Thomas Cooke Email & Phone Number

Teaneck, New Jersey, Us

Director of QA for the ClaimSphere (HealthCare) suite of products.

Corporate head of SQA for leading health care cost management firm, managing an average workload of 100+ active projects. Define the mission and strategy of SQA team. Meet with Business partners, Business Analysts, Development teams, and Project Managers to review requirements, create test plans, and establish project timelines. Lead onshore and offshore test engineers (and 4 SQA managers) in test execution, defect reporting, and test documentation. Established firm’s initial offshore testing team.• Customized HP Quality Center (ALM) 11 to provide defect metrics and root cause analysis. • Established SQA entry and exit criteria to improve turnover quality. Significantly reduced Production outages. • Implemented automated regression testing of key business applications through QTP, Automate, and customized scripting, significantly reducing regression test execution time and improving testing accuracy.

New York, Ny, Us

Established the initial Software Quality Assurance team at Morgan Stanley Trust (Mutual Fund Transfer Agency), including planning, hiring, training, test environment creation and maintenance. Managed and expanded the Global QA teams in the Investment Management and Merchant Banking divisions. Led QA team in planning and executing tests for trading, mutual funds, accounting, tax, pricing, investment banking, merchant banking, portfolio management, corporate actions, compliance, and other key applications. - Established Proactive SQA program, focused on process improvement techniques to "build quality in" (rather than "test it in") and on defect prevention.- Implemented Data Masking program for disguise and protection of data used in test environments.- Dramatically reduced the frequency of Production defects, and improved application stability. - Significantly expanded investment in test automation, reducing overall testing time and increasing test coverage. - Part-time trainer on technology topics, including Data Privacy, Information Security, and QA.- Regularly delivered presentations to senior management on progress of QA team. - Active contributor to the Lunch and Learn program and to the corporate QA Managers Forum. .

Led the Information Security, Release Management (PVCS, Changeman), Standards, and Business Continuation teams. Planned and monitored annual IT budget. Ensured compliance with Privacy and Security policies, GLB, and SOX. Conducted divisional training to introduce new projects and initiatives. Developed training program and led implementation of the SOX and Information Protection (GLB) programs. - Coordinated quarterly DR testing. Led OS and other software upgrades across the division. - Senior member of Security Advisory Board, Enterprise Standards Board, and IT Center of Excellence. - Led divisional Security Awareness Program. Implemented Data Protection Initiative, including Data Masking.

Managed the Production Support, Release Management, Information Security, and Disaster Recovery teams. Established and improved the communications with the Business and with Vendors for application upgrades and outages. - Implemented campaign of outage prevention through root cause analysis. Installed Tivoli monitoring tools to identify problem hardware and software. Significantly reduced downtime for customers. - Led implementation of ITIM entitlements systems and password reset self-help.

Established and managed the Development and QA teams for the systems supporting Prudential’s conversion to a public company ($20 billion distributed to 12.8 million customers). - Initiated comprehensive data quality review of large volumes of data from 34 business units throughout the US and Canada in order to improve accuracy of the transaction. Created reports to identify exceptions, and worked with BU and IT teams to manage issues to resolution. - Developed run-to-run controls for all vendor and customer-facing interfaces for this transaction. Planned and executed full volume end-to-end test cycles. - Implemented strategies to simplify processing, and to reduce printing and mailing costs by over $4 million.

Partnered with Operations, IT, Marketing, and Tax, to produce 3+ million year-end state-of-the-art customer statements. These annual statements displayed income, trades, exchanges, gains, losses, checking and VISA activity, tax information, account performance. Met strict year-end processing deadlines. - Statements Teams recognized as world class in quality, compliance, and customer focus. - Initiated monthly testing cycles, and timely reconciliation of exceptions, to improve overall quality and accuracy of tax reporting. - Key contributor to Enterprise-wide projects such as Custody (Portfolio) Project, Asset and Benefit Account Summary, and Microsoft Windows award-winning PruServ (Call Center/CRM) application.

Managed Operations units responsible for customer tax reporting. Also managed portfolio Pricing, Class Actions and Bankruptcy Support, and Branch support teams. - Upgraded daily balancing and reconciliation procedures. Improved tax deposits to 100% on time. - Implemented international database to provide educational materials about withholding rules, tax rates, and operating procedures to branch offices. Reduced routine requests for information by 25%.

Managed day-to-day operations: deposits of dividends and interest, receivable research and collection, data entry, claims payments, abandoned property escheatment, and account reconciliation. - Designed and implemented state-of-the-art check depositing system that eliminated back-end reconciliation, improved timeliness and accuracy of deposits, and reduced staff by over 50%.