VIZIONARA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Managing Principal
- Principal
As founder and principal of Vizionara, Barbara leverages 20+ years of high-technology management and leadership experience to help clients drive digital transformation, strategic planning, IT organization design, and operational maturity. She draws on an extensive IT executive background, including Fortune 500 CIO staff roles managing the Office of the CIO, IT Marketing & Communications programs, and IT Operations. Her prior IT delivery roles include business unit aligned management of technology portfolios, spanning multi-million-dollar web redesigns, enterprise platforms, digital/database marketing tools, resource and financial management systems, and strategic cross-functional initiatives.
Barbara has also served as a faculty lecturer at Babson College in the Technology, Operations, and Information Management Department, where she brought a corporate perspective to an academic MBA environment and consulted with startups, non-profits, and small businesses on their technology roadmaps.
Barbara is continuously looking for ways to promote women in technology and serves on the Advisory Board of Untapped Potential, which is focused on unleashing the human capital of top female talent. Her industry organization involvement includes being a WITI member, membership in CT Women's Council, and presenter at events promoting STEM careers and Women in Science.
She holds an MBA from Boston College with a concentration in IT and Marketing and a BE degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ.
Denise spent many years overseeing the Voice of the Customer program for a global IT organization and is an expert on customer experience industry standards and company best practices. A Certified Scrum Master, she is adept at executing large scale multi-year IT projects. She has extensive experience in overseeing agile transformations for Fortune 500 technology companies.
A Women in IT and STEM advocate, Denise is active in initializing important youth STEM programs with local non-profit organizations. She is honored to speak at various women's networking and STEM conferences and programs.
Denise holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts.
With more than 20 years of global technology management and consulting in the IT industry, Denise excels at helping clients drive IT modernization and transformation.
Her current Vizionara consulting engagement is serving as chief of staff for the CTO of a market-leading private equity firm. She previously acted as chief of staff for one of Boston's major consulting firms.
She specializes in product engineering and cloud operations, portfolio management, voice of customer programs, organizational planning, leadership and diversity. Her in-depth knowledge of the rapidly changing IT environment allows her to bring experience, creativity, and energy to today's IT challenges.
Denise spent many years overseeing the Voice of the Customer program for a global IT organization and is an expert on customer experience industry standards and company best practices. A Certified Scrum Master, she is adept at executing large scale multi-year IT projects. She has extensive experience in overseeing agile transformations for Fortune 500 technology companies.
Dina draws on more than 20 years of IT management and leadership experience to help clients solve business problems through the discovery of process efficiencies, process redesign, and technology enablement. With a strong customer-centric focus throughout her career, she offers a unique perspective on problem solving with the end user in mind to deliver improved business outcomes.
Her expertise includes managing teams, program operations, marketing strategy, and global development. Dina is results-oriented, with concise attention to detail and enthusiasm for developing programs, events, and solutions that engage clients/users, produce sales and business results, and deliver process efficiencies.
Dina is currently working with a major consulting firm providing operations management for Enterprise Center of Excellence teams. Her achievements include an insourcing initiative resulting in $4M in savings, deploying a single design tool firm-wide saving $200K in license costs, providing workshops on design thinking and agile methodology, developing a customer satisfaction assessment tool, and providing financial and resource management in support of a $13M annual budget.
A highlight of her previous IT accomplishments is scaling an executive briefing program worldwide for a major global technology company, as well as driving the integration of two worldwide briefing programs as part of one of the largest technology mergers in history.
Dina lives in central Massachusetts with her husband and two sons and her French bulldog, Beau. She is very active in the regional high school's booster program, volunteering in both fundraising and event leadership roles.
She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management from the University of Vermont, Burlington, VT. She is a certified Change Management Professional, with training in Six Sigma and is working to become a Scrum Master.
Gemma is an experienced IT professional with 15+ years spanning the technology, energy, finance, and consulting sectors based at different times in the UK, New Zealand, or the US. Gemma's global experience demonstrates that she can work with remote and diverse teams, Gemma brings team members together by installing spirit, a sense of purpose, and identifying a common language.
