Rick Gardner Email & Phone Number

Hanover, Md, Us

• Lead a large-scale professional services engagement supporting a top-tier financial services client, overseeing the development activities of 40-45 onshore and offshore resources to ensure delivery excellence and client satisfaction. • Implemented a robust project governance framework to improve delivery quality, operational efficiency, and alignment with strategic objectives. • Established a team governance structure, fostering collaboration between onshore and offshore teams to streamline workflows and enhance communication. • Designed and rolled out key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to provide actionable insights into team performance, quality delivery, utilization, budget adherence, and profit margin. • Partner with internal and client stakeholders to define strategic roadmaps, ensuring alignment with business goals and long-term initiatives. • Serve as a trusted advisor to the client, providing proactive solutions, actionable recommendations, and strategic oversight to maintain transparency and build stakeholder confidence. • Optimized resource management and budget efficiency by driving accountability, monitoring utilization, and implementing processes to maximize profitability while maintaining high-quality delivery. • Led initiatives to increase visibility into project metrics, ensuring internal and external stakeholders

Tysons Corner, Va, Us

Enhanced project delivery systems, applying engineering insights to reclaim $2M in at-risk revenue and increase efficiency by 25%.· Implemented the 'Strategy First' project management framework, improving project delivery success through direct technical problem-solving and team leadership.· Founded the Project Management and Delivery Center of Excellence, uplifting organizational capability with over 150 consultants.· Established a PMO focused on technical project management, delivering consistent and successful program outcomes.· Managed 6 project managers and consultants, achieving a 50% improvement in project health scores for Strategy-First projects.· Led 8 strategic engagements with a 100% satisfaction rate, ensuring precise and efficient delivery.· Rescued three at-risk projects, rescuing over $2M in at-risk revenue and enhancing project efficiency by 25%.

Tysons Corner, Va, Us

• Directed a multidisciplinary team of 11 employees, including 9 Product Managers and 2 UX/UI Designers, each focusing on unique product lines. • Spearheaded the design and implementation of remote diagnostic functionality that garnered real-time telemetry feedback from over 450 customers. This data was instrumental in shaping platform certification choices and feature prioritization. • Leveraged telemetry data to implement a more focused testing and support strategy, resulting in a 25% reduction in triage time for defects for applicable customers. • Orchestrated the complete lifecycle of 96 features across various platforms, from research and feature description to success criteria and validation. • Maintained close relationships with high-profile customers, such as American Express, Citibank, Home Depot, Lowes, Visa, Bank of America, and NASA, ensuring alignment with market demands and customer needs despite the complexity and scale of projects.

Tysons Corner, Va, Us

• Recruited, built, and led a specialized 12-member team of Engineers, UX Designers, and Quality Engineers, focusing on groundbreaking Platform Automation research and development. • Secured 8 patents through intensive R&D efforts, highlighting the team's innovative contributions. • Maintained a 100% employee retention rate, reinforcing a culture of engagement and job satisfaction. • Led quarterly business reviews with C-suite executives to validate past performance and set the stage for future strategic initiatives.

• Successfully delivered 15+ complex projects from discovery through maintenance for prestigious clients, including Coca-Cola, Sotheby’s, Bloomberg, and SourceMedia. • Spearheaded the successful onboarding and career development of 5 new delivery managers, ensuring both procedural compliance and alignment with company-standard project requirements. • Implemented a standardized, metrics-based framework for feature cataloging, allowing for precise project tracking, optimized staffing, and comprehensive risk assessment. • Contributed to customer sales meetings and proposals, generating over $3M in revenue.

• Directed and delivered key big-data projects for high-profile companies including AOL, Cloudera, Juniper Networks, GSK, etc.• Directed and delivered an innovative project for Cloudera to allow potential customers to deploy AWS clusters of Cloudera + Zoomdata/Tableau/Pentaho in their AWS account with one-click.• Coordinated with client project teams and managed the day-to-day development activities of off-shore engineers for big data and business intelligence initiatives.• Managed a team of engineers to assist AOL in visualizing and exploring real-time data from disparate sources into a single business intelligence environment.• Screened, interviewed, and assessed potential new employees, assuring the selection of qualified candidates for each position.

Tysons Corner, Va, Us

• Coordinated with the executive team to develop, define, and refine product offering and value proposition.• Oversaw the efforts of 5 project management, design, and engineering teams to deliver core offerings on web, iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms. • Spearheaded critical development and content-deployment efforts for a Facebook application aiding FC Barcelona in engaging with 32M Facebook fans.• Partnered directly with Guess, Inc. to design an engaging social media integrated loyalty application for iPhone.• Deployed Facebook-based contest for Meliá Hotels International, allowing the client to analyze the Facebook demographics of 5K participant profiles.

• Functioned as head of all technology initiatives, providing top-level consulting services on all education programs for the Mexican Federal and State governments.• Supported a key White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans to develop a creative social/web platform to support White House efforts toward improving access to higher education.• Established and introduced web-based registration and student and course management tools allowing the Mexican government to offer an e-learning program to over 10k citizens.• Acted as project manager responsible for ensuring key milestones were delivered to clients on time, under budget, and above all expectations.

New York, Ny, Us

• Designed and implemented a software process to collect feature telemetry information from AIMExpress to accurately track application performance and feature usage patterns.• Developed numerous new features for AIMExpress, an Actionscript, web-based version of the popular instant messaging client.• Implemented an automated build system to simplify the process of delivering new versions of the finished product to QA and operations teams.• Created automated localization tool to support the translation of AimExpress and ICQ in seven different langauges.• Developed and delivered Javascript social media toolbar add on that web-site owners could embed in their sites to add social experience to their end-users.

New York, Ny, Us

• Monitored and drove accountability for all projects and services including delivery, performance, and functionality.• Led the creation and deployment of an innovative enterprise reporting portal providing access to a variety of internal reporting tools and automating provisioning workflows for 1.5K enterprise users.• Leveraged Business Objects SDK to automate the creation of approved reporting end users.• Developed an Ab-Initio ETL process to analyze data relating to the abnormal disconnection of AOL sessions, identifying and resolving a key bug delaying the delivery of the production release of the AOL 9.0 software.• Built and incorporated creative tools to organize and extract critical information to streamline operations.

New York, Ny, Us

• Managed all aspects of the user-acceptance testing environment while monitoring for top performance.• Offered detailed instructions on properly installing the components necessary for operating the publishing platform to all development, QA and operations teams. • Coordinated with database and server operations personnel to identify optimization opportunities and assure optimal business success. • Devised and launched strategic TCL publishing tools for the AOL Welcome Screen, recognized as the most visible location in cyberspace.

New York, Ny, Us

• Supported the entire development process including design, specification, implementation and testing.• Collaborated with channel managers and the design team to build pages for the Shop@AOL family of web-sites, ensuring the approved design’s transformation into HTML following best-practices and industry-standards. • Integrated dynamic partner content into the AOL content management system including writing custom Perl processes for creating dynamic HTML content based on partner content and loading custom content into the AOL publishing tools.

Computer Science

Computer Science