Robert A. Russell; MCPM, PMP, ITIL, LPI
+1 (647) 895-1762
Rob@RobRussell.ca
English / Français
Summary
Strong people leader with 25 years of experience building high-performance teams that get things done in IT. 20 years with Financial Services firms, built on 5 years prior experience architecting and delivering products to market for disruptive startups.
Best at building centers of excellence for IT service delivery and production management, as well as operational technology risk management and business continuity.
Known for turning ambiguity to vision, keeping changing priorities aligned with strategy, and building process improvements in to everything we do.
Successes
Availability Services Manager, Delivery Enablement and Service Operations
Process architecture and restructuring of operational delivery and governance for 50yr-old cloud transaction processing platform used by 60% of IIROC member firms, tracking the investments of millions of Canadians.
SIS currently manages over 18 million client investor accounts, processing up to 1M trades per day and 900 transactions per second.
Coaching and guidance of management team members (Infrastructure, Risk/Privacy/Security/DR, Development, Testing, PMO, Data custodial, Client Service) through significant organizational and cultural change to decades-old established practices.
Migration of enterprise operations from Tivoli INFOMAN for z/OS to ServiceNow, including: Incident, Problem, Change, Request
Leadership of major cross-functional initiatives to align delivery processes with industry best practices, improving client satisfaction and retention. Alignment of processes: ITIL/ITSM, DevOps/SDLC, Agile/PMO, KPI/SLA
Rebuilt change management process to introduce a weekly change period, allowing for higher-level management oversight and reduction of client-impacting incidents. Rebuilt incident, problem and crisis management processes to improve street reputation, reducing major incident business impacts per year by half, twice.
Hands-on command & control for all major incidents (integrity, interruptions, performance, security, cyber, privacy) with Kepner/Fourie/Tregoe CauseWise methodologies, through to post-incident analysis and holding line managers accountable for Service Management improvement actions required to prevent recurrences.
Vice-President, IT Operations & Risk Management; Banking & Financial Services North America
Established operational control over all integrated production environments, processes and personnel following Macquarie's 2009 acquisition of Blackmont Capital; led existing staff and systems for established lending, investment and wealth management businesses within BFS ($25M/yr IT operational budget, $500k/mo vendor charges).
Built high-performance team of 3 senior managers and 9 analysts in Canada, with 35 shared service operations analysts in Manila, responsible for Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of systems containing $50B in AUM and $8B lending book. Reported directly to North America CIO. Hired staff strategically from my own external network and internal transfers during the integration, building up existing staff with performance management, training plans, coaching, mentoring.
Optimized purchased service operations team to handle 80% workload increase with no net new staff as our business grew AUM faster than all our competitors combined. Launched Twitter for IIROC-licensed advisors in March of 2011 after assessing and evaluating the IT risks and navigating the Enterprise IT processes associated with social media.
Transitioned all IT processes relating to $8B mortgages business to a new strategic partner; packaged the IT solutions in preparation for the sale of $600M premium financing business.
Wrote and implemented processes and policies for: Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Knowledge, Known Error, Continuous Improvement, Request Fulfillment, Access, Operational Control, Vendor, Capacity, Catalog, Service Level, Availability, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery management. Oversaw construction of Software Development and QA policies and processes.
Executed Operational Risk Self-Assessment of processes and environment to identify adopted gaps from corporate policies and regulatory requirements; developed remediation plan that was verified complete by Internal Audit with no additional findings; completed all required actions ahead of deadlines for internal, external and regulator audits.
Reported to, represented and advised the Corporate Risk Council on IT risks and their potential impacts to the business. Collaborated with Council on new processes; provided training and consulting to business stakeholders on IT policies, best practices and industry trends.
Program Manager; Service Delivery Architect; Principal Consultant, Markham 2008 – 2010
Developed and supported best practices, frameworks and tools for production management and operations teams encompassing all business units, as leader of Prime Brokerage Horizontal Initiatives team that became the genesis of the IDEAS Production Management Tools, Service and Plant Intelligence team.
Optimized and built IT production management and service operational processes and methods, using continuous process improvement to reduce opportunity cost and improve service.