Gemma has a passion for driving product delivery using an agile mindset whilst keeping end-users at the center of the design. Gemma's analytical skills and willingness to be a ‘hands-on' product lead make her a great asset for any program.
Gemma's more recent positions include Engagement Lead and Release Manager for an Enterprise IT Service Store. She has also been a User Experience Project Lead managing initiatives within a global business to deliver training, usability assessments, user research, and the delivery of a pilot design system that sets standards to manage design efforts on a large scale. Gemma's most challenging role saw her as the Technical Lead for a collaboration tool implementation, managing technical members of the team to resolve issues with a third party while allowing time for release planning, sprint planning, and stakeholder management.
Gemma's creative outlet is teaching yoga and enjoys leading others through a practice of mindfulness and movement to support their well-being. Gemma has recently completed her Scrum Master Certification.
Job Titles:
- Communications & Change Management Consultant
Jaime is an accomplished communications and change management leader who is adept at helping clients develop and implement innovative marketing and internal communications programs. She fell in love with communications and change management early in her career and never looked back.
Today she has over 20 years of deep expertise in developing and empowering organizations and thought leaders through global change management strategies. As a member of several large change teams, she has driven measurable results through game-changing content and communications programs.
Jaime has worked with organizations across a wide range of industries - from .com and high-tech to life sciences and manufacturing. Over the past five years, she successfully implemented Workday, Epic, and Kronos across large organizations.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Mass Communications from Westfield State College, Westfield, MA, where she majored in Public Relations and minored in Graphic Design.
During her free time, Jaime is a mom to three wonderful children. She enjoys traveling, music, and watching her children play sports.
Jen draws on more than 20 years of experience to help clients drive process improvements to transform the work of their IT and software development teams.
She has worked in major corporate consulting firms, large technology companies, small start-ups, and, most recently, drove product licensing processes for a leading developer of mathematical computing software. Jen also brings a decade of higher education experience, having taught courses in operations, supply chain, and project management at Babson College. Foundational to her career has been her knack for guiding clients to prioritize and manage trade-offs within a portfolio of products and projects.
Jen offers strong IT experience in management of enterprise applications related to product development, including product data management, product lifecycle management, configuration control, and team collaboration applications. Her software product development experience includes applications enabling innovation management, portfolio management, resource allocation, and project management.
Jen also has a unique background in digital rights management that encompasses full lifecycle understanding of product licensing, from product design through back-office systems and customer support systems. She recently combined her portfolio management experience with her technical understanding of software delivery to help a growing software company focus its license offerings to meet the needs of a wide variety of customer types.
Facilitating the learning experience for others has been a theme throughout her professional life. Her proudest accomplishment was being awarded "Advisor of the Year" by the Student Government Association at Babson College and she currently serves as a mentor to students at her local community college.
Jen holds a Master of Business Administration from Boston University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. She is certified in SCRUM and qualified in Six Sigma.
With more than two decades of program management and delivery experience, Jennifer is uniquely qualified to help clients drive transformational changes resulting in improved enterprise processes, cost savings, and increased cyber security and compliance.
She has supported technology, financial, social media, and information storage companies. Jennifer is a specialist in building program management offices (PMO), digital transformation, and operational maturity.
She is particularly experienced at delivering enterprise-wide, high-visibility projects on schedule and within budget, including implementation of global upgrade from Oracle to SAP ERP, standard remote-connectivity virtual framework, Service Cloud, and Regulatory Cyber Security NIST CSF Framework.
Jennifer has spent most of her career helping to implement transformation changes and solutions to business and IT challenges and has worked with organizations of all sizes in nearly every functional area. She is known for building strong relationships and coalitions with multiple stakeholders and functional organizations driving common results.
With multiple engineering degrees and an MBA in finance, Kathi has experience in power plant design, food processing and packaging, and financial areas of manufacturing. She has the unique ability to pair efficiencies with processes, providing solutions at a consistently accelerated pace. She is also extremely detail-oriented and organized, with strong business and technical knowledge.
Kathi worked for several years in engineering, operations, and finance, before focusing her efforts on not-for-profit organizations. She was a key member of several groups which provide funding for public education institutions, where she used her process knowledge to advance their goals.
