Avalon Swain, Project Manager in Charlotte, NC, United States
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Avalon Swain

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Charlotte, NC, United States
Toptal Member Since
June 4, 2018

Avalon is a certified PMI Project Management Professional (PMP), PMI Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC), PMI Disciplined Agile Coach (DAC), PMI Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM), and 3x Salesforce certified consultant who has been planning and delivering business and digital transformations especially with Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Tableau solutions for the past 10 years—enabling organizations to achieve higher performance and meet their goals.

Project ManagementTechnical Project ManagementIT Project ManagementSoftware Project ManagementSoftware DevelopmentProgram ManagementProject Management Office (PMO)Business TransformationEnterpriseClient Delivery ManagementPMIProcess Improvement Project ManagementDigital Transformation Program ManagementProject Management Professional (PMP)Agile Coaching

Project Highlights

Global Customer Master Data Implementation
Managed the design and delivery of customer acquisition and onboarding strategies, processes, and technologies.
Executive Scorecard Dashboard Implementation
Led the delivery of a balanced scorecard dashboard for TIAA senior leadership team.
Global Salesforce Implementation
Successfully migrated several global business units from disparate automated marketing, customer relationship, and customer service systems to Salesforce.

Expertise

Agile CoachingAgile LeadershipAgile Project ManagementAgile TransformationBusiness TransformationDigital TransformationProgram ManagementTechnical Project Management

Work Experience

Business Transformation Coach | Business Intelligence Consultant | Tableau Developer

2022 - 2023
DirectMed Parts & Service (via Toptal)
  • Aligned with company leadership, assessed digital capabilities, recommended a data-driven culture, and developed balanced scorecard dashboards to highlight customer, operational, and financial OKRs.
  • Recommended several marketing, sales, purchasing, engineering, inventory, distribution, and financial value stream process improvements.
  • Assessed and planned the business transformation roadmap, including streamlined HubSpot, Salesforce, Rootstock Manufacturing, and Rootstock Financial technology stack and talent realignment.

Agile Coach | Scrum Master | Salesforce Administrator

2021 - 2022
ContractPodAi (via Toptal)
  • Joined the team as a senior Salesforce administrator to support client migrations. Realigned to provide Salesforce integration development and team product management, Agile coaching, and scrum master responsibilities quickly after joining the team.
  • Led introduction of Salesforce development team sprint ceremonies, including backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily standup, sprint demo, and retrospective continuous improvement sessions. Oversaw Jira and Confluence administration.
  • Aligned with internal executive stakeholders to gather strategy and finance business requirements and provide an agile delivery of Salesforce customizations and solutions.
  • Aligned with external customer stakeholders to gather ContractPodAI and Salesforce Integration requirements and provide an agile delivery of customizations to support contract lifecycle management solutions and integrations.

Digital Transformation Manager | Agile Coach | Scrum Master

2019 - 2021
Signs365.com (via Toptal)
  • Owned the product, program, and project management responsibilities of aligning with business executives and assessing emerging business transformation opportunities in the manufacturing domain for the client's customer and employee digital channels.
  • Performed product owner and product management responsibilities of collaborating with various business stakeholders to reach consensus on transformation, project epic justification, user story development, and feature prioritization.
  • Led a team of eight developers and provided agile coaching and scrum master leadership of agile sprint ceremony facilitation, including grooming, planning, standup, demo, and retrospective activities. Also led Jira and Confluence administration.
  • Owned program management responsibilities of scope, time, and budget reporting. Led IT development and operations teams from inception, construction, and transition phases to ongoing support activities for several corporate strategy implementations.
  • Provided Agile coaching across several functional and operational teams by implementing Scrum and Kanban best practices to successfully deliver digital transformation products and features.
  • Managed the disaster recovery response to a Net Walker zero-day cybersecurity attack and led an ISO 27001 security audit and gap analysis.
  • Implemented stronger email security protection due to the ISO27001 audit and gap analysis. Leveraged Barracuda and Mimecast, and an offsite, Backup as a Solution was implemented leveraging Veeam Backup and Recovery.

Senior Project Manager | Product Manager | Scrum Master

2018 - 2019
NKR Insurance Services (via Toptal)
  • Managed a designer and two developers in the planning, analysis, design, and development of a fintech startup mobile application POC and MVP.
  • Partnered with the client to document company and product vision, goals, milestones, and roadmap for periodic board presentation.
  • Established the agile project initiation, development and delivery environment for product personas, epics, user stories, acceptance criteria, and product backlog.
  • Implemented project sprint ceremonies including backlog grooming sessions, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint demos and reviews, and sprint retrospective meetings. Also responsible for Jira and Confluence administration.

