Strategy | Business consulting | Leadership advisory | Program and Change Management advisory to C Suite on top strategic initiatives.Embrace change with confidence. As a seasoned C-suite advisor, Alison Schwalm turns uncertainty into opportunity, leveraging cross-industry experience to deliver strategic solutions that drive results.Passionate about creating clarity and organizational alignment, Alison provides a clear vision and playbook for success. She helps organizations pivot to stay relevant, integrate acquisitions, develop new services, and enhance operational efficiency for growth.As the Founder and Principal Consultant at ClearPath Advisory LLC, she empowers employees through every transformation, offering strategic leadership and change management. Alison helps executives envision outcomes, challenge the status quo, and execute strategic initiatives for improved experiences and efficiencies, ultimately scaling for increased growth.

Recruited as Transformation Lead/Consultant to build the Insurance consulting practice origination and consulting frameworks and assets and support the delivery of transformation solutions and outsourced operations to Fortune 500 Insurance clients (Group & Voluntary Benefits, P&C, Healthcare)

Organizational readiness lead and strategic advisor for Guardian's Group Benefits Transformation team. Focus is on a multi million dollar investment to modernize and replace Guardian's operating platform from quote to claim for all Group Benefits products and services. A multi phase initiative starting with Guardian Absence Comprehensive product launch.

People Count - and are at the heart of all we do. My mission is to continue to mature Guardian's employee experience capabilities and create a unified employee strategy to evolve the culture to accelerate Guardian's transformation. As we create an engaged and high performance organization, we will then be able to create exceptional and effortless experiences for our customers, so they can achieve their best in life, health & wealth.

As the Head of the Strategic Change Office at Guardian Life, Alison is responsible for partnering with Executives to create an agile and change ready organization to support business transformation and growth. Alison is responsible for building and evolving the change practice, and developing and maturing the change capability of the organization through establishment of standards, processes, education and adoption of a change management culture. * C Suite strategic partner leading integration of 3 acquired companies (2500+ employees) into Guardian (Technology, HR, Finance) (CEO award nomination)* Executive Advisor/Engagement Lead: Major Business Transformation initiatives: Agile Transformation, Multiple office relocation (USA), Office 365/Collaboration Tools, Workday Chatbot (AI), New sales operating model for 550 sales employees and digital portal for employer benefits (sales to onboarding). * Change/Transformation Practice Lead: Created enterprise framework, tools, standards and consulting resource model to support strategic initiatives , Expense reduction and Employee Experience/Culture Transformation

Promoted into the senior leadership team to lead the Merck Six Sigma Program across MRL (R&D) IT division (600+ employees). * Six Sigma Master Black Belt: Coach 100+ belts/change agents, managing 50+ projects to deliver $200M business growth and productivity* Provide business consulting support to top strategic initiatives across the business.Mentored and certified over 80 green and black belt candidates and achieved over $200million of business benefits. Exceeded annual business target of $30 million business benefits. Key initiatives included Change Leadership role supporting the Portfolio and Program Management (PPM) transformation, with conversion of 6,000 global project managers onto the Microsoft project platform and global PPM processes.Received numerous business impact awards and recognition for contribution to the business.

Responsible for developing the strategic roadmap, business capability and enabling technology for Merck Research Laboratory division (Preclinical /Scientific Engagements/Investigator studies). - Development of the IT portfolio- Management of the business analyst team - Organizational Change Lead supporting integration activities within the Global Centre for Scientific Affairs organization (after the merger of Schering Plough). - Established a global BA COP to improve the Business analyst practice/discipline and was a key contributor to the Business Architecture COE. - Received multiple awards for business impact on key projects.

GE Money Mercury COE Leader. Role assumed responsibility for developing and streamlining the software management process for GE's 3rd party testing vendors, used in the GE Money business unit (50+ countries). Processes (& tool) developed became leveraged as best practice across multiple GE business functions globally (3,000+ employees), ensuring compliance to controllership requirements. Role also included management of off shore Quality Center Application Support team based in India.

Global Delivery Partner (to CIOs): Promoted into this new role (Responsible for GE Money's major receivable platform (VISION PLUS) with deployment across 22+ countries. Products include GE Money Bank, Mortgage, Credit Card and personal loans).Created global product launch roadmap and managing a cross functional global team (20+ employees and vendors) to deliver new products (annually). Provided leadership of the Quality Center (Test Director) application team (20+ resources) based in India.

Selected to head up the Loss Recoveries Department, (Australia & New Zealand Auto Finance), after the AGC acquisition, responsible for delivering $1.2M impact to profit line and managing multiple Loss Recovery (Debt Collection) Agencies. Functioned as a black belt leading various continuous improvement efforts for the business including automation of the loss recoveries process, and outsourcing asset verification (to team in India), enabling $100M annual savings.

As a new start up department, developed operational process for Business New Dealer Accreditations and led process improvement initiatives enabling compliant and productivity benefits within the business operations. As a certified green belt streamlined new business process to ensure 100% compliance for all sales. Provided engagement and business readiness plans and activities to 200 internal staff and more than 3,000 external vendors/3rd party dealers. This process was leveraged as best practice for the Australian mortgage business.

Management Leadership Program at GE. With only two positions open for the program each year, this 2 year leadership program is for high potential employees undergoing an accelerated leadership development path with rotations and cross functional assignments. Various assignments leading projects and improving business processes and operations across Finance, Operations, Products (Card Services), Automotive Financial services, Compliance, Systems & Technology, and Quality (Six Sigma). Projects typically reported into the VP of each business function.

Head Hostess and Event Management: Co-ordinated and managed events and catering activities for corporate and social functions (up to 300 people). Activities included staff management, customer liaison and overall co-ordination on the event.