Experience

August 2020 – Present

Chief Information Officer / Aflac Benefits Solutions

As part of a strategic growth initiative to penetrate the Dental and Vision insurance market, Aflac undertook the acquisition of a specialized dental and vision organization. This new entity was subsequently christened Aflac Benefits Solutions (ABS). Recognizing the need for robust technological leadership to facilitate scalable growth, Aflac enlisted my expertise in August 2020.

My primary objective was to define and execute a forward-looking technology vision and strategy capable of underpinning the ambitious scale of business growth envisioned by the parent organizations leadership. The transformation of the organization was a key objective – transitioning from a small business operation to a sophisticated, enterprise-level entity capable of delivering cutting-edge solutions. In my role, I’ve navigated through various aspects of the business and have made significant contributions in many areas, five of them are highlighted below.

  1. Strategic Planning: In close collaboration with the executive team, I play an integral role in shaping and advancing the overall organizational strategy, with particular emphasis on aligning technological initiatives with broader business objectives. A notable achievement in this capacity has been the implementation of transformative technology solutions that have catalyzed substantial market growth for ABS, thereby establishing a unique competitive advantage.
  1. Digital Transformation: I led a comprehensive digital transformation journey, managing an investment of nearly $40M, resulting in the complete modernization of our organization’s technological architecture. This transformation involved an extensive migration to Amazon Web Services, effectively eliminating the on-premise footprint. Throughout this transformation, we’ve successfully implemented a suite of enterprise-level solutions, including a dynamic data exchange mechanism, personalized user portals for diverse personas, and a robust data analytics platform. By pulling together six different partners and expanding the transformation teams to 400 people, I was able to execute one of the most impressive transformation programs in the industry.  This has substantially improved our operational efficiency and laid a solid foundation for future growth and innovation.
  1. Governance and Risk Management: I’ve instituted robust processes, systems, and controls that effectively mitigate risk and limit exposure, reflective of the best practices observed in mature organizations. This has been a key contributor to our business stability and resilience. Alongside these internal process enhancements, I have refined our vendor management practices, bringing them in alignment with the strategic guidelines of the parent organization. This holistic approach to governance and risk management has fortified our business operations and ensured regulatory compliance.
  1. Product Management: I’ve successfully introduced a product management approach to technology solution delivery, utilizing Agile methodologies to ensure we provide optimal value to our end-users. Our approach has been strategically structured to define distinct roadmaps for brokers, providers, employers, and members – our key stakeholders. This strategic demarcation has enabled us to deliver highly tailored and impactful solutions, underlining our commitment to a customer-centric ethos and our dedication to effectively serve our varied constituents.
  1. Talent Management: I take immense pride in having cultivated a team that not only supports but propels innovation throughout our organization. By strategically onboarding fresh talent, and simultaneously prioritizing the upskilling and empowerment of our existing team members, we have fashioned a cohesive, resilient technology division that operates in unison. Our focused investment in people development has fortified the foundation of our organization, aligning all members towards a shared vision of innovation and growth.

November 2017 – August 2020

Vice President of Research and Strategic Innovation / HealthPlan Services, a WIPRO company

In this role, I took the helm of creating a dedicated research and innovation function, with objectives squarely aimed at fostering revenue growth through calculated investments and cultivating a company-wide ethos of ingenuity. My team and I instituted programs that were directed towards:

  1. Advancing Operations and Technical teams’ pursuits in product and service innovations, as we acted as catalysts for key teams throughout the firm, aiding them in elevating their product or service improvement ambitions.
  2. Empowering personnel to generate novel ideas, by establishing platforms for ideation like jam sessions, hackathons/cod-a-thons, and sourcing ideas internally and externally for the company’s advantage.
  3. Developing the skills of our staff members. This involved pinpointing the optimal skill sets for in-house training, leveraging internal resources, and identifying external resources such as MOOCs, conferences, and so forth.
  4. Recognizing new market opportunities by discerning market trends, disruptions, and potential new markets. This included encouraging support at the larger corporate level for ideas that diverged from the core business sector. A case in point is the recent blockchain solution I led to refine the member enrollment and data reconciliation processes, mitigating discrepancies across multiple systems.

Furthermore, I spearheaded the formation of a Professional Services department, which brought in $2M revenue in the first year through an expansion of offerings beyond our platform. This included consulting and custom development services that augment the core platform’s functionality.

Lastly, I was accountable for the incorporation of DevOps practices within our application lifecycle management process, emphasizing automation to amplify the productivity of our development staff.