Since returning to the corporate sector, Kathi has leveraged her comprehensive background in business and project management in the consulting industry as an advisor to an IT consulting firm.
Kathi optimizes invoice and billing workflow at Vizionara, oversees its financial processes, and leads its efforts to foster women in business events.
She holds an MBA in Finance from Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, and a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Materials Science Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey.
With more than 20 years' experience in project and program management, Kim is highly skilled at helping clients mobilized and motivate teams to execute and deliver business and IT program goals.
A dynamic, dedicated, and motivating leader, Kim has extensive experience working within Fortune 500 companies across various roles primarily supporting financial services organizations and their clients. Many of her senior roles were devoted to software development delivery to external customers.
Her enthusiasm for delivery, project, and program management has energized professional services teams to excel and enhance the customer experience. She brings with her a vast spectrum of leadership and experience, both as a team leader and project manager, with success in managing multi-phase, multi-year IT initiatives ranging from full-system conversions to platform implementations and expansions.
She is currently working at a major Boston area consultancy as a key player supporting a highly visible cloud transformation program. Her role includes driving program milestones across the entire global IT organization. She also stood-up and led the Project Management Organization (PMO) at a Boston based Fintech start-up company.
Kim has a passion for business analysis and a sound understanding of the business processes. Her superior communication and organizational skills enable her to seamlessly work cross-functionally, optimizing delivery methodologies to achieve key company objectives and desired business outcomes. Kim's ability to energize project teams and end user clients fosters the teamwork needed to create and deliver successful outcomes.
Early in her career, Kim had the unique opportunity of working in Sydney, Australia as an ex-pat, which fostered her love for travel and adventure. Prior to starting a family, Kim became a certified personal trainer and developed outdoor boot-camp classes designed specifically for women wanting to improve overall health and fitness. In her spare time, Kim enjoys skiing with her family and spending time on the beaches of Cape Cod.
A native New Englander, Kim is a graduate of Northeastern University, with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
Maryann is a hands-on strategy, operations and program management leader who is adept at helping clients execute technology and organization transformation initiatives. She has more than 20 years of experience in operational IT strategy and project and organization management strategy, in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors.
Having held a variety of roles in IT, operations, and data management organizations, Maryann is particularly skilled at driving complex challenges through to solutions by providing strategic direction, ensuring deliverables are met and managing project timelines.
She has a deep, broad-based background in stabilizing technology operations (portfolio management, financials, vendor management, project execution), leading PMOs (Project Management Offices) and executing technology and organizational transformations.
Her most recent experience includes helping a major area consulting firm with their strategic vendor management initiative. She has also led an IT transformation initiative for a major global corporation, and spearheaded the implementation of an operating and managed services model for a global insurance group which generated multi-million-dollar savings.
Maryann is especially passionate about helping the underserved, particularly the homeless, and currently sits on the board of Journey Home, a homelessness advocacy organization in Hartford, CT. She also volunteers at her hometown food pantry, the Plainville Community Food Pantry.
She holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems from Bryant University; an Advanced Masters Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University; and a Project Management Certificate from Boston University.
Sue is a technical analyst consultant at Vizionara who offers a unique combination of skills in both development and data management to help clients design and deliver initiatives with measurable results.
Sue has over 20 years of IT experience, with a comprehensive background in both business and technical domains. She has worked extensively with both waterfall and agile Scrum methodologies to deliver timely, valuable solutions to stakeholders. Her technical background and business knowledge make her an expert liaison between IT and business units.
Sue also has experience as a results-oriented PMO analyst, skilled in project management and strategic planning. She specializes in working with multiple Project Management Office software tools.
Sue's accomplishments include leading client requirements and design sessions and utilizing business knowledge and experience to translate requirements into system specifications for a Fortune 500 company.
Her attention to detail makes her an invaluable resource as a data analyst. Sue has used her technical skills to code complex SQL queries against Teradata and DB2 databases to identify and report data integrity issues. She has reviewed the system update process for 80 million health care customers and made procedural suggestions to reduce timing conflicts with a prescription drug vendor.
An active community member, Sue serves on parent and school committees and supports the Girl Scouts of CT. She also provides technical setup and support for a local estate sale company.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from Bentley University, Waltham, MA.