Tara C. Wilson Email & Phone Number

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

With a passion for branding and community leadership, I help local communities connect with local business owners who want to see their communities thrive. My decades of experience in building go to market strategies and product delivery help me build successful advertising and brand campaigns for my clients. Backed by Best Version Media, we provide high quality platforms and marketing campaigns that increase customer awareness, boost website traffic, educate customers, build brand loyalty and engage with our audiences.

Ontario, Canada

My career path started by understanding how various areas of the business operate so I could effectively lead transformational change. In regulated and non-regulated industries, I worked hard to identify operational gaps, improve end to end processes and implemented technology solutions. This is my passion; applying technological solutions to help everyone work smarter, not harder. From recovering a stalled program and delivering the first cloud services at BlackBerry to developing the US BB10 Go to Market readiness plan and exceeding expectations when harnessing the power of all the teams involved to ensure product, support, carrier and channel readiness for launch was achieved. During downsizing at BB, I streamlined activities across many departments to amalgamate teams, implement matrix models, build KPIs and set new direction. I moved into enterprise software sales while earning my MBA to further round out my experience and build client facing skills. My work with Auvik Networks allowed me to combine my background in infrastructure, IT Operations and business growth to help our customers grow their own success in revenue and streamlining operations as we work together to expand their client bases. Upon completing my degree, I knew my board experience, professional success, digital transformation success and educational knowledge put me in a great position to help others; so I began mentoring and consulting; eventually building my own consulting practice. I focus on helping others identify gaps and opportunities, coach through challenges and build teams to lead change. My competitive advantage is that I help leadership teams learn how to build transformation plans and navigate through constant change in the future - not a just a consultant for hire. Coaching and executing strategy is my niche. I've cultivated my life to continual learning, growing and sharing my knowledge. I'm happy to tell you more - just ask.

Primarily North America

My consulting approach with clients is to integrate strategy, technology, process, and culture; including evaluating business models and IT operational frameworks to optimize efficiency, reduce costs and improve profitability. I work collaboratively with executive teams to deliver valuable assessments by identifying areas of improvement and eliminating roadblocks. I've overseen many migration of on-prem and legacy systems to Cloud and micro services with a focus on building team skillsets, identifying business alignment gaps while working with senior leaders across business and IT areas. I orchestrate extensive support to startup companies to understand IT models and life cycles through advisory, market analysis and consultative services.Key contributions include:• Successfully increased market share by researching and building out segment market analysis identifying key competitors, areas of weaknesses, and opportunities for buy-out.• Drove consistent business growth by designing and implementing business strategies, corporate culture practices and defining targets.• Encouraged maximum performance through analyzing metrics and deliverables by building pivot-capable versatility into directionally sound frameworks.• Promoted and sustained coaching relationships with senior leaders to understand, build and support leadership vision.• Spearheaded, developed and delivered leadership training, succession plans and management objectives by clarifying the existing organizational structure and corporate vision.• Over a two year period, I've advised on strategic transformational plans for a major Canadian retailer to migrate from on-prem to cloud services (incl using APIs). My focus was on preparing leadership teams to build out new operational frameworks, help teams develop training plans for new technical skills and delivery mindsets as well as help communicate long term impacts and strategies to help the organization deal with the mult-year changes needed.

Hamilton, Ontario

Helping the company become more efficient and profitable. Analyzing the company’s business plans and finances to recommend strategic direction, risk identification and mitigation, marketing trends and plans, and potential funding opportunities.

Hamilton, Ontario

Streamlined client onboarding process and statement of work activities to increase operational effectiveness for MobiStream by developing and implementing the user journey approach. Incorporated customer requirements and user journey into development cycle and delivery while representing the voice of the customer, acting as Product Owner for SaaS delivery. Performed diversified activities, including cultivating potential opportunities in Tech Start up Space, leveraging connections to assess specific pain points MobiStream could solve and building proof of concept opportunities for exploration.My key contributions included:• Proficiently planned and delivered a portal solution for one of the top financial institutions in Canada, allowing the customer to extend the life of a $1.2M investment in legacy software.• Delivered expert advice to clients in resolving business issues by conducting root cause analysis resulting in saving one partner $500K in ending an existing project and saving over 400 hours of wasted effort.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Displayed a high level of leadership and technical competence to transform the team from transactional support to business value realization focus. Established, executed and delivered the Strategic Account segment program within four months, which included marketing content, customer use cases, business value drivers, and enhanced account management. Significantly increased the velocity for customer value by developing cross-functional alignment with support and product teams. Consistently delivered amazing customer experience to build Auvik's reputation by streamlining internal processes.My key contributions included:• Successfully increased monthly recurring revenue by 15% within four months of new programming.• Improved customer satisfaction by 23% by refining segmentation to define customer needs and value use cases.

