Information Technology Global It

James A. Smith

Sugar Hill, Georgia 678-***-****

*******@****.*** Linkedin.com/in/jasmith717

Director, Information Technology

SUMMARY

Highly accomplished, customer focused, IT Executive with 20+ years of progressively responsible experience in driving business results through innovative use of technology. An effective communicator with the ability to educate and inspire while driving transformation to maximize business performance. A leader recognized for implementing organizational change, successfully establishing IT strategy, building high performance technical teams and introducing new technology that delivers business value. Broad, well-balanced, hands-on, technical acumen. Proven success “seeing around the corner” to anticipate future needs and developing solutions that leverage technology to address business opportunities while continuously pushing the boundaries of possibility.

COMPETENCIES

• Strategic Planning & Analysis • Asset & Vendor Management

• Information Security • Acquisition & Merger Integration

• Budget management & Forecasting • IT Operations and Service Delivery

• Cloud Solutions & Migrations • Infrastructure Optimization

• Program and Project Management • IT Governance & Oversight

• Business Continuity and DR Planning • Contract Management & Negotiation

Proactive, lead from the front – hands-on approach to ensuring the success of the business.

• Delivering large-scale, step-change, multi-year initiatives

• Solid financial and business management skills

• Confident, cross functional leadership to achieve performance and financial results.

• Champion of innovation and adapting to change.

• Committed to continuous learning and professional development.

• Solid Information Security background, cyber security assessment, risk analysis, privacy, data protection, regulatory frameworks, risk and security architecture.

• Strong knowledge of the NIST / ISO cyber security framework

• Strong knowledge of compliance and validation within an effective and secure desktop solution.

• Demonstrated ability to work in a virtual team environment across global time zones.

• Ability to pull and analyze data for helping drive continual operational improvement.

EXPERIENCE

Deputy Director – Information Technology Services, Infrastructure & Operations

GWINNETT COUNTY GOVERNMENT Jun 2019 – Present

Deliver executive leadership through periods of organizational change, and successfully manage business units through dramatic growth, transformation and development. Improve global IT processes and technical designs to validate the appropriate use of infrastructure & operations technology. Establish an enterprise architecture and ensure technology investment enables and drives business strategy.

Implemented a strategy to standardize deployment and configuration of the infrastructure through automation including naming conventions, timestamps, bucketing of data sources, storage and sizing technical architecture and design to include the

Develop and manage standardized, highly efficient technology services; ensure reliability and scalability of infrastructure in a dynamic environment. Modernized legacy systems through next generation services and capabilities to include complete hybrid cloud solution (e.g., compute, backup, infrastructure security).

Ensure all technology practices adhere to IT or Security compliance and regulatory standards or controls.

Implement effective life cycle management to drive system & technology consolidation and keep footprint manageable and cost-effective.

Chief Information Officer

GA DEPARTMENT OF BANKING AND FINANCE Nov 2015 – Sept 2018

Recruited to transform DBF’s IT organization into a strategic business partner. Direct, plan, organize and control all IT activities to ensure the effective, efficient and secure operation of all IT systems, to meet the strategic objectives of the agency. Responsible for information security to ensure alignment with technology operations to provide maximum value risk protection. Lead and direct the staff responsible for supporting technology and security operations of the agency in multiple locations.

• Lead the transformation to a Hybrid Multi-Cloud enterprise Microsoft Office 365 (GOV), Azure (GOV), dramatically improving service delivery and enhancing data security to maintain a system reliability 99.99% Service Level performance.

• Developed and institutionalized policies standards, processes and multi-year step programs to improve hardware and application life cycle management to stabilize annual acquisition costs while providing continuous improvement of the estate.

• Implemented Infrastructure modernization and consolidation at all facilities using standardized hardware and visualization to improve storage and compute performance while achieving a 60% reduction in annual operating expenses.

• Developed and implemented scalable short and long-term Infrastructure and strategic plans based on business strategies, goals, and operating requirements to align IT with the business.

• Implemented IT Service Management practices, documented workflows, built measurable processes and established SLA reporting to improve IT performance and inter-relationships with business units.

Director, Global Enterprise Operations

CORPORATE EXECUTIVE BOARD Jul 2012 – Nov 2015 CEB acquired SHL in July 2012.

Change advocate appointed to build the integrated, global, IT operations organization. Oversee and manage the planning and implementation of systems and projects Collaborate with business units to design and implement the long-range IT strategic roadmap for all aspects of IT infrastructure and governance, technology due diligence, project management and delivery, networking, and data security. Develop relationships built upon trust, credibility, and impact in support of a rapidly growing fully integrated company. Execute strategic initiatives, measure performance, manage processes and establish priorities to achieve business goals for growth.

• Architect and manage the integration of two global companies: creating a single global infrastructure with redundant services and hot failover capabilities between the US and UK regional data centers.

• Collaborative partner to the consolidated Security Plan, ISO 27001 recertification of all product platforms, SOX and SASE 16 audits. Successfully passed ISO 27001 recertification of the SaaS products and infrastructure, as well as annual independent / customer security audits for three consecutive years.

