IT PHILOSOPHY AND OBJECTIVE:

I understand the impact IT has on a company’s overall productivity and financial success. Successful IT Professionals are able to accept, adapt to, and drive change as well as place high standards on customer service and problem solving. As an IT professional, it is my objective to work in an environment in which my results - oriented approach to problem solving, productivity, positive attitude, technical experience and overall philosophy of IT will provide value and leadership your company.

SUMMARY:

• Results-oriented IT Professional with over 17 years of work experience providing solutions and leadership in a wide array of industries including Insurance, Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, and Education.
• The experience and ability to deliver quality service in a dynamic environment, as well as the ability to drive and facilitate change.
• Expertise includes requirements gathering and ITIL Methodologies (Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement).
• Proven experience in technical project management and global collaborations, enterprise-wide Systems Engineering and support, and Infrastructure hardware/software architectural design and integration.
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills with proven ability to work as a cross-functional team member spanning multiple IT departments and business units.
• Well developed and experienced leadership, management and customer service abilities.
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills, including experience in technical documentation and presentations to audiences ranging from technical to non-technical and senior management.
• Microsoft, Novell, and ITIL Certified with years of Engineering experience as well as experience with UNIX Administration.
• Led a project to implement a user password synchronization tool for the largest Healthcare organization in West Michigan.
• This tool simutaniously reset and sync’d passwords across multiple OS platforms was delivered successfully, on time, and on budget. In addition to leading the project, I was responsible for the architectual design and technical implementation.
• In the days prior to LDAP, this tool dramatically decreased the amount of time the Operations staff spent resetting passwords by 80%, thus making them more productive and efficient.
• Led eBusiness Shared Services Team and worked with outside partners to consolidate and transition processes and support in conjunction with corporate initiatives.
• Consistently meet project deadlines.
• All of my projects or tasks that I lead were delivered on time or ahead of schedule.
• Diligently served as a primary resource and lead the project initiative for Confidential Consolidation project.
• A project which reduced Confidential ’s physical server count by 50%, reduced server hardware and maintenance costs, and increased the ease in which new servers are deployed in our environment.
• Shared Services role included serving as a liaison between European and North American IT Operations resources for collaborations for global projects and work initiatives.
• This resulted in bringing bring the proper resources together saved Confidential Financial Services valuable time and effort, allowing work and project tasks to get completed.
• Consistently meet SLA standards for all systems and applications for which I was responsible for.
• Helped negotiate a support contract with a software vendor that saved Confidential and Confidential Financial Services thousands from the initial price quote.
• Received multiple commendations from Confidential in the form of Certificates of Appreciation, Spot Bonuses, and public acknowledgements of exceptional contributions for delivering quality, and on-time project and technical work.

TECHNICAL & P ROFICIENCIES:

Applications: MS Office Suite Professional (MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access, MS PowerPoint), Adobe Acrobat, Symantec Antivirus, CA ArcServe, EMC RepliStor, HP Service Manager, Remedy Help Desk, CA Unicenter Service Desk R12

Operating Systems: Windows Server NT/ 2000/2003/2008 , Windows 98/XP/Vista/7, Novell NetWare 4/5, RedHat Linux 9, AIX 5

Server/Desktop Management: Ghost, Bare Metal Restore, PuTTY, MS Admin Tools

Directory Services: Active Directory, LDAP

Virtualization: VMWare Workstation/Server

Messaging/Collaboration: MS Exchange

Networking Technologies: LAN, WAN, SMTP, SNMP, TCP/IP, DHCP

Hardware: Compaq, Dell, HP, IBM

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidential, Caledonia, MI

IT Shared Services Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managed the Tools Team and ensured the successful delivery of support and services to global business customers.
• Team consisted of Developers and Service Desk Administrators.
• Team provided help desk and technical support for HP Service Manager, HP Asset Manager and CA Service Desk.
• Responsible for interviewing, hiring, and on-boarding specialized contract staff and off-shore support for business related projects.
• Evaluated processes, procedures, and new products in efforts to increase cost-effectiveness and business efficiency.
• Acted as an liaison between Farmers Business Units and IT Operation
• Led bi-weekly Change Advisory Board meetings for Tools Team business users and oversaw the successful implementation of mini-releases and product enhancements.
• Held weekly 1-1 meeting with individual staff and bi-weekly team meeting
• Helped staff develop individual development plans based on their job role and career aspirations.
• Worked with staff on setting annual goals and performance objectives.
• Performed mid-year reviews and year-end employee performance evaluations for my staff.

