Karla Nelson Email & Phone Number

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Spearheaded a data pipeline project crucial to the success of the Enview, the startup's only product.Worked with a team of engineers to ingest data from various third-party sources for use in an early-stage legislation tracking application.Designed and implemented key workflow processes such as task prioritization and assignment, code reviews, and incident management.Identified project risks and potential mitigation strategies to CTO and senior leadership. Worked with team to execute the recommended solutions for delivering maximum value within tight timeline and resource constraints.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Wrote, tested, and reviewed code to implement features for the Drinkworks.com website and e-commerce platform.Designed and built prototype for an in-house article and knowledge management database for a fortune 500 company. Partnered with clients, designers, and engineers to gather and document requirements. Built MVP from scratch according to mock-up specifications.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Worked as an integral member of a software product team to develop a sports betting mobile application for the company’s largest client. Technology stack included React Native in Typescript, Redux, PostgreSQL, Firestore, GraphQL, and third-party APIs.Employed agile methodology within a peer review workflow framework to develop, test, review, and deploy high-quality code to implement features per documented designs.Updated legacy codebase to align with industry best practices and company coding standards.Partnered with senior management and other developers to design, document, and implement more inclusive hiring processes for engineer candidates following recommendations set forth by Project Include.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Completed a solo capstone project designed to simultaneously reduce food waste and hunger by matching excess food at restaurants with soup kitchen demand. The app allows users at restaurants to post excess food items that would otherwise go to waste. Users at soup kitchens can view, claim, and rescue the donated food for distribution to food insecure families and individuals. Technologies used: React, Redux, Redux-Saga, Node, Express, PostgreSQL, Material-UI, Passport authentication middleware, and various other JavaScript libraries.Worked with four teammates to develop a public-facing data visualization web application for the Center for Economic Inclusion, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing inclusive growth in the Twin Cities in order to achieve regional prosperity. As the most senior engineer on the project, my role on the team included tasks ranging from leading client interactions and mentoring teammates to architecting and constructing the application’s database.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Led a team of data analysts responsible for construction and migration of legacy data to SAP during deployment to one of the largest Cargill business units.Worked closely with business users to ensure data were sourced and migrated correctly across all process areas and objects.Acted as Agile champion and coach as team transitioned to scrum methodology for custom development work.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Managed IT Asset & Configuration Management Database (CMDB) of approximately 1M active records, more than 1.5M relationships, and more than twenty external integrations.Responsible for support, maintenance, and configuration of CG4 asset tracking software used by 400+ technicians at Target headquarters and distribution center locations to record IT asset lifecycle activities.Collaborated with users to understand business needs in the IT asset and configuration management space; created user stories that reflect these needs and prioritize them in the backlog.Developed, tested, and migrated code for enhancements and fixes to the ServiceNow platform.Worked with team to reduce operational workload by 75% using a combination of automation and organizational change management strategies.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Migrated IT asset management from legacy system to ServiceNow platform, an enterprise-wide SaaS solution with more than 3,000 active users at Target.Upgraded configuration management database (CMDB) from highly customized instance of ServiceNow to largely out-of-the-box version of newer release.Chosen by scrum team as one of two members to represent Asset & Configuration Management disciplines during go-live.Reduced contractor footprint for tool support and enhancement by 100% with minimal headcount addition (from 40 contractors to zero and one additional FTE).

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Served as Process Owner and ServiceNow tool Subject Matter Expert for Target Technology Services (TTS) Software Release Management.Gathered requirements for tool updates and championed requests throughout prioritization, design, and build phases of the ServiceNow enhancement process.Led a five-person team that designed and launched the Implementation Services metrics dashboard, which was distributed to senior leadership (e.g., directors and vice presidents) on a monthly basis to track key performance indicators.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Partnered with Cargill Business Units to optimize their product portfolios using data-driven Six Sigma methodology.Managed the Data & Architecture work stream during the planning and deployment of a successful 26-week pilot at Cargill European Starchy Enterprises. Discovered savings and margin uplift in excess of $20 million dollars over three years, more than three times the project’s original target. Collaborated with both the Demand and Supply work streams to redefine the original consultant-designed, B2C-centric process to better meet the needs of Cargill businesses (which are predominantly B2B).

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Project Tartan was a monumental, multi-year effort to standardize business processes and migrate best practices across the company. It included migration to a single Enterprise Resource Planning system – namely, SAP – for all Cargill Business Units. The Material Master is the most complex of the SAP objects, as it touches and relies on input from all major business process areas.Interacted with process designers to understand how fields and field values in the Material Master affect and are affected by various business processes. Documented business rules governing data in the Material Master. Gathered business requirements for the SAP solution from Business Unit Subject Matter Experts; performed fit/gap analysis to determine ability of the solution to meet these needs. Collaborated with the process design teams to engineer solutions that bridged gaps between business requirements and SAP functionality. Authored and approved process design documentation for proposed changes to reports, interfaces, conversions, enhancements, forms, and workflows. Worked with Data Conversion team and Business Unit Subject Matter Experts to map data from legacy systems to fields in the Material Master and related objects. Validated that data in the Material Master and related objects conformed to business rules. Resolved data-related issues and crises during the transition from legacy systems to the SAP solution. Authored and revised job aids related to the Material Master.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Formulated and processed a wide range of beverages featuring Cargill ingredients. Created custom interactive MS Access application to manage documentation of pilot plant activities. This program is still used on a near-daily basis by pilot plant personnel to track beverages produced, setup and procedures used, and quality specifications such as Brix and pH. Learned Visual Basic and SQL in order to build, program, and maintain database and GUI. Trained and managed several Beverage Applications contract employees and interns. Developed and updated standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the Beverage Applications lab. Involved in the design, implementation, and sustainment of the Cargill Food Ingredients & Systems Project Portfolio Management process. Managed the Beverage Category project portfolio and facilitated Project Portfolio Management training. Acted as a Cargill Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Champion. Ideas to Innovation (i2i) is a proprietary used to capture ideas and drive innovation throughout the company. Collaborated with internal and external customers to provide innovative solutions in the beverage space. Vital member of the team that created Dole Fruit Smoothie Shakers, an innovative frozen novelty made with real fruit and yogurt that produces a smoothie when the consumer adds juice and shakes. Led five-member planning team for the Technology Job Family-Twin Cities quarterly meetings, which included more than 100 invitees. Acted as Food Safety Coordinator for the Dry Storage area of the Cargill Research Building.

Mba, Information & Decision Sciences

Education record