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 Service Management.
20 years with Financial Services firms, built on 5 years of prior experience architecting and delivering products to market for disruptive startups.
Best at building centers of excellence for IT service delivery, production management, and operational excellence, including operational technology risk management and business continuity.
Known for turning ambiguity to vision, keeping changing priorities aligned with strategy, and building process improvements into everything we do.
Successes
Availability Services Manager, SIS Service Operations
Organizational transformation, process architecture, strategy and restructuring of operational delivery, service management, and governance for 57-year-old capital markets cloud transaction processing platform used by 60% of IIROC member firms, tracking the investments of millions of Canadians.
Established in 1967, a subsidiary of IBM since 1992, and a subsidiary of Kyndryl from 2021-2024, SIS managed over 18 million client investor accounts, processing up to 1M trades per day and 1,000 transactions per second.
Coaching and guidance of management team members across silos (Risk/Privacy/Security/DR, Infrastructure, Development, Testing, PMO, Data Custodial, Client Service) through significant organizational and cultural changes to decades-old established practices and continuous improvement.
Leadership of the Service Operations Team, including analysts for incident, problem, and change coordination, as well as release management and service transformation.
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.
Successful migration of enterprise operations from Tivoli INFOMAN for z/OS to ServiceNow, including Incident, Problem, Change, Service Request.
Established Operational Risk Management as a practice area and proactively documented the process and management gaps responsible for 75% of further major incidents, SLA penalties, and project failures.
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, twice reducing major incident business impacts per year by half.
Hands-on command & control for all major incidents with Kepner/Fourie/Tregoe CauseWise methodologies through to post-incident analysis and holding line managers accountable for improvement actions.
Implementation oversight and stabilization coordination for Canada’s first real-time partial trading solution in 2024.
Organizational transformation efforts concluded with the 2024 transition of the SIS business services to Broadridge.
Vice-President, IT Operations & Risk Management; Banking & Financial Services North America
Reporting jointly to North America CIO, Global CIRO, and Global CTO, established operational control over all North America integrated production environments, processes, and personnel following Macquarie's 2009 acquisition of Blackmont Capital and other businesses.
Delivered the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of systems containing $45B in AUM and $8B lending book, and managed the $25M/yr operational budget and ongoing vendor relationships ($500k/mo.).
Merged and managed the acquired teams and production systems for all lending, investment, and wealth management businesses within BFS North America, standardizing processes across business lines and aligning with global best practices.
Built a high-performance team of 3 senior managers and 9 analysts in Canada, with 35 operations analysts in Manila.
Brought in new staff from my own external network and internal transfers, building up existing staff with performance management, training plans, coaching, and mentoring. Established succession planning, feedback, and objectives.
First to market in Canada with Macquarie’s launch of 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.
Leveraged knowledge and service catalog management to double workload again with only arbitraged resourcing.
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, Service Catalog, Service Level, Availability, Business Continuity, and Disaster Recovery management. Optimized based on LEAN and ITIL principles.
Oversaw construction of Software Development and QA policies and processes, introducing Service Transition and Operational Readiness project milestones to ensure successful deliveries.
Executed Operational Risk Self-Assessment of processes and environment to identify adopted gaps from corporate policies and regulatory requirements; developed remediation plans that were delivered and verified complete by Internal Audit with no additional findings; completed all required actions ahead of deadlines for internal, external, and regulatory audits.
Program Manager; Service Delivery Architect; Principal Consultant, Markham 2008 – 2010
As leader of Prime Brokerage Horizontal Initiatives team that became the genesis of the IDEAS Production Management Tools, Service and Plant Intelligence team, developed and supported best practices, frameworks, and tools for production management and operations teams encompassing all business units.
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 development 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. This 2-week initiative realized 80% of the benefits of a proposed 3-year $15M CMDB purchase, which 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 150k+ daily reports, tracking movement of US$900B in client assets; managed responses to all overnight incidents and business continuity events, with my Remote Command Monitoring Centre (RCMC) team as the globally visible umbrella group responsible for 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 the RCMC’s coordinative value 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 N-central, the ITIL-based network and systems infrastructure monitoring and management flagship product of N-able Technologies.
Product became so successful that Nitrosoft rebranded itself as N-able Technologies and profitably entered the ASP marketspace.
The success of the N-central product was later the primary driver of the N-able merger with SolarWinds.
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, which became the first group to be entirely LPI certified. Oversaw all projects, managing minimum standards of quality, documentation and version control.
Canadian Internet Broadcasting Network, Ottawa, ON 1999 – 2000
Senior Computing Systems Manager
Reporting directly to the principals as the first hire at an ambitious startup, deployed Canada’s largest commercial instant-messaging network.
Built entire corporate infrastructure: furniture and telecom to high-availability clusters with geographic failover.
Flight Instructor, 2013 - Current
Corporate Secretary and Director of IT; Board of Directors, 2010 - 2012
SOSA’s mandate is 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.
Operational focal for anti-collision systems and several ongoing initiatives for safety and training.
2019, 2017 - 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
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.