Salesforce Program Architect

2012 - 2018
Intentional Signs
  • Managed several consultants, administrators and developers and the technology investment and delivery operations of a marketing and sales technology consultancy for several manufacturing, distribution, and transportation industry clients.
  • Aligned and partnered with client stakeholders to lead several agile, waterfall, and hybrid projects in the delivery of personalized marketing automation, customer relationship management, and business intelligence digital solutions.
  • Improved the sales conversion rates through the integration of optimized customer relationship management via Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud. Successfully led five Sales Cloud and two Service Cloud client implementations.
  • Managed customer relationships and provided business requirements management, process improvement, and technology business case justification.
  • Conducted program management for CRM, EPM, and financial reporting project teams and delivered executive scorecard business intelligence and predictive analytics solutions.
  • Supported several key clients, including Coca-Cola Bottling, Hertz Corporation, TIAA, Discovery Education, VF Corp, and Pacific Pond.

CRM Program Manager

2003 - 2012
TCA
  • Established the technical vision and direction of a B2C residential services franchise.
  • Led a team of 25+ service engineers to meet customer service levels.
  • Managed all the technical hardware solution implementation projects, including servers, storage, network, data/voice, VoIP, Wi-Fi, and mobility.
  • Handled all the software solution implementation and defect resolution projects, including infrastructures, customer relationship management, service case management, project management, and financial reporting application systems.
  • Headed enterprise productivity and business intelligence deployment using MS Windows Server and MS SQL Server.
  • Oversaw office productivity and the project management system implementation using MS Office, MS Visio, and MS Project.
  • Managed customer relationships, financials, and collaboration productivity using MS Dynamics CRM and MS SharePoint.

Customer Relationship Management Technology Manager

2001 - 2003
IBM
  • Managed $15 million in global services customer relationship management consulting practice revenue and 20 functional and technical consultants in support of Oracle/PeopleSoft CRM system implementations.
  • Provided career development support for consultants and project managers and increased team productivity billable hours, driving revenue increase across the consulting practice.
  • Developed CRM operations maturity, knowledge capital, best practices and SDLC, and waterfall and agile project and risk management plans customized for the energy and financial services industries.
  • Partnered with strategy consultants to architect, build, and implement PPM and PMO knowledge capital and best practices for financial services and investment banking clients.
  • Managed customer service, contact center, and call center deployments using PeopleSoft CRM.
  • Integrated PeopleSoft CRM with SAP ERP and Oracle financial systems.
  • Delivered a CRM consulting practice marketing campaign and project plans using Microsoft Project and Microsoft Office.
  • Supported several key clients, including JP Morgan, Sprint, CBS, NewPower, and Philadelphia Housing Authority.

Financial Services Technology Manager

1996 - 2001
Accenture
  • Aligned with the strategy and process consulting practice management to plan and deliver enterprise architecture, customer relationship management, eCommerce, and enterprise performance management consulting engagements at Fortune 100 clients.
  • Planned and managed several large, complex application and infrastructure projects simultaneously and led the global implementation project teams of 12 to 18 technical consulting and client architects.
  • Spearheaded partnership with executive-level stakeholders to ensure all the project charter, scope, quality, risk, cost, resource, and time constraints were managed and the communication plans were accurately and efficiently executed.
  • Supported the application development best practice and knowledge capital delivery at investment banking, capital markets, lending and insurance clients.
  • Contributed to enterprise architecture, BI, IT operations maturity model, and IT service delivery assessment using KX.
  • Delivered project plans, ROI, and TCO metric reporting using Microsoft Office and Microsoft Project.
  • Supported several key clients, including USAA, Aetna, Empire, Bank of America, and Atrium Healthcare (formerly Carolinas Healthcare System).

Global Customer Master Data Implementation

Managed the design and delivery of customer acquisition and onboarding strategies, processes, and technologies.

Aligned with business partners to implement customer data governance policies and processes.

Implemented technology to effectively acquire, cleanse, consolidate and safeguard the accuracy of customer information in a global enterprise consumer goods environment.

Executive Scorecard Dashboard Implementation

Led the delivery of a balanced scorecard dashboard for TIAA senior leadership team.

Aligned with senior company executives and managed the planning, analysis, design, build, and deployment phases in an agile hybrid project environment for a customer, sales, operations, and financial metrics executive scorecard dashboard via Tableau, Salesforce, and AWS cloud-based solutions.

Global Salesforce Implementation

Successfully migrated several global business units from disparate automated marketing, customer relationship, and customer service systems to Salesforce.

Aligned with executive stakeholders from program inception and led the planning and inception of sales cloud and service cloud SaaS solutions for several global business units. Initial deliverables included business case justification, project charter, and epic/user story backlog of a standardized sales process. Avalon also led backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily standups, sprint review, and sprint retrospective sessions. During the rollout, Avalon led cross-functional teams in configuring the solution for seventeen countries globally.
1981 - 1985

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) in Management Information Systems

East Carolina University - Greenville, NC, USA

SEPTEMBER 2022 - PRESENT

Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

MAY 2022 - PRESENT

Disciplined Agile Coach (DAC)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

APRIL 2022 - PRESENT

Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

NOVEMBER 2019 - PRESENT

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)

JANUARY 2018 - PRESENT

Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant Certification

Salesforce

JUNE 2017 - PRESENT

Salesforce Administrator Certification

Salesforce

JUNE 2017 - PRESENT

Salesforce App Builder Certification

Salesforce

JUNE 2015 - PRESENT

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Institute (PMI)