Initiated and drove projects to standardize ITIL-based incident and problem management process for all business lines.
Oversaw specification, prototyping and development management of new support tools for configuration management, troubleshooting, tracking and metrics reporting.
Created strong track record of execution, creative problem-solving and relationship-building, leading to account growth (5X), cost savings ($5M) and SLA adherence (10X response time improvements).
Operations and Program Manager; Principal Consultant, Markham 2006 – 2008
Built, staffed and managed the Prime Brokerage Custody Straight-Through Processing Application Support team (12 FTE), responsible for all applications in the trade cycle (web-based to mainframe).
Designed and implemented new CMDB abstraction layer, renewing lifespan of existing segregated inventories. My 2-week initiative realized 80% of the benefits of proposed 3-year $15M CMDB purchase that was then cancelled.
Tracked and remediated IT Security risks and operational incidents to reduce business impact.
Incident and Monitoring Manager; Senior Consultant, Halifax 2003 – 2006
Oversaw generation of 150,000+ reports on a daily basis, tracking movement of US$900B in client assets; managed responses to all overnight incidents and business continuity events, with my overnight Remote Command Monitoring Centre (RCMC) team as the globally visible umbrella group responsible for monitoring the production of client reporting, data delivery and on-demand applications for 12 business units.
Led RCMC and provided template for Morgan Stanley's 2006 Enterprise Command Center construction after demonstrating coordinative value we had brought during business continuity events (natural disasters, terrorist attacks).
Managed growth and attrition from 3 to 19 FTE, including major scope expansions and multivendor growth in offshore facilities to provide follow-the-sun coverage in a CMMi Level-5 environment.
Product Architect, Product Management Group 2002 – 2003
Conceived, designed and constructed first several versions of what was to become N-central, the ITIL-based network and systems infrastructure monitoring and management flagship product of N-able Technologies (Now SolarWinds MSP). Product became so successful that Nitrosoft rebranded itself as N-able Technologies and profitably entered the ASP marketspace.
Designed and constructed Linux-based hardened operating system distributions, allowing product to be sold as a hardware appliance with low up-front costs to the customer and immediate revenue recognition for N-able.
Senior Systems Analyst, Nitrosoft Linux Professional Services 2000 – 2001
Trained and mentored professional services team, becoming the first group to become entirely LPI certified. Oversaw all the team’s projects, developing and managing minimum standards of quality, documentation and version control.
Canadian Internet Broadcasting Network, Ottawa, ON 1999 – 2000
Senior Computing Systems Manager
As first hire at an ambitious startup, reporting directly to the principals, built entire corporate infrastructure: from furniture and telephones to load-balanced high-availability server clusters with geographic hot-failover.
Browser-based real-time chat for marketing, recruiting and social media.
Rolled out Canada’s largest commercial instant-messaging network in 2000.
Flight Instructor, 2013 - Current
Corporate Secretary and Director of IT; Board of Directors, 2010 - 2012
We fulfill our mandate to promote the sport through instruction and coaching to members, hosting of youth camps organized by related charities, sponsorship of athletes to international competition, and introductory flights.
2019 - Dr. Wolf Dietrich Leers Award: Flight Instructor of the Year
2017 - Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Gliding Certificate 2909, Silver Badge 1109, following a Free Distance unpowered flight of 319km
2017 - Dr. Wolf Dietrich Leers Award: Flight Instructor of the Year
2014 - Member at Large Award: For significant contributions to the overall operations
Certification and Licensing
Project Management Professional (2008, PMI #1108665, PMP #522250, current to April 2027)
Masters Certificate in Project Management – York University, Schulich School of Business (2008)
LEAN Process Certification - Principles - OEM Consultants (2012)
ITIL (v2 and v3) Foundation Certification (2006, 2011; EXIN #43889)
Transport Canada Pilot Licence (2002; GG397562) with Flight Instructor rating (2013)
Linux Professional Institute LPIC Certification (2000)
Ontario Smart Serve (1998; 030219127506)
Although I have omitted activities over 20 years old, I have lots of other great stories to share when we meet.