Donald Howard Email & Phone Number

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Working to realize the promise of technology to improve humanity and to pull IT out of its 70 years of missing the mark. Key tenets: 1) Systems designed to augment human abilities; 2) Shared theory of the domain developed and captured over time using stories; 3) Small teams working on short cycles to deliver the highest priorities first; and 4) Design thinking and object thinking anchor software that fits

Amsterdam Area, Netherlands

Crafting sustainable software solutions for value-driven companies that will grow with the business and adapt to changing circumstances. Simply revolutionary.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Creating valuable technology strategy and innovative technology solutions in support of the mission to save lives through cellular therapy.

Shoreview, Mn

Over the last 4 years with Deluxe, I've provided strategic technical leadership, championed pivotal business and technology transformation efforts, and innovated valuable IT solutions. Excelling at integrating dynamic corporate, business, and technology needs, I balanced a portfolio of enterprise architecture (EA) and project solutions impacting a $600M+ product revenue flow, millions of customers, thousands of employees, and 800+ applications. Solution Project Leadership— Raised reliability and improved redundancy for flagship, multimillion-dollar revenue-generating, front-end order product.— Helped capture multimillion-dollar revenue growth by orchestrating development of a trackable delivery feature. — Modernized fulfillment channel application with flawless redesign and on-the-fly conversion to a web-services path.— Concurrently facilitated consumer market reach expansion and created a reusable 3rd-party payment service gateway.— Minimized pricing discrepancies and heightened pricing accuracy by using modern front-end technology to access back-end legacy functionality. — Advanced corporate transformation agenda by deploying leading-edge technology for transitioning bank customer auto-pay links.Strategic EA Initiatives— Informed and impacted 8-figure enterprise investment decisions with state-of-the-art, data-rich risk assessment dashboard.— Assessed and recommended solutions for cutting costs, maximizing IT investments, decreasing duplication, and expanding functionality for 6 independent commerce systems. — Supported viable business case proposals with early-stage technology solution ideation, architecture planning, and supplemental recommendations.— Collaborated with fellow architects on organizational engagement protocols.— Nurtured an innovative culture, mentored junior talent, set up study groups, and organized IT in-conference events.— Led team of as many as 15 senior architects as Chair of the Architecture Review Board.

Woodbury, Mn

At Assurant, I provided architectural and strategic direction to optimize delivery of IT solutions and roadmaps. I worked cross-functionally with all business teams and aligned C-Level strategy with technical objectives. Key Initiatives— Saved $3M per year by modernizing IT infrastructure and operations through implementation of software standards, application lifecycles, and uniform configuration management policies.— Saved ~$560K in annual data center software maintenance and generated potential annual savings of ~$2.4M by retiring non-strategic technology as part of an enterprise-level strategic IT roadmap.— Greatly improved delivery and product support by instituting a metrics, performance-driven strategy.— Accommodated cutting-edge mobile needs and facilitated access to corporate data through formulation of a mobile device management strategy. — Drove next-generation integration architecture strategy following in-depth analysis of multiple vendor products, solutions, and software.

Woodbury, Mn

I coached on- and off-shore resources in design of web applications to improve and automate business processes, streamline work, and consolidate efforts. Select Highlights — Honored with the Chairman’s Award for outstanding contribution to corporate success for making an outstanding contribution to corporate success by introducing and shepherding an organizational shift from waterfall to agile development method.— Pioneered a global partnering model with teams in India to develop an new browser-based system.— Speeded development while lowering cost by implementing novel open-system technologies. -------------------------------------------EARLY CAREER EXPERIENCE-------------------------------------------Senior Consultant — ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES INTEGRATION (ATI)Senior Consultant —TAJ TECHNOLOGIES, Client: Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc. Technology Consultant — INDEPENDENT PROJECTS

M.S. Software Engineering, Object Oriented Software Engineering

B.A. Economics