April 2014 – November 2017

Vice President of Product Development / HealthPlan Services, a WIPRO company

Ascending through various levels of the Development organization to an executive role equipped me with a granular comprehension of challenges, a perspective cultivated from the ground up. This experience allowed me to address potential concerns in different areas proactively, enabling teams to understand and support new projects or changes within the organization effectively. My broad-ranging responsibilities included:

  • Orchestrating a global staffing transition that generated over $15M in savings on run rate costs, a significant financial benefit for the company.
  • Introducing strategic initiatives that led to a meaningful reduction in staffing needs and enhanced application quality. This was accomplished by streamlining software development and testing practices, leading to increased consistency and maintained productivity.
  • Supervising a budget to ensure completion of run-and-manage work, managing staff augmentation and reduction in alignment with project needs. I mitigated potential negative impacts of business cycles through effective communication.
  • Collaborating with fellow executives on product direction through the development of product roadmaps, and was instrumental in outlining project scopes that were ambitious yet achievable.
  • Nurturing a robust relationship between Operations and IT teams by working in close concert with business leaders, ensuring all available resources were employed for major initiatives.
  • Engaging with clients at both executive and technical levels, enhancing visibility into our company’s capabilities during initial sales presentations and subsequent configuration and requirements gathering sessions.
  • Negotiating favorable pricing and SLA contracts with architecture, infrastructure, and staffing vendors, leading to considerable cost efficiencies.
  • Overseeing the analysis of potential software and products for compatibility and utilization within our corporate structure, and providing purchase recommendations based on these evaluations.
  • Leading the drive to enhance business processes and systems, contributing to the company’s efficiency and competitive advantage.

 July 2012 – April 2014

Director of Product Development / HealthPlan Services

After about a year working remotely, I had an opportunity to move back to the Tampa area. Once back, I was promoted to a Director role based on my previously held roles and responsibilities. In this position I was responsible for:

  • I was responsible for managing the budget and execution of several large strategic initiatives through multiple development teams.
  • Implementing a matrix team structure to give each team focus around different software features which allowed for more efficient development and instilled a sense of ownership while still ensuring that changes to the software supported an overall vision.
  • Directly involved in the resourcing process to raise the caliber of the team by bringing in new talent as well as coaching existing resources by providing frequent poignant feedback. Also, worked with resource vendors for on-site and offshore contract resources to adapt with the ebb and flow of projects.
  • Defined a process of efficiently on-boarding resources by making available pertinent documentation.
  • Playing a key role in the Healthcare reform initiatives in coordinating consumption and implementation of regulation changes from the Government.
  • Assigning tasks, supervise, mentor and complete timely performance evaluations for staff along with providing technical training and career development to staff.

 May 2011 – July 2012

Team Lead / HealthPlan Services

In early 2011, my wife had been offered a very good opportunity and we decided maybe it was time to move on from HPS. However, due to the amount of business knowledge and trust from the Executive team that I had gained, I was offered to stay-on with the company but work remotely in a Team Lead position. I took on this opportunity in addition to the previous responsibilities as a team, I was also responsible for:

  • Setting up and utilizing more offshore resources for project work.
  • Worked with the project management office with rolling out a more robust SDLC process that ensured the development teams completed high level designs and detailed level designs for each project.

August 2007 – May 2011

IT Technical Manager / HealthPlan Services

After working with a single team of developers, my interactions with various teams gave me an opportunity to move into a Technical Manager position where I:

  • Managed several teams that reported to Team Leads across different technologies.
  • When I started in this position, I primarily interacted with a single large client on all IT projects to ensure end-to-end solutions would meet their needs.
  • I eventually transitioned to run all aspects of development when implementing new large carriers. I was able to accomplish this because of having had an opportunity to learn all aspects of our product offerings from enrollment capabilities, billing capabilities, data integration capabilities, document generation capabilities and portal capabilities.
  • Implementations required working with several teams internally as well as with external IT teams. This required reviewing solutions to ensure business needs are met along with facilitating JAD sessions between organizations.
  • Worked with the project management office and executives to provide status internally as well as clients.
  • Represented IT at client sites, especially during initial requirements gathering sessions.

July 2006 – August 2007

Team Lead / HealthPlan Services

I quickly moved into a Team Lead role where I:

  • Played a key role in evaluating various version management tools. Worked with the implementation team to define the process and workflow that would need to be implemented.
  • Worked with the implementation team to identify various workflow paths during the setup of a new ticket tracking system.
  • Managed day-to-day tasks for web developers along with ensuring teams followed peer review, code reviews and defined coding standards.
  • Provided estimates for different project requests.
  • Worked with project management staff to provide accurate project status.

July 2005 – July 2006

Web Developer / HealthPlan Services

I joined HealthPlan Services (HPS) as a web developer where my responsibilities included:

  • Worked as a developer on client websites written in PHP.
  • Implemented features based on client requirements using IBM DB2 database as a back-end.
  • Provided forward-thinking suggestions to make features configurable versus hard-coding and customized solutions that could not be reused.
  • Worked with the team leads to formalize a code review process to ensure consistent quality deliverable.

August 1999 – July 2005

Information Systems Analyst / EarthLink

As an analyst I was primary responsible for the following functions:

  • Worked on internal and external applications that were developed in Progress 4GL language.

My in-depth understanding of web service architecture and relational databases enabled the team to enhance the methodologies previously in place of hard-coding various configuration level attributes.