Geoff Sowrey Email & Phone Number

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

(Formerly Believeco.) Being asked to take over and rebuild the digital practices under watch of one Canada's foremost entrepreneurs is no small feat. Working with a multi-skilled team, I helped refound and focus the Digital team, putting effort in high value areas, mentoring team members, setting digital strategy for client work, delivered enterprise governance, practices, and policies for ecommerce, privacy, security, Web3, and AI. The team was later merged with four other Digital teams during a corporate merger, where I took a senior leadership to ensure the integration, development, and growth of a 12-person multi-disciplinary Digital Experience practice, including technical direction, skills development, process refinement, resource planning, while also working on our clients' needs: technical strategy and consultation, website operation audit and analysis, solution maintenance, and forward planning of 40+ projects ranging from $10,000 to $350,000. Strategically, I focused efforts on increased use of cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions) to eliminate owned infrastructure and dependency, minimize risk, and maximize operational flexibility. Technologies: AWS (IaaS), GCP (IaaS, SaaS), WP Engine (PaaS), WordPress (PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, MySQL), NoSQL/JSON, React, Laravel, Shopify, GitHub, Bash, Node, ChatGPT, MidJourney, CopilotKey clients: Beam Suntory, Becton Dickson, Cavendish Farms, Johnson & Johnson, FireSmart Alberta, Miller Thomson, Lobster Council of Canada, Osler, Shannex, Thomson Rogers, Timbermart, Unity Health, FYi Doctors, Balzac's Coffee Roasters, Alberta Milk, Red Deer Polytechnic, Alberta Cancer Foundation, Canon, Liquor Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Leading a multidisciplinary customer self-service portal group of 12 people across 3 teams during the COVID-19 crisis, I was responsible for the update and operation of Shaw Communication's customer-facing online services, including the support and chat systems. I led a mixed team of full-time and contract developers, analysts, and project managers on a sprint-based cadence that aligned with legacy backend data services, requiring 24/7 operation. During my oversight, we experienced over 99.99% availability with high responsiveness, without any SEV0 or SEV1 incidents.

Calgary, Canada Area

The crown corporation responsible for tourism within the Province of Alberta required someone to service and enhance their IT services and infrastructure. In addition to ensuring updates of software and services in a cloud-first architecture, I worked closely with the Digital Marketing team to audit and map all dependent services and provide plans for optimization, improving efficiency to our stakeholders and reducing overall technology operating costs by $700,000 annually. As a result of my efforts, we were able to transition to remote operations at the start of COVID-19 without any significant issue.

Calgary, Canada Area

Taking over the Web Services team in the midst of a new platform project allowed me to review the current operations of over 1,500 websites in terms of processes and resourcing, level set the roles that were needed to support the work, help improve the team dynamics and morale, and plan for the future state of enhancement and operations. In addition, I worked extensively with the Information Services team across every faculty and department, contributing to change management processes, and participated in security review and remediation.

Calgary, Canada Area

As a Solutions Lead, I worked closely with clients to understand their requirements and business goals, ensuring that our solutions were cost-effective and maintainable. I also conducted enterprise content management audits, recommended operational efficiencies, architected solutions, and provided infrastructure design and support.

Calgary, Canada Area And Barreal De Heredia, Costa Rica

In the Technology Director role, I managed a multi-disciplinary team responsible for the digital delivery of Fortune 500 clients -- over 100 web properties across over 40 different clients. I worked closely with clients to understand requirements, which translated to functional specifications and directions within the team. Between 2008 and 2010, I helped found and establish The Hangar Interactive (Critical Mass Latin America) in Costa Rica.

Bachelor Of Arts, English Rhetoric And Professional Writing, Computer Science Minor

Activities and Societies: Cooperative Education program English Rhetoric and Professional Writing, with a minor in Computer Science

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