As a Business Development Representative for a start-up organization headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with offices in the US and Dubia, I build bridges between North American and EU organizations and the wealth of technology talent available in Ethiopia. • We provide a new option for offshoring of software development as well as full spectrum technology and managed services options.• We don’t just provide human capital, we provide state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for our talent, to ensure high capacity, reliable, and secure connectivity, in a proven offshoring model to meet our customer’s needs.• I help bridge the gap between cultures and help answer the question for prospects that are uncertain about this novel location – why Ethiopia is a hidden gem, and soon to no longer be a secret in developed countries for quality and economy in technology and managed services outsourcing.

Seeking new opportunities.

Managed offshore technical resources and teams performing software development, digital transformation, and infrastructure projects based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This included:• Working closely with offshore teams engaged in NA and EU markets to ensure successful outcomes and customer satisfaction, resulting in 900% growth in delivery center’s capacity. • Performing client management functions e.g., running project or engagement kickoff sessions, managing cadence of engagement review meetings, management of risk, change, quality, and work performance and personnel issues to ensure consistency, more predictable outcomes, and customer satisfaction. • Preparing status reports, collaborating with teams for technical presentations for technical, business, and executive stakeholders to maintain awareness, ensure alignment, and mitigate risk.• Responsibility for growth in strategic accounts, affected a threefold expansion in existing accounts while managing intake of new business and laying foundation for new Project Management Office.• Responsibility for offshore resource procurement, created role of business Fulfillment Manager in PMO, responsible for fulfilling resource needs for customer engagements and projects, including identification of new talent, grooming existing talent, screening interviews, customer interviews, and onboarding and release processes in consistent and effective manner.• Managing internal projects, including analysis and determination of what projects to perform, pulling teams together, creating Roadmaps, epics, backlog, user stories, running daily standup meetings, sprint reviews, demos, and release planning.• Managing customer projects including enterprise systems migrations and upgrades and custom software development, ensuring quality deliveries that were on schedule, within budget, and resulted in improved NPS and CSAT scores.

Performed technical and program management consulting for small and medium organizations in the Atlanta Georgia metro area.

Provided leadership and managed multiple concurrent highly complex infrastructure, data center, integration and development, customer facing projects in Telecommunications and Mass Media companies such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, and others to drive successful deliveries and customer satisfaction with teams from 5-30 contributors, and budgets from $100K-$25M.• Used Waterfall, Agile, hybrid, and proprietary process methodologies to deliver quality products on time, within budget and with excellent quality.• Drove planning and technical project kickoff, resource acquisition from cross-functional multi-national organizations, performed activity analysis, schedule creation, monitored and controlled schedules, work activities, costs, and quality to meet team, business, and customer goals and deliverables.• Managed SDLC for custom software deliveries, complex digital solutions, and cloud migrations to ensure customer requirements and established quality standards were met. • Performed cost management, risk management, quality management, communication management, customer relations, delivery phase management, to ensure customer acceptance and a smooth transition to customer care and support.• Presided over system go-live and cut-over activities to ensure on time completion and customer satisfaction.• Identified risks and issues, analyzed and solved problems where possible, or marshaled resources and expertise as needed, and escalated and informed all stakeholders if required to make certain no issue lingered and was attended promptly.• Oversaw technical troubleshooting sessions, escalated and managed critical situations to quickly resolve issues and keep projects on track.• Provided status reporting using collaboration tools and in person to technical, business, and executive stakeholders to ensure project status was shared and any obstacles were removed, and stakeholders were informed.

