Christopher Spear Email & Phone Number

Philadelphia, Pa, Us

Conshohocken, Pa, Us

Served as Chief Information Officer for David's Bridal (DBI), reporting directly to the President of Marketing, Finance and Technology. Responsible for strategic IT leadership and a $12 million-dollar operating budget supporting 195 stores and digital operations. Key goals were to improve omnichannel commerce and enhance customer satisfaction. Operating environment spanned both on-premises and the AWS and Azure clouds.- Led a team of thirty-five IT professionals, both on- and off-shore, addressing organizational business technology needs, including infrastructure, security, applications support, and user support.- Spearheaded remediation of a ransomware attack. Implemented a recovery plan to restore all production systems keeping business continuity and data security.- Transformed the IT organization during the DBI bankruptcy. Addressed personnel issues, led negotiations to adapt existing contracts to the new organization, and ended cure amounts on outstanding debts.- Developed the annual strategic plan for the DBI IT organization aligning business priorities to the available capital and expense programs. Focus area on addressing technical debt reduction to increase operational stability and adaptability.

Conshohocken, Pa, Us

- Accountable for the enterprise architecture of David’s Bridal (DBI), the largest bridal store chain in America, which operates more than three hundred stores in forty-five states, Canada, the United Kingdom, México and Puerto Rico.- Responsible for resource allocation, career development, performance management and growth of an architecture practice that spans several architecture disciplines, including business, data, solution, infrastructure and security.- Serves as Enterprise Architect for strategic business initiatives to rebuild and replace the eCommerce website (davidsbridal.com) and the order management platform to establish and maintain a balance between short- and long-term business and technology objectives.- Founded the architecture and solution design for Data Hub, a multi-domain single source of truth that facilitates the ability to carefully manage enterprise data, ensuring constant awareness of its location, reliability of its contents, and access whenever and wherever necessary.- Operated as Product Owner for the Data Hub by negotiating with business sponsors, developing an agile backlog, documenting user stories, and arranging sprints with the agile team based on time and priority order. - Supports the operating model of the DBI IT organization in the areas of application portfolio management, project life cycle management, change management, and talent management. - Responsible for the coordination of a strategic planning effort for the DBI IT organization which focused on increasing the agility of the application portfolio to build for growth and effectively managing IT capital through the building and execution of a multi-year IT roadmap.

Horsham, Pa, Us

- Responsible for the drafting of the strategy for the Information Management and Technology group of Penn Mutual, a Fortune 1000 company providing life insurance and annuity products to affluent clients. - Created and staffed a new web development practice responsible for the delivery of digital tools and ​experiences ​for advisers and clients. - Negotiated and secured new vendor relationships for the recruitment and hiring of staff, as well as new software packages that aligned with business strategy and discovery.

Wayne, Pennsylvania, Us

- Responsible for the enterprise architecture of Radian Guaranty, an industry-leading company providing ​private mortgage insurance and related risk management products and services. - Provided guidance and governance over a one hundred million-dollar modernization program launched to revamp and retool the technology platform to provide more agility to the IT organization to react quickly to market pressures. - Oversaw a move into the AWS cloud with attention paid to security controls, operations and continuous integration. - Accountable for the delivery and maintenance of an IT Blueprint which detailed the five-year strategic plan for how technology goals were to be met.

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Accountable for the creation and growth of a solution architecture practice to support all current and upcoming client projects.

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Grew a multi-disciplinary solution delivery practice from twenty-two members to one hundred six members located in three countries using a blend of both on- and off-shore resources. Responsible for the delivery of solutions for over eighty webstores for clients both domestic and international.

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Provided estimations and architectural governance to solution delivery teams at GSI Commerce, an e-commerce and fulfillment firm supporting major retailers.

Owned all custom technical solutions for clients of a content management software (CMS) package created and published by Really Strategies, a software and consulting company which focuses on the publishing industry.

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Accountable for resource allocations, career development and performance management of a thirteen member solutions development staff. Responsible for the coordination of a strategic planning effort for the NFN IT organization which focused on increasing the agility of the application portfolio to build for growth and effectively managing IT capital through the building and execution of a multi-year IT roadmap.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Provided architectural, design and development expertise for clients in the Fortune 500.