Chris Bensen Email & Phone Number

Greater Chicago Area

Developing and executing the funding strategy for six campuses which determines future restricted grant awards as well as unrestricted grant funding. Identifying errors and working with campuses and district office departments to resolve those errors which directly impact funding and institutional performance. Serving as primary subject matter expert for compliance issues that impact funding and reporting. Responding to concerns of auditors and state agencies. Serving as Adult Education program director including creating and distributing calendars for term schedules, data activities, and daily operations. Coordinating state grant reporting. Generating and creating reports and dashboards. Software testing including state systems and PeopleSoft. Calculating 2,000 term dates per fiscal year for seven campuses based on complex business rules that drive all business.Accomplishments: •Doubled the amount of state recognized GED/HSE degrees for five years and now tripling themby establishing advanced data matches with the state so students without ssns are counted.•Originated complex and crucial processes including automated student nightly drop processing and a National Reporting System calculation process for institutional performance.•Managing and maintaining a daily data feed to the state preventing data entry in the state system that saves over $1.1 million in salaries year as well as ensuring both systems have matching data.•Providing effective strategies that regularly increase educational gains performance for state goals which determine annual grant awards; the effect of this was as much as doubling performance.•Resolving approximately $260,000 of compliance-related data issues each year.•Increasing annual grant awards by $883,000 in an environment of decreasing grant awards.•Created a successful scheduling strategy to increase funding annually by $1-$3 million.•Identifying many report errors in the state system involving performance and funding.

Managed, audited, and corrected all data in undergraduate and graduate recruitment databases (1.5 million records). Created and programmed segmented automated communication plans to recruit students. Developed recruitment strategies and executed student search recruitment projects involving purchased data ($250,000 annual projects). Served as a technical expert for recruitment systems including creating new business processes. Served as data reporting analyst including creating and analyzing reports. Managed information technology projects across multiple departments. Tested software and worked with software vendors proactively to improve their products and to solve technical problems. Exclusively handled and loaded all recruitment data for 5 years including all test scores.Accomplishments: •Providing strategy and execution of recruitment projects that brought in 33% of the freshman class each year totaling $112 million annually in tuition and fees.•Managed data bridge projects involving connecting a PeopleSoft data warehouse to another system.•Developed recruitment system software with a vendor including a SQL version.•Managed a flawless data conversion for 1.5 million records into new SQL databases.•Acted as the only data manager for 5 years including conducting over 5,200 data imports.•Acted as communications manager for 3 years, sent mass emails to over 3 million recipients, and facilitated mailings to over 2 million recipients.•Completed 3,800 projects/requests involving prospective student/applicant data over 5 years.•Saved more revenue than my salary annually by identifying and correcting costly data issues.•Served on Data Governance Committee, Staff Council, and Diversity Committee.

Tested software and prepared reports. Performed research, data analysis, data validation, and data entry. Wrote, designed, edited, and proofread publications. Developed and maintained websites. Provided extensive telephone/email service for inquiries.Accomplishments: •Improved quality of the alumni giving database by broadening the types of data captured and stored.•Processed alumni giving data requests for Campaign Northwestern, which raised over $1.5 billion.

Administered to an international database which captured the methods of all business engagements. Accomplishments:•Assisted in increasing the budget of my department by means of the quality of my work.

Managed underwriting and finance audits. Edited policies with the Office of the President.Accomplishments:•Identified billing errors resulting in an annual increase of revenue of over $200,000.

Greater Chicago Area

Launched and operated new businesses for a small corporation. Built relationships with businesses, merchant associations, customers, and hosted formal events. Supervised, interviewed, hired, and trained employees including management. Managed databases, conducted investigations and research. Exercised full authority in purchasing and price setting.Accomplishments: •Created and established new processes and techniques to increase sales which reached an all-time high that resulted in the opening of many new businesses.