South Western, Ontario

Tara is an expert in operational management and technology delivery, recognized for leading complex, transformative technology programs that enable her clients to resolve significant organizational challenges. She attributes her success in leading programs, boards and non-profit initiatives to empowering the teams she works with to better assess their immediate landscape, their long term goals and build the path to achieve these. She has a strong, results-based reputation in the financial and technology sectors, and is known for her culture-building strategies that move people and organizations forward – together. An active listener with proven facilitation and problem solving skills – thinking "in and out of the box,” as required, I focus on the intersection of business development, application of technology, marketing communications and workforce mobilization to deliver growth strategies.

Greater New York City Area

Galvanize Worldwide is the largest distributed network of marketing and communications professionals. Role Overview: Worked as part of a team who met with clients to assess and build strategic plans, develop campaigns and craft messaging about client services and the business value they offered. Helped to balance ideas with results and to create a vision for all aspects of the digital and social footprint. Worked with both internal teams and clients to maintain favorable relationships with clients and build a positive Galvanize experience. Collaborated with company directors and kept team on task and all projects on deadline; handling logistics and continuously update all parties on the project progress.

Sw Ontario

Role Overview: Purposefully transitioned to entirely new role in sales to complete my holistic capture of the customer/client experience in this customer-centric, individual contributor role.Key Accomplishment: Ranked 2nd on team of Strategic Account Executives within first year of new role. • Navigated learning curve of long sales cycle, leveraging drive, adaptability, and capability to learn with urgency and subsequently rise to 2nd performer in team of 7 within first year.• Overcame initial corporate clients’ resistance, spurring engagement of 100 clients through my strategic, signature communication blending ambassadorship, evangelism, and an educational focus.• Collaborated with cross-functional teams – marketing, technical account managers, product owners, and executive – to plan upgrades, assess budgets, and enhance product delivery and incentives.• Developed client specific marketing plans for senior executive level customer base to ensure value propositions were clearly articulated and aligned with BlackBerry corporate strategy.

Waterloo, Ontario

Role Overview: Reporting to VP, transitioned to new department following the amalgamation and centralization of several IT units; contributed to building processes for a successful merger.Key Accomplishment: Successfully completed departmental restructuring to a matrix model, built new KPIs and then began internal consulting accountability to help 4 other departments plan and complete their organizational changes. • Recognized for increasing velocity and delivering more with less resources; methodology included mentoring, empowering, encouraging, and supporting staff to create solutions and achieve results: o Embedded cultural changes by transforming to an Agile/DevOps delivery model. o Supported and coached peers, employees, and senior leaders while changing from a hierarchical department to a matrix environment. o Developed corporate communications to ensure alignment between vision and transformation execution across the organization.• Led cross-functional internal consulting engagements, assisting senior leaders to replicate success in adopting new business models and setting direction and goals/objectives, and meaningful KPIs.• Achieved Scrum Master certification as part of a team developing and overseeing internal Agile practices, assisted other departments in adopting scrum practices.

Waterloo, Ontario

Role Overview: Accepted temporary assignment to work with cross-functional business teams to deliver two major product launches to 4 major US corporate clients – AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. Helped plan and deliver go-to-market strategies and Carrier launch plans. Key Accomplishment: Accepted the challenge to help launch the BB10 in one of our toughest markets, worked with departments across the organization to successfully deliver 4 US Carrier Launches - this activity included plans for beta rollout, marketing, production fulfillment and launch plans. My success in this role led to a secondment extension so I could continue working with the teams to deliver improved results. • Followed earlier work with product development to expand knowledge of new product introductions to market; 3-month assignment was expanded to allow me to similarly assist each business unit: marketing, carrier setup, carrier support team training, internal support training, and customer service.• Represented senior management at executive product readiness meetings; accountable for executive and cross-departmental communications - including facilitating ad hoc cross-functional action plans• Delivered end-to-end strategies, identifying risk, prioritizing fixes, streamlining dependencies, and creating an operational framework for a quicker turnaround, less risk, and better customer focus.

Waterloo, Ontario

Role Overview: Position continued from earlier role and expanded accountability to leading team of 15 (and indirectly approximately 400 globally) to deliver on hundreds of software, operating system, and hardware products.Key Accomplishment: Led my team to set 2 corporate records: 1) launching new devices on time and 2) moving up a launch date by 3 days in a fiscally strategic market (UAE), and meeting a challenging corporate mandate. • Set vision, goals and objectives for the team and department; accountable for departmental deliverables and performance management/team development. • Concentrated primarily on partnering with cross functional IT teams to manage program governance, up/downstream issues, program delivery communications and risk mitigation strategies. • Focused management of relationships with senior leaders across the organization to identify, execute and deliver cross-functional programs, product delivery and managed services.• Provided mentorship and coaching to my team of senior leaders; focused on building partnerships with the organization’s senior executive for directional input to ensure successful delivery.