• Improved business unit collaboration by expanding the Cisco Unified Communications platform globally, reducing telecommunications costs by 38%; eliminating redundant services and enhancing operational efficiency, while maintaining peak “business as usual” performance metrics.

• Collaborate with business and product leaders to ensure software design and development are in alignment with Infrastructure architectural direction and can be effectively supported through deployment.

Director, Information Technology Operations

SHL Jan 2011 – Jul 2012 SHL Merged with Previsor in Jan 2011.

Effectively lead and align globally dispersed teams around key corporate goals, ensuring the delivery of high-quality results. Leverage a strong business acumen and solid technical expertise to construct strategies that capture significant improvements in cost savings and revenue while enhancing operations.

• Design/implement the “in sourcing” of global IT operations to include a 300% increase in technical staff globally, the migration of over 700 production and line of business application servers in a six-month time span, while maintaining “Business as Usual” metrics.

• Build two intercontinental, central, Data Centers that deliver “anytime, anywhere” performance for our revenue generating product platforms and line of business systems, reducing annual operations budget by £1.2M in the first year.

• Create and deploy a 24x7x365 “Follow-the-Sun” Service Desk to include deployment of Microsoft SCOM and SCCM platforms, processes and automation to maintain an 85% user satisfaction rating.

Director, Information Technology

PREVISOR May 2010 – Jan 2011

Leverage expertise to analyze operations and improve performance of the infrastructure teams. Support business objectives through technology innovation, determining areas of potential cost reduction, program improvement, and policy change. Coordinate planning, implementation of new policies, objectives, and project execution to ensure continuing operations, achieve superior levels of support, maximize returns on investments, and increase productivity. Serve as a liaison between organizations, shareholders, and outside organizations to increase communications and synergy between IT and business departments.

• Prepare annual budget of $2M, and prepare project and annual budgets for approval, ensuring cost effective measures and guidelines are in place to curb unnecessary expenditure.

• Direct IT department staff, appointing positions and assigning responsibilities, while acting as a mentor to increase leadership skills, drive team continuity and improve individual performance.

• Establish departmental responsibilities and coordinate functions among departments and sites, driving teams with a hands-on approach to projects and change, as well as implementing corrective action plans to solve organizational or departmental problems.

• Direct the performance of Level 1, 2 and 3 services and support for clients (internal and external) to ensure timely resolution, which exceeded expectations.

Manager – Field Service

INTEGRICOM Nov 2009 – May 2010

Organized, planned, implemented and managed services operations to achieve efficient business processes including customer implementation, managed services platform maintenance, service management and operational certifications. Designed appropriate productivity, quality and service level goals that met or exceeded customer expectations or contracts. Developed and managed budgets, product and service pricing and profit margins to meet or exceed company objectives.

• Introduced a new “Complete Care Package” program to deliver customized enterprise class technologies to small and medium (SMB) businesses. Flat monthly fee service enabled companies to receive enterprise support and service at an affordable price.

• Principal Consultant for Virtualization (VMware), Hosting, Compliance, ITIL/IT Service Management, Project Management and high-end customer systems (Messaging, Collaboration, High Availability Systems, Business Intelligence, Specialized Line-of- Business Applications)

Director, Information Technology

NORTHEAST GEORGIA DIAGNOSTIC CLINIC Apr 2005 – Nov 2009

Provided highest tier of technical expertise and resolution to problems for clinical staff. Devise creative solutions to build a highly available infrastructure to support an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) conversion. Provided IT support and escalation to employee network across multiple healthcare practices. Adhered to HIPAA requirements while providing expedient problem resolution in a high-stress medical environment. Track all requests in ticketing system and documented solutions accordingly. Administrate a diverse collection of systems and network configurations, both in the data center and desktop environments. Train colleagues on technology and implement various networks and security solutions, both physical and virtual.

• Developed strategic planning for to improve the clinics transition to a full paperless operation. Annual business plans for all IT groups, IT infrastructure Strategy, and Charter.

• Established “always on” service levels, engineering Data Center environmental and systems architecture to provide fault tolerance and redundancy.

• Raised system availability from 85% to 99.99%, standardizing specifications for purpose-built hardware, implementing Layer 3 switching fabric, and designing High-Availability Infrastructure.

• Installed Citrix Virtual Desktop Interface (VDI) solution on HP Thin Clients with smart cards to improve the transition of workflows from the Medical Assistants to the Physicians in the exam rooms and post visit record maintenance on the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system.

EDUCATION

Northeastern University, MBA Fundamentals for Technical Professionals, Boston, MA

Boston University, CIO Pocket MBA Program, Boston, MA

University of Maryland, Bachelor of Science, Criminal Justice, College Park, MD

Chubb Institute, Network Engineering and Data Communications, North Brunswick, NJ - Honors Graduate

CERTIFICATIONS

Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) Windows 2019, Windows 2016, Windows 2012

Cisco Certified Network Associate, Certified Network Professional-Data Center

ITIL Foundation v4.0

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