Wayne Thomas, M.Ed., Pmp® Email & Phone Number

Canada

The Stakeholder and Community Engagement (SCE) unit within Children's Services collaborates to deliver effective engagements. We do this by providing process design and facilitation expertise while offering extensive knowledge of successful engagement practices. SCE takes a holistic and human-centered approach to engagement by leveraging systems thinking and design thinking methodologies, tools, and techniques.As Manager of Engagement Coordination & Research. I support the SCE team by advising on engagement innovation, research methods and approaches, and leadership. This includes:• Providing engagement project leadership via networking and developing relationships and interactions within and across government• Advising on next best practices by monitoring emerging trends, issues, and methods• Infusing human-centred approaches, processes, into innovation and continuous improvement efforts within the ministry• Providing research expertise on priority engagement initiatives including designing engagement surveys and providing engagement data collection advice to policy and program areas• Interpreting engagement findings and providing advice on policy development and messaging

During my time as Engagement Specialist with the Stakeholder and Community Engagement unit, I was able to: • Create and lead a knowledge-sharing and capacity building series around design thinking methodology and its application within government to tackle complex problems. 93% of attendees found the series to be valuable to their work, an effective method of capacity building, and plan to continue attending and learning from them.• Create proposals for how research would be conducted.• Design and lead human-centered processes for program, policy, and service design/redesign • Collaborate with teams to design recommendations to improve the efficiency and sustainability of programs and services. • Design and execute several province-wide stakeholder consultations contributing to updated Acts and Regulations.• Collaborate with clients directly to walk them through prototypes, end-to-end facilitation of persona building, service blueprinting, and testing those internally. • Collaborate with cross-functional teams across the ministry including Project leads, Minister Chief of Staff, internal teams, and external vendors.

The Strategic Engagement Branch at Alberta Education operated on a model of exploring together to make sense of complex problems and find and test the right solutions. We did this with the aim of delivering powerful, meaningful experiences for students and their supporters in the education system. Our offerings included user research and engagement support, design facilitation (sprints), agile and traditional project management advising, and capacity-building.During my time with Alberta Education's Strategic Engagement Team, I:• Led teams of up to 90+ employees in grassroots coalition teams to drive transformational and innovative change within government departments using a systemic design methodology• Increased employee engagement by incorporating them as the agents of change and the co-creators of unique products and services• Designed, project managed, and executed a framework for employees across government to create and sustain their own communities of practice in order to foster learning, knowledge sharing, networking, and development with a bottom-up approach. • Coordinated a graduate research symposium attended by over 40 educational managers and researchers•Applied problem solving and strategy skills in facilitation to establish clarity of issues/problems for management and senior leaders around complex issues

• Providing comprehensive, investigative research, associated expertise and consultation to support the development and implementation of program policies, initiatives, and processes essential to the Ministry of Education.• Leading major policy and program/initiative development projects aimed at supporting strategic direction for Early Childhood Development Learning and Care.• Providing leadership, direction, planning and integration to internal and external project committees to ensure alignment, to leverage knowledge and resources and to deliver successful outcomes.• Developing and maintaining effective relationships and strategic alliances with both internal and external stakeholders, stakeholders of interest and stakeholders of influence to promote and ensure shared understanding and responsibility to align policy, programs, and resources to achieve improved outcomes and measures moving towards an integrated system.• Leading the development of an issues management analysis process to provide advice and awareness of issues, trends and challenges that can affect the development of policies, initiatives and programs.

• Supervised new teachers in the early stages of their teaching careers• Increased student enrolment by over 90% via changes to program offerings and scheduling • Incorporated technology practices and principles into curriculum at the classroom level• Prepared school to go through a national level review• Advocated for funding on behalf of rural students with complex needs • Established and nurtured collaborative relationships between staff and administration of nearby school districts

South Korea

• Developed a new method for lesson planning• Inspired students to take a personal interest in English • Created a unique summer programming experience for students

Developed project to reduce ministry spending. Project resulted in a cost saving of over $2M

Edmonton, Canada Area

-Assisting students with Educational Instructional Technology course lab component-Marking weekly assignments-Supervising midterm and final examinations

Technology Training Center

Training faculty, staff, and students on how to use the new University of Alberta Google interface.

Assisting team members of the Education Program Standards and Assessment Division with the redesigning of the key competencies of curriculum and assessment within the educational system of Alberta. This includes research, collating data, and supporting the team in completing projects.

-Operating Mobile computer lab carts-Troubleshooting hardware problems for instructors and students-Assisting students and faculty in Learning Commons area

M. Ed, Educational Psychology: Technology In Education

Activities and Societies: Orientation Presentation Facilitator, Faculty of Education Technology Advisory Board, Graduate Student.

B. Ed, Business Administration, Finance, & Information Technology

Activities and Societies: Orientation Leader for Student's Union Orientation Program Facilitator for Student's Union