Waterloo, Ontario

Role Overview: Hired to restart stalled program that was initiated 8 months’ prior.Key Accomplishment: Successfully delivered a stalled program within 6m (the whole program delivered in just a year and a half); launched the first cloud infrastructure at BlackBerry.• Planned and implemented BB’s first cloud infrastructure: identified stakeholders, program scope, project structures, and executed ongoing service management and end-to-end work activity.• Established reputation as a force for change and progress, as well as for firm project management, marshalling resources to complete complex project with global, 30-department impact.• Led corporate-critical outage resolution, avoiding severe financial penalties and PR loss.• Developed integrated corporate communication plans for over 30 departments to assist senior leaders to bring new services to light, helping staff understand the transition to building new skill-sets and cross-functional operations to align performance and develop new technology capabilities.

Kitchener, Ontario

Role Overview: Accountable for leading major projects spanning both IT and Business interests; from planning and overseeing key acquisitions to working with service providers to facilitate disaster recovery execution. Key Accomplishment: Successfully transitioned MCAP from a hosted service arrangement to a new provider for managed infrastructure services - with no unplanned downtime or customer impact. I was accountable for the RFP, vendor evaluation, migration planning, internal process transformation, board, corporate and external communications. • Partnered with MCAP Business partners and leaders of ResMor Trust Company to ensure a smooth integration of services for migration - this successful acquisition resulted in MCAP becoming one the largest national independent real estate financing companies. • Developed and successfully executed disaster recovery plans required to maintain annual Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and financial governance requirements. • Worked with Senior leadership to develop the Infrastructure RFP and evaluation criteria to determine new managed services outsourcing arrangement.• Partnered with SunGuard to plan, migrate and build communication plans for migration.• Maintained and fostered positive relationships between MCAP and external service providers as MCAP continued to evolved technologically; moving into shared HW storage services, continued network security upgrades, increased firewall intrusion detection and prevention.

Kitchener, Ontario

Role Overview: Accountable for managing the team and providers that kept the IT department running by ensuring consistent, quality infrastructure and platform services (IDS/IPS, FW, Storage, Network, VPN, email, iSeries & AS/400) were available as per SLAs. Key Accomplishment: Worked with IT leadership to develop plans to outsource infrastructure hosting and built out plans for HA and DR capabilities with this transition.• Responded to regulatory changes with proactive measures, leading network upgrade to improve corporate redundancy, applications’ stability, and to lower annual costs by 30%, an undertaking that touched each of 12 national branches, a secondary data center site, and entire IT operation.• Implemented company’s first-ever intrusion detection and prevention, a pivotal condition required to close a major financial transaction with a world-renowned institutional lender. • Managed an annual operating budget of over $1.5M, all external service providers and was accountable for overseeing the annual data center audit - including developing communications and plans in place for any required ‘at risk’ control objectives.• Partnered with CGI to provide level of Disaster Recovery required to maintain its Standard and Poor regulatory rating.• Lead and coached internal infrastructure project and operational teams to deliver on business objectives. • Developed, planned and executed corporate objectives to help my team drive results and move the organization forward.

Kitchener, Ontario

Role Overview: Accountable for identifying areas of improvement and potential options for better IT delivery. Key Accomplishment: Developed policies to formalize oncall, remote access, and scheduled maintenance practices. Worked with all lines of business, HR and IT leadership teams to ensure successful adoption of these practices. • Worked with business and IT areas to assess issues in end to end process and work through implementing mutually beneficial changes.• Gained experience learning new lines of business and systems based approaches to problem solving and employee adoption of change.

Kitchener, Ontario

Role Overview: Accountable for identifying process, procedure and skill gaps at the team level in the Infrastructure area. Key Accomplishment: Identified chronic engagement issues; worked with IT and Business teams to ensure infrastructure engagement occurred earlier in the process. My recommendations resulted in better PR for infrastructure team and decreased unnecessary team lag times by an average of 40%. • Refined my analysis skills; focused mainly on identifying process and technology gaps then developed plans to remedy these issues.• Worked with team mates to action tactical problems and made recommendations to management when longer-term efforts were required.

Taught English to students for grades 3, , 6, 7, 8, 9 - mostly without the assistance of testbooks to guide topics or compency levels. Necessity being the mother of invention, I developed mulit-level strategies to teach the language at a broad range of skill-sets.

Master Of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Executive Management

Activities and Societies: Cohort Representative 2015- 2016 Using my business experience, I focused on balancing my family life, board.

Bachelors Of Arts, Honours Degree In Political Science And International Studies

Activities and Societies: Political Science Students' Association - Social Director (1997-1998) – Liaising between Faculty.

Tesol, Teaching English To Speakers Of Other Languages

Earned my certification for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages - TESOL so that I could take a teaching job in Mexico.