Jennifer (Stille) Russell Email & Phone Number

Oak Park, Il, Us

Energy non-profit consultant. Part-time. Local community work supporting access to stable housing, entry to school and jobs. Volunteer role.

Cincinnati, Ohio, Us

• Led the Agile Delivery function as Function Lead, managing a team of 25, including eight direct reports. The team supplied Agile Delivery Leads and Scrum Masters to five programs, enhancing product and data science capabilities.• Contributed to company initiatives within the Product and Design leadership team. • Developed and implemented a new vision and strategy for Agile Delivery, which significantly enhanced delivery efficiency and transparency. This strategy integrated product, design, engineering, and project management, focusing on "fit for purpose" agile practices that emphasized speed to value, delivery, collaboration, and predictability. Practices were tailored to specific teams or scaled across programs using a combination of scrum, scaled, ShapeUp, and DevOps practices.• Enhanced the function's value and reputation, leading to a proactive 50% growth in requests for agile support and a 20-35% improvement in speed to value across programs.• Collaborated with the PMO to refine business processes by integrating waterfall, agile, and portfolio management approaches.• Developed value-driven metrics strategies with program stakeholders, setting clear benchmarks. • Led the adoption of best practices for the JIRA Planning Tool, including cloud migration and new strategies for hierarchies, cross-program release visibility, epic handling, DevOps features, and enhanced reporting. • Initiated and co-led various improvement projects, including Inception training, agile best practices for data science, and agile function optimization.• Served as the interim Agile Delivery Lead for the complex Media program during its restructuring, providing project management, agile coaching at multiple levels, and operational improvements to enhance execution visibility.• Selected for the Kroger Women’s Leadership program.

Chicago, Il, Us

As Client Partner - I work with business and technology executives to develop custom software solutions. Specialities include large scale agile, lean, distributed teams, coaching and enablement. $6M annual sales target met through client focused, outcomes driven approach. Client relationships built on trust, shared goals and open, effective communication. Responsible for initial discoveries, proposal development, negotiation, staffing, budgets, invoicing, client success. As Delivery Principal - have responsibility for overall delivery health and team growth. Core strength in ability to structure and build successful delivery teams in multiple delivery models, with an eye toward value and quality. Teams have been highly successful, built on foundation of collaboration, feedback and improvement.Select client experiences:• Education Product Company - 3-year strategic partnership building new assessment product within an e-learning portfolio with goals for university wide and international footprints.• Global Marketing Firm - 2-year partnership achieving 1% lift by coupling rich transaction data with leading edge data science and provide CPGs and customers personalized, real time deal experience. • Global Pharmaceutical - Contract analytics product streamlining financial analysis of contract pricing and rebates, increasing confidence in pricing and reducing overall time for new contract approval.

Chicago, Il, Us

Working with multiple clients from startups to enterprises supporting an agile product lifecycle, including outcomes based thinking, build, test, learn loops. Approach differs by organization maturity and size. Coaching includes Product Leads, Product Managers, Product Owners, Agile Teams.Select client experiences:• Large Scale Retail Pharmaceutical, two in-the-box pair to Product Lead in 300-person retail pharma platform re-write. Remit included assessment of overall agile capabilities for program, including engineering, testing and product practices. Recommendations included significant cycle time reductions, and increased confidence through faster feedback loops by shifting integrations and testing earlier. For product, resulted in creation of Product Playbook with emphasis on moving PMs closer to business, and idea, build, test, learn loops.• Data Science Innovation Center for Large Scale CPG, engaged as Product Coach and facilitator for lightweight assessment and recommendations. Priorities included road-mapping techniques, outcomes based bets, and Inceptions to bring Business, Product, Engineering and Data Science closer. Received CTO attention as example for complex product kick-offs.• Financial Services, New York, NY (indicative team coaching engagement), agile coach for project manager, scrum master, BA and dev teams. Introduction of agile maturity model, agile principles, scrum ceremonies and tools, supported by direct iterative coaching

Chicago, Il, Us

• Co-founder ThoughtWorks Johannesburg, South Africa office. Responsible for creation and running of Operations engines including Recruiting, People, Finance, Resource Management. Head of Delivery for in-office accounts. • Head of Capability Development efforts and focused team based mentorship.• Community partnerships including TechinBraam incubator effort, AgileAfrica and Tech4Africa conferences, and tech education initiatives with IkamvaYouth and BlackGirlsCode. • Co-creator of CodedinBraam meet-up, showcased on BBC Africa, now one of the most popular in Johannesburg at over 1300 members. • Office grew to 50 people over two years. Clients ranging from Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) to mPedigree, an award winning start-up with a charge to break the chain of fake drugs in Africa. The office was built on natural spirit of entrepreneurship, passion for technology, and underlying spirit of ubuntu.

Chicago, Il, Us

• Regional Delivery Assurance including proposal review, staffing and ongoing delivery health.• Capabilities and Communities Lead managing 15 global leads in creation of communities of practice. Popular internal 'Wikipedia' of approaches and best practices created.• Core member creating and running Inception, Agile Fundamentals and Project Management trainings.• Co-lead for creation of NA grade and role expectations

Chicago, Il, Us

• Launch team opening first ThoughtWorks Brazil office in Porto Alegre, Brazil.• Initiative leader including Client Satisfaction and regional Decentralization efforts.

Chicago, Il, Us

• Retail Giant, Chicago, IL, co-sourced, distributed team of 40 charged with creating a new Repairs experience for customers. • Global Medical Solutions Provider, Malvern, PA, scrum master for 2 teams in 150+ person medical systems program, charged with streamlining provider experience. • Leasing Company, Bangalore, India, short-term move to Bangalore to shore up 40-person backend leasing team. Team of eight, good experience as offshore component of distributed teams.

Chicago, Il, Us

• European Electronics Retailer and others, London UK, two year move to London as BA for several projects, including development of new point of sale for three brands across 10,000 stores.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Combination of business analyst and project lead duties in support of Financial Services and Marketing departments.