Developed and delivered integrated enterprise software solutions to clients in the US and Canada to solve business problems, improve efficiencies, and reduce costs by implementing these solutions in alignment with ITIL principals.• Implemented and integrated the Alcatel-Lucent Smart Grid Management System (SGMS) at the Electric Power Board of Tennessee which was the first system of this kind that provided real time access to meter data and utilization metrics to customers and customer support personnel, as well as integration with the AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), billing and CRM systems, and other business and logistics systems. Accomplishments included:- Performed the initial integration of the SGMS system with the smart meter data collection system (TUNet from Tantalus)- and then designed an ETL tool to populate the SGMS Oracle data warehouse with the historical data from TUNet.- Designed tools to integrate SGMS with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), collection point of meter data from RAN and migrated historical data to SGMS database using custom developed ETL utilizing Oracle, Perl, and SQL stored procedures with SOAP and XML.- Completed integration, testing, validation, and go-live of poly phase meter data collection, storage, and billing to meet SOW deliverables.• Designed, implemented, integrated, and customized IBM/Tivoli solutions with Netcool, ITM, ITCAM, and TADDM for web application monitoring and management, network event management, asset discovery and management.

Worked as IBM Tivoli Business Automation pre-sales technical specialist and supported sales cycle for Tivoli Enterprise Systems Management solutions in major and mid-market accounts in US Southeast and Caribbean regions.• Performed product presentations and demos for customers and prospects, user groups and at Tivoli conferences to promote our value proposition, and further our sales goals.• Completed Proofs of Concepts in competition with other vendors as condition to close business or to advance further in sales cycle.• Responded to RFP/RFI’s as needed with detailed custom prepared and designed solutions to put organization in a competitive position to win business and meet or exceed personal, regional, and national sales objectives.• Executed Proofs of Technology for customers and prospects to allow hands-on deployment, configuration, and customization of software in portable labs to demonstrate ease of deployment, capabilities, and use cases.• Completed post sales activities to ensure customer success by assisting with product implementations, delivering product workshops and demos, sharing best practices for implementation and support, and tracking problem management records, and participating in response to critical situations and areas of dissatisfaction.• Prospected accounts for opportunities to increase our footprint with products and solutions from Tivoli Portfolio as well as entire IBM portfolio e.g. DB2, AIX, etc.• Functioned as conduit to provide product feedback and requests for enhancements from customers to product management and development groups.• Was top performing sales engineer for region assisting in closing more than $15M in software and services.

Performed as a consultant for designing and implementing IBM Tivoli solutions from the start of the sales cycle to the completion of the implementation project. • Participated in initial contact with prospect/customer and sales executive in order to provide understanding of customer requirements or pain points and begin to develop solution and quote.• Performed technical presentations and demos of solutions and components as opportunity dictated.• Designed solutions as per customer requirements, responded to RFPs or developed quotes and presented those to customer or prospect to drive winning business.• Prepared project plans, schedules, and resource requirements to ensure solution delivery within schedule and budget.• Performed technical project activities including hardware installs and configuration, database installs and configuration, software install and configuration, software customization, development of integration tool and facilities per technical specifications and SOW to ensure customer satisfaction with final product.• Provided training and/or knowledge transfer to guarantee customer confidence with ownership of the solution.

Provided IBM Tivoli software consulting services as an independent contractor for self-owned and managed corporation. This included marketing and sales, contract management, project management, design, implementation, and customization services.

Drove business development activities for IBM partner and reseller in southeastern US working with IBM partner development to identify opportunities, connect with potential clients, and work to close sales. Also performed onsite consulting with existing customers, performing Tivoli enterprise management architecture, low-level customization using scripting tools and programming languages, and software and hardware installs.

Performed Consulting services as subject matter expert in enterprise systems management to provide guidance in evaluation and selection of product suites from IBM/Tivoli, BMC, and Computer Associates. This included:• Preparation of the RFP and evaluation of the responses. • Providing guidance in the selection and awarding of the contract.• Negotiation of the terms of the contract and working with the legal and procurement departments to finalize the agreement.• Building the team to implement the solutions from new hires and internal resources.• Managing the implementation project through completion.

Acted as Swiss army knife performing primarily technical services, sales, and architecture and design for startup Tivoli Systems that was acquired by IBM.