Stabilized cost management, program management, and disaster recovery.
• Improved morale: our eNPS score climbed from zero to 63 in under three years.

Sr. Manager, DevOps (2020.11 – 2021.02)

My mission was to develop a cloud strategy to replace costly and ill-fit legacy business applications.

• Negotiated with Group to include Japan's reliability requirements in cloud architecture.
• Wrote the business plan for migrating infrastructure systems to Microsoft Azure.
• Developed a new managerial plan for “Technology Foundation” division.

Chief Architect (2020.03 – 2020.10)

My mission was to bring the Enterprise Architecture team back to relevance.

• Founded design board to improve project quality rejecting inferior proposals, publishing architectural guidelines, and creating a business capability model.
• Established a model for architectural diagrams and documented over 100 applications.
• Created a hybrid cloud platform strategy for the enterprise.

Self employed (2017—2019)

Toronto, Canada

VP, Technology (acting) (2018—2019)

Ethica is a marketing start-up building a software-defined networking product based on open-source technologies. I led the Research and Development department for a year during the pre-seed phase prior to the decision to outsource product development.

• Hired and led seven software engineers.
• Led the capture of requirements and architecture of the VPN/multi-link tunnel software, its remote management software, and the components that house and manage the tunnel.
• Deployed proof of concept by March 2019.
• Deployed a first working product by October of 2019.

Consultant (2017—2018)

Consulting for IQVIA, a $10B US health data services firm in a client-facing role, I led the implementation of a de-identification service for specialty pharmacy data feeds.

• Managed stakeholders from IQVIA, Privacy Analytics, and a counterpart (Management Science Associates).
• Performed extensive analysis and design of the service toward HIPAA compliance, stability, completeness of data handling, stability of the production environment, and information security.
• Led the specification of features and non-functional specs for the bespoke de-identification engine. Wrote prototype scripts for transport and de-identification.

This new line of business was established, with some 90 feeds live within the first year.

PortfolioAid Inc (2010—2017)

Toronto, Canada

Director, Business Risk and Opportunity (2012—2017)

Acting as an internal consultant across operations, I worked with the management team on a variety of critical initiatives including:

• Modernizing the core software delivery life cycle. We implemented agile and dev-ops methodologies.

• Ensuring a secure production environment for PII and financial data for millions of Canadian investors.

• Monitoring the ROI of different products and the cost-efficacy of serving our different clients.

Risk Manager (2011—2012)

• Ensuring the organization performed all of the regulatory and risk functions required to sell to the regulated wealth management industry.
• Obtained annual SOC-2 audits covering security, availability, integrity, and confidentiality.

Product Specialist (2010—2011)

• Identifying innovation as key for a technology provider, I founded an R&D funding program that raised half a million dollars through grant and tax credit programs—this was invested in product development, systems modernization efforts, and automated deployment.
• Established the marketing function and developed product positioning and promotional activities.

NikkoCiti (2007 – 2009)

Tokyo, Japan

Vice President

At the investment banking unit of Citigroup:

• Founded a new function to bridge the gap between IT and Compliance by implementing the ITIL functions of incident management and change management.
• The chief objective was production resilience despite constant changes, a complex environment, and the financial industry’s uncertain times.
• Met SOX and J-SOX audit requirements in incident ad change management.
• Reduced incidents due to changes to 1 in 600.

Early career

2000 – 2007

Technology project consultant in Japan (ING Life), Australia (Channel 7, Macquarie Bank) and North America (Telus, Sun Microsystems, Morgan Stanley, and EDS).

1994 – 1999

Specialist in technology projects at Toronto firms as Trimark Investments, Star Data, Medialinx, and imoney.

credentials

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute, 2012—present.

License 1498836

Certified Internal Auditor (non-practising)

Institute of Internal Auditors, 2013—2018.

License 123146

MSc Risk Management

Birmingham City University, 2014

Hons. BSc Geography

Brock University, 1994

leadership

non-profit boards

Board of directors, Cycle Toronto, 2016 – 2019

• Chair, IT Governance Committee 2017—2019
• Vice President of Board of Directors 2017—2018

Board member, Society of Information Risk Analysts (US), 2015 – 2017.

writing

Co-author: 2017 IIAC guidance on third party cyber assessment.

Author: 2017, article on deploying application vulnerability fixes in “ISACA Journal”.

speaking

Panelist: 2016 IIAC Cyber security conference.

Panelist: 2015 RSA Conference, San Francisco.