Confidential, Caledonia, MI

IT Shared Services Manager

Responsibilities:

• Served as technical project manager for Tools Team related projects
• Developed project plans, gathered business requirements, and oversaw Q&A testing.
• Planned, designed, and provided technical solutions based on customer needs.
• Acted as the Situation Manager for enterprise incidents and outages involving Tools Team supported applications.
• Facilitated and documented problem resolution.
• Documented and published Root Cause Analysis for support team and Management
• Responsible for and supported Group IT Operations Asset Management, Change Management, Incident Management, and Discovery Tools.
• Documented processes and procedures for Tools Team Service Desk.
• Provided Hardware and Operating System Support (AIX, Microsoft, IBM) for Tools Team hosted applications.
• Reduced annual operational costs $250,000 by consolidating, eliminating, or reducing Service Agreements, Servers, and Applications.
• Helped implement major application version upgrade and SaaS solution which saved our business customer 1.3 million dollars over 5 years.

Confidential

Senior European Wintel Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Managed internal projects specifically for the European Wintel team and served as Subject Matter Expert for new initiatives including Virtualization.
• Led European Wintel effort for European Datacenter server upgrades, refresh and consolidation.
• Compaq to IBM Server Hardware upgrade.
• Windows 2000 and XP upgrade to Windows 2003
• Refreshed or virtualized application servers based on application requirement.
• Successfully led European Data Replication Project which eliminated the need for local backups and implemented solution across 50 sites and four countries.

Confidential, Caledonia, MI

Senior Wintel Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Provided expert SME support for highly visible business projects and discovered new and innovative ways in which to provide solutions to customers.
• Provided day-to-day operational support including server, user, email and anti-virus administration
• Supported the Confidential Intranet Web Developers and Administered the Confidential Wintel Intranet web page.
• Successfully lead and provided technical expertise for a number of enterprise IT related projects.
• Physical to Virtual server consolidations (VMWare)
• Operating System upgrades (Windows, AIX)

Confidential, Caledonia, MI

Senior Wintel Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Enterprise anti-virus design and implementation
• Served as Wintel SME on the STAR Application Technical Team. STAR is the largest eBusiness application at Confidential (a subsidiary of Confidential ).
• Designed, installed, and integrated AIX, Linux, and Windows infrastructure for STAR application components (Siteminder, Apache).
• Helped design and install Wintel infrastructure for Tea Leaf application used by STAR Help Desk.
• Provided Wintel Engineering and Production support for Farmers Telecom Team application servers:
• Helped install and design Windows infrastructure for Confidential HelpPoint Customer Service Application used in OKC Call Center.
• Installed and upgraded Wintel infrastructure Gold Voice Recognition Software used for Confidential Call Center.
• Effectively served as the Team Lead for the local Wintel Team. This involved working closely with the local Wintel Manager to provide support and leadership for team members, work requests, daily operations, and projects.
• Acted as mentor to 2nd and 3rd level support staff.
• Selected as member of the Confidential Global Change Agent Network. The organization was designed to better help communication between Executive Management and the ISP/ASP workforce.
• Effectively provided technical team leadership responsibilities, which included Change Management and Problem Management escalation resolution.
• Represented Wintel Team in weekly CHANGE ADVISORY BOARD meetings
• Researched, tested, and evaluated new technologies for business customers.
• Created and composed Request for Proposals (RFS) for competing vendors.
• Weighted requirements and compared solutions. Created document with results and recommendations for management consideration.
• Provided 24x7 on-call support

Confidential, Grand Rapids, MI

Systems Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Provided senior-level Engineering support for Novell and Microsoft operating systems support for over 10,000 users and 35 remote sites for the largest hospital in West Michigan.
• Completed datacenter installations of physical servers and Network Operating Systems.
• Served as the team representative on the Change Advisory and Continual Service Improvement Boards.
• Provided Service Desk Operations Support
• Resolved problem and incident requests reported by business users.
• Worked with business users to provide analysis and solutions for their IT needs.
• Provided 24x7 on-call support
• Responsible for user support and application scripting.
• Acted as team Technical Project Manager and Subject Matter Expert for IT related projects.
• Successfully led and completed two highly visible IT projects in Operations and IT Finance.