Transformational leader who drives programs, projects, and cross-functional teams to deliver superior results through gap analysis and solution development. Expertise in building and developing teams, creating BI analytics (KPI, OKR, metrics), and implementing software governance, security, compliance, policies, and standards. Skilled at improving customer experience, shaping business strategy, and managing vendor relationships, contracts, and stakeholder partnerships. |
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Mutual of Omaha | Omaha, NE
2019 - Present
Software Governance (GovOps)
2021 - Present
Leading teams to create, implement and adhere to company policies, standards and best practices. Setting of goals and objectives, maintaining ethical standards, aligning with the intended culture, ensuring compliance, along with designing and implementing governance framework.
- Software Governance (GovOps)
- Solution Intent Review (SIR)
- Open-Source Program Office (OSPO)
- Align engineering and architecture governance processes, standards, and practices.
- Collaborate in all levels and departments to develop, maintain, update or replace Policies, Standards and Best Practices.
- Develop and maintain metrics to align with Objectives and Key Results (OKR), Business Intelligence (BI) and Service Level Objectives/Agreements.
- Collaborates across teams to:
- Uncover pain points
- Formulate ways to accelerate delivery
- Standardize the governance end to end process
- Execute automation opportunities
- Review emerging technologies and industry trends, to improve current business processes.
- Maintain Policies, Standards, Procedures along with the governance and compliance.
- Maintain Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), CyberSecurity, and GovOps practices.
Information Services Agile Project Manager
2019 - 2021
Managing the overall planning, execution and delivery of all run, grow and transform work being performed by cross-functional stable team that consists of both technical and business resources.
- Responsible for building and leading high performing teams, including building strong product owner, sponsor, solution lead, stakeholder, vendor, customer, and team relationships.
- Management of projects to include the definition of project charters, budgets, and measures as well as developing project structures and ensuring proper operations turnover.
- Management of team work, develop and implement work processes, metrics, key performance indicators (KPI), objectives and key results (OKR), business intelligence (BI) and reporting.
- Facilitate the day-to-day coordination of work and removal of impediments while adhering to standards and Product Management prioritization/Objectives.
- Responsible for tracking work status and managing issues and risks to include financial analysis, evaluation of progress/quality/costs, developing action plans to address gaps or risks, adherence to compliance and procurement processes, and problem resolution.
- Responsible for work to implement or enhance a wide range of business system and/or technology solutions, which span a number of disciplines, including development, programming, implementation, compliance, and information management.
- Facilitate continuous Improvement/growth plans for the team in several domains, such as DevOps, Operational Excellence, Customer Experience and use of Customer Insights.
PAYPAL | LaVista, NE
2001 - 2019
Lead Manager
2012 - 2019
Led an agile scrum team to create, read, update, disable, and maintain internal applications used by business units to support customers. Served as Project/Product owner and Scrum Master for the CRM development team.
- Develop solutions on sharing data between applications, creating policies, processes, and protocols, and ensuring compliance with security for users accessing applications and customer data retention.
- Negotiated with third party contracts and vendors relations.
- Saved $600,000 annually by collaborating with 17 teams, 57 points of contact, Legal, Information Security and Procurement for a new CRM system. Evaluated nine companies for bids. Full Executive approvals and funding for final selection and implementation.
- Reduced engineering research and resolution time to resolve a customer issue. Established the process to begin machine learning solutions by leveraging database access and APIs to extract data from the corresponding systems and display in one interface.
- Product / Project management using Agile and Waterfall development for short and long term projects, working with engineers and business partners to complete deliverables on schedule and on budget.
Manager
2007 - 2012
Led an engineering team supporting applications and services. Provided ongoing career mentoring and process development. Administered technical CRM and contracts with third party vendors.
- Protected external and internal interfaces with security policies and compliance processes.
- Managed the contract negotiations and took the lead on CRM software development, formed a relationship with the CRM representatives, and took ownership of the partnerships, creating a CRM development team.
- Strengthened the technical support team’s internal interactions and improved customer interfaces. Supported associate teams by developing applications to allow technical backlog transparency and providing a scalable solution for escalations.
Lead Engineer
2007
Supported web services encompassing API’s, developer network and all features used in merchant tools. Established protocols, escalation flows, and job descriptions for developer technical support. Built and presented statistical data and progress to the executive staff.
- Developed white sheets used to clarify functions of existing features and provided on call support and back up for employees rotating on after-hours support.
- Maintained administrative permissions in developer forums, a site for training agents on using payment features as well as access to customers for beta testing new features and products.
Supervisor for Developer Integration and Web Services
2003 - 2007
Led a web services team of four and a technical support team of 17. Supported the API and all features used by merchants. Formed a web services desktop to organize and centralize resources to advocate for customers. Developed a desktop app to centralize and organize all resources for agents.
- Completed a business requirement document (BRD) and implemented a test environment of three servers, software, and remote access to troubleshoot code and customer client / hosted software.
- Decreased critical issue response time and sharpened incident communication by creating an application that took the on-call engineer through a flow that imported the data needed from multiple locations for review while allowing the communication routing to multiple locations and email.
Technical Support Professional
2001 - 2003
Developed HTML code and CGI scripts. Handled escalated issues from technical support agents and assisted with high dollar managed account integrations.
- Developed shopping cart code and contributed to the integration of companies using PayPal as a payment processor.
- Ensured that customers complied with security policies and best practices for external facing interfaces.
- Prevented a third party from removing code that allowed deep market penetration for product adoption and led to becoming the dominate player in the market. Took the initiative to research and discover a method that allowed the code to remain on the third-party site.
Sarpy County Sheriff's Department | Papillion, NE
1996 - 2001
Sarpy County Sheriff's Department
Senior Juvenile Services Officer
1996 - 2001
Write policies and provided training to officers in: Sarpy County Sheriff Department, Omaha Juvenile System, and Health and Human Services of Nebraska in the use of Electronic RF Monitoring Equipment (http://strategic-tech.com) used for House Arrest Programs and curfew monitoring.
- Maintain UNIX, Windows 2000 Server, and remote RF equipment for House Arrest.
- System Support of Windows 9x, NT, 2000 and client/server applications.
- Research and purchase hardware and software.
- Maintain and troubleshoot the field equipment including: Palms, house based receivers, mobile transmitters and all the software used to operate the equipment.
- Built and maintained PC's for employees of Sarpy County Sheriff Department.
- Assisted with installation of new switch room and running CAT 5 lines from building to building along with telephone lines.
- Provided support to remote Sheriff offices to connect to the Sheriff network and to secured Federal network databases
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EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Master of Science in Cybersecurity, Bellevue University
Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice | Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Wayne State College
Motorcycle Instructor (RiderCoach) Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicle
Corrections Officer, Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center
Certification: TOGAF Enterprise Architecture
Member of the Board of Directors Mutual First Credit Union
Member of the Board of Trustees Sanitary and Improvement District (SID #233)
Honored Listee from Marquis Who's Who!
Presented at the Heartland Developers Conference: OSS ticking time SBOM, October 01, 2025
Presented at the Heartland Developers Conference: Navigating AI & Tech Ethics panel, August 21, 2024
Presented at the Heartland Developers Conference: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software Governance, October 24, 2023
Author: A Fallen Angel Key, 2023, Xulon Press (https://thekotur.com)
Contributed to: PayPal Hacks, 100 Industrial Strength Tips and Tools, Book, 2009
Co-authored: Happy about Website Payments with PayPal, Answers to Over 40 of the Most Commonly Asked Questions, Book, 2005
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