Patrick Mario Blais Email & Phone Number

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Identified, purchased, renovated, rent and manage a small portfolio of single-family rental properties, including tenant selection and relations, contractor negotiation, rent collection, cash flow management, and hands-on repairs (that occasionally...I even do myself).

Washington, District Of Columbia, United States

I help organizations uncover, understand, address and overcome strategic, human, financial and operations-related challenges to achieving their mission. I help leadership assess how well day-to-day activities contribute to reaching strategic goals. I develop and help implement action plans that better align resources and effort to mission, operating objectives and desired outcomes. Using plain language and transparent, straight-forward approaches, I help all members of the team to move themselves and the organization forward.

Takoma Park, Maryland, United States

Oversaw day-to-day HR and administrative operations of a small science-based consulting firm. Advised company leadership on strategic issues. Championed changes that led to securing an outside consultant to lead development of a new company strategy and reorganization.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Recruited by a former supervisor, I supported and directed the day-to-day activities of a staff of 400 and ensuring efficient delivery of approximately $200M in annual client work. This ambitious role combined the duties of three former operations directors with the objective of streamlining and synchronizing operations across two divisions – one the newly formed combination of three formerly separate teams. Supporting two division vice presidents, I matured operations and aligned them with the company's strategic plans. I re-engineered roles and responsibilities within the division and partnered with corporate departments to de-duplicate functions, maximize resource use and contain costs. Some quick success in the division role prompted Abt leadership to request that I establish a company-wide process improvement PMO to replicate and expand process refinements. Day-to-day duties included financial analysis, budgeting, labor allocation, human resource management, internal communication and division administration.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

A fellow consultant recruited me to assist this non-profit organization see its operations through a new lens and provide a streamlined approach to executing their strategic vision. While generally overseeing day-to-day operations, I created an aligned framework to organize and position each activity, process, stakeholder and department using the same map. This framework formed the basis for rethinking roles and responsibilities and allowed leadership to realign the enterprise to better support the organization's needs and future direction.

Fairfax, Va

I returned to ICF to serve as operations chief for the Human Capital Division, where I led business functions for this $40 million, 125-person practice. Leadership needed a masterful process and people manager with a strong systems perspective and a keen sense of financial matters, to oversee and improve back-office activities. Key accomplishments: • Achieved 40% increase in project profitability by the end of the 1st year, by focusing on improved project pricing, reducing scope creep, better resource allocation and more attention to financial metrics.• Established a common operating framework (The Blais 6) to help managers comprehensively and consistently understand and execute their business development, project execution, financial, administrative, customer service and supervisory responsibilities. • Created and conducted extensive training on each Blais 6 business area.• Identified and tackled teamwork challenges by holding staff discussions that led to more open, honest and direct communication, transparency in decision making, and bi-directional trust and cooperation. • Coached supervisors for more consistent treatment of human resource issues and effective performance appraisals.• Supervised creation of knowledge management and other business systems. • Influenced the redesign of company’s project management quality review program. I subsequently assumed the helm of corporate marketing and communications, that supported the $1 billion, 5000-person firm. In this role I re-envisioned and reinvented operations and led the change management efforts to evolve a service bureau into a more strategic, financially-driven business partner for client-facing groups. I established a department mission and key operational objectives, reorganized the team, brought in new talent and key contractors, re-purposed existing talent, upgraded systems, developed operating procedures, and fine-tuned existing processes.

Washington, Dc

Following an internal assessment process initiated by the Executive Director and the development of a new strategic plan, I was hired to bring internal operations up to speed and in line with highly successful external programs that had outgrown the organization's ability to support them.I supported NASTAD as the director in charge of finance and accounting, contracts, legal, administration and operations, information technology, human resources, member services, event management, and communications. I served as liaison to the Finance and Audit Committees, financial interface with the Board of Directors and supervisor to the Membership Committee liaison.I collaborated with the Executive Director on strategic organizational improvements and provided mentoring and coaching to senior employees. In addition, I supervised the Global Program Director and helped lead this part of the organization during a period of rapid growth. Key accomplishments: • Supervised the transition to in-house financial systems and managed substantial growth in accounting capacity while tripling reserves and achieving 100% perfect annual audits. • Overhauled and codified human resource functions including general policies and procedures, recruitment, benefits, coaching and performance management. • Upgraded information technology to provide stable communication systems, continuity of operations processes, and long-term planning and deployment of future technology. • Analyzed and corrected weaknesses in the organization’s approach to requesting proposals, issuing contracts, obtaining insurance coverage, and other areas with legal implications.• Established a department responsible for communications policies and procedures, branding, materials production, newsletter editing, and redevelopment of the website. • Formalized member service functions into a recognized department and expanded member support to include new member orientations and special website pages.

Fairfax, Va

I helped lead the Information Technology Division by creating and performing as the company’s first operations director. I created operating processes and systems that improved efficiency, reported on monthly sales to maintain our focus on growth, coordinated staff utilization to increase profitability, oversaw recruitment, training, retention, incentives, salary and bonus administration, performance appraisals, and other human resource functions, and managed administrative activities. I was originally hired to coordinate activities and produce monthly client reports for the EPA’s fledgling Green Lights and Energy Start Programs. I essentially eliminated this initial role by working with a software development team to automate most of the processes I was hired to execute. Subsequently, I created ICF’s first customer service center, supporting the Energy Star Programs. I tripled revenue over three years through excellent customer service and additional support offerings. I secured a second project to support the DOE’s Clean Cities Program by defeating an entrenched incumbent during the bidding process. This introduced the firm to a new client and program that ICF still supports. At leadership’s request, I took on a side project to assume oversight for the graphics department and overhauled operations to improve efficiency and client satisfaction. I was hired at the Analyst level and promoted several times to Principal.

Washington, Dc

Provided general administrative support to the office of the Executive Vice President of Government Affairs, which had been downsized from five support staff to two. I quickly reduced the department’s spending by streamlining processes, analyzing costs and eliminating duplicate or unnecessary expenditures.

Boston, Ma

After working my way up from telephone representative to group lead, to department supervisor, I oversaw a 30-person call center team providing customers with IBM (formerly Lotus) product information and with assistance and recommendations on purchasing third-party add-on products from a sales catalog. Responsibilities included recruitment, supervision, coaching, training, scheduling, and oversight of call escalation. I served as a Crosby Quality Improvement Process certified trainer and quality team member. Shortly after assuming the supervisory role, I restructured the department, resulting in an improved call routing process, shorter customer wait times and a dramatic reduction in employee on-boarding training time from six months to six weeks. This model was subsequently utilized in reorganizing the entire customer service division, resulting in dramatic cost savings for the corporation.

Burlington, Vermont Area

After obtaining my English Literature degree, I worked with clients to convert their existing distribution systems to a proprietary software program, operating on IBM System/36 minicomputers. Typical projects included developing the project plan, file conversions, software and hardware installation, testing, customer training, and overseeing client operations for the first few days of live operation. By the end of one year, I was at the top of the "leader board" in system installations per month.