Niki Virani Poonawala, Mba Email & Phone Number

Houston, Tx, Us

North Sydney, Nsw, Au

North Sydney, Nsw, Au

North Sydney, Nsw, Au

- Deliver board presentations on the strategic integration of emerging technologies, translating complex technical concepts into clear, actionable insights that facilitate informed decision-making at the highest level.- Proactively assessing emerging technologies, identifying their potential for disruptive innovation, and leveraging these insights to create new business opportunities and enhance market positioning.

North Sydney, Nsw, Au

- Proactively established and led a Generative AI Community of Practice, fostering a collaborative environment for knowledge sharing, skill development, and innovation. Facilitated regular discussions, workshops, and knowledge exchange sessions, resulting in a well-informed and empowered community that collectively advances expertise in generative AI technologies and applications.- Apply design thinking, lean startup, and agile methodologies to guide teams in creating customer-centric digital solutions that address user pain points and capitalize on emerging market trends.- Spearhead the evaluation and integration of emerging technologies, such as AI, IoT, and blockchain, into day to day operations.- Leverage data analytics and user feedback to drive data-driven decision-making, ensuring that projects are optimized for user satisfaction and business outcomes. - Leading cross-functional teams to adopt cutting-edge practices that embraced digitalization, automation, and data-driven decision-making, driving the industry toward a more agile and competitive future.- Successfully executed a product management pilot program, serving as a pivotal catalyst for testing and refining product management strategies and paving the way for a product mindset within the organization.

Houston, Tx, Us

Mentor for the Clean Energy Accelerator at the Rice Alliance.

Houston, Texas, Us

- Demonstrated expertise in overseeing a diverse portfolio of high-value capital projects, ensuring successful project execution while meeting budgetary and timeline constraints.- Championed a culture of continuous improvement, driving the adoption of best practices, innovative technologies, and performance metrics, enhancing project delivery efficiency, and ensuring portfolio success.- Successfully led a comprehensive SAP implementation initiative, aligning business processes with industry best practices and leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance efficiency and productivity.- Redesigned and optimized critical business processes, resulting in streamlined workflows, reduced operational bottlenecks, and improved data accuracy, leading to a boost in overall organizational performance.

Houston, Texas, Us

- Orchestrated the seamless integration of demand forecasting, supply capacity planning, and inventory management to ensure optimal product availability while minimizing excess inventory, resulting in a 5% reduction in carrying costs.- Fostered collaboration among cross-functional teams, including sales, operations, and procurement, to align demand projections with production capabilities, enhancing agility and responsiveness to market fluctuations.- Established key performance indicators (KPIs) to track supply chain performance, regularly analyzing data to identify areas for improvement, leading to a 10% increase in supply chain efficiency and reliability.

Plano, Texas, Us

- Managed all phases of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) for dozens of customers; Select clients included: City of Dallas, County Council of Oxfordshire (UK), State of Texas, State of Michigan, Town of Mt. Pleasant, City of Beatrice, City of Rialto, City of San Mateo, City of Cincinnati- Performed onsite and remote calls to troubleshoot, analyze and resolve issues that arise during implementation and go live phase for upgrades- Lead requirements gathering, development and document sessions with internal and external stakeholders- Developed reusable tools, templates and practices that lead to increased efficiency in delivery methodology, reduced implementation timeline to recognize revenue and streamlined the implementation cycle

Houston, Tx, Us

- Led 5 citywide performance improvement projects which resulted in over $1M in savings based on improved productivity, quality and waste reduction.- Identified and mapped over 50 As-Is and To-be processes; identified process constraints, bottle necks, and variation to exposed gaps between actual and target performance and discovered opportunities for improvement.- Designed analytics center of excellence and business performance dashboards that provides timely information and insights that enable data driven decision making for the City’s $4B budget.- Defined a multi-year roadmap for City of Houston (COH) with a focus on data management, and a comprehensive enterprise-wide Data Management Framework for the COH covering data governance, data quality, metadata, data architecture and data lifecycle management and controls.- Created Bright Ideas, an open innovation program that captures the ideas of 23K employees to prioritize future projects in a fun and competitive manner.- Lead the outreach efforts of the 4th largest city in the United States to encourage adoption of open source, open data, and open government philosophies across 23 city departments, which resulted in an 8x increase in the number of datasets on the open data portal.

Worldwide, Oo

- Conducted research on private sector salary lifecycle to help develop outline and thesis for white paper on federal compensation structure to increase eminence of the firm.- Managed design, development and implementation of ‘Consultant Data Tracker’; tool used by ~2300 practitioners to help build business case for year-end evaluations.- Aided in the development of custom and ad-hoc reports that outlined relevant data, metrics and key performance indicators to facilitate high-level decision making.- Worked with internal team and users on requirements gathering, design specifications, functional and extract, transform, load testing, and client-faced training.- Facilitated visioning, strategic planning, board development, customer service improvement, performance management sessions to help organizations align their values, clarify goals, and identify obstacles to change.

Austin, Tx, Us

Teaching assistant for undergraduate course on Business Foundations.

Washington, D.C., Us

Summary:Facilitated in-depth stakeholder interviews across the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to identify and document the unfunded request process. Utilized business process design to develop process map. Authored comprehensive report of findings, recommendations and next steps for governance board at VA.Essential job functions:• Surveyed 20 stakeholders across Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at all ranks to gather data for process analysis • Created process map with accompanying narrative to drive clarity in the unfunded request (UFR) process• Diagnosed opportunities for improvements in current UFR process that resulted in time savings of 2-3 weeks• Authored professional consultant report, presented project finding and recommendations to VA governance boards, executive clients, and contract primes to increase effectiveness of UFR process

Bethesda, Md, Us

Summary: Successfully managed multimillion budgets across various control accounts while meeting tight deadlines on key monthly deliverables. Initiated cross functional relationships between suppliers, engineers and customers to yield higher quality results and more robust financial forecastsEssential job functions included: • Managed cost plus fixed fee and fixed price contracts efficiently achieving a 97% success rate for actual versus planned margin. • Interfaced with program management, business management, scheduling, earned value and technical team members to monitor, analyze and collaborate with vendor points of contact for an Integrated Master Plan (IMP) and Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) and report schedule performance • Established and led a project management office (PMO) by creating a standard framework, processes and procedures to provide centralized financial, deliverable and operations management support to a division worth $4.3M. • Developed training material for the SAP Accounting System and trained approximately 100 Financial Analysts on the financial module

New Brunswick, Nj, Us

Essential job functions included:• Prepared benefit smoothing and fringe analysis to assist plant controllers on human resource planning• Generated detailed financial and operational projections (i.e. revenues per region and product, expenses per headcount, expenses per department and project, capital expenditures).• Improved operational efficiency of finance systems by 9% through implementation of streamlined data-management procedures• Contributed to 12% growth trend by developing strategic recommendations for management regarding long-range planning

Rolling Meadows, Il, Us

Created a risk management plan that identified, handled, tracked, reduced and controlled potential risks for a Fortune 500 entertainment company.

Los Angeles, California, Us

Responsible for identifying, sourcing, researching and qualifying new investment opportunities.

Master Of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Finance, Strategy

Master Of Public Affairs, Non-Profit/Public/Organizational Management

Bachelor Of Science, Business Administration; Finance And Strategic Management