Cicek Neftci
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
New York, NY, United States
Toptal member since June 24, 2022
Cicek has been a project manager for over 15 years and a director for over seven years in the advertising, product, tech, and creative areas. With experience in places like Ogilvy, McKinsey, and Frog, she can take any project and bring it to completion at the right quality and set client expectations while educating them on risks, processes, and planning. Always known as an empathetic yet assertive leader for her department and projects, Cicek is also training to become a productivity coach.
Expertise
- Agile
- Leadership
- Program Management
- Project Management
- Scope Management
- Scope of Work (SOW)
- Storytelling
- Team Management
Work Experience
Director of Project Management
Hogarth
- Spearheaded performance on the highest volume account, delivering 100+ daily assets and managing innovation projects.
- Led strategic product management initiatives to develop the ICP platform and create the product roadmap.
- Implemented agile and waterfall methodologies, increasing daily output by up to 20% and reducing burnout.
Project Manager
Relay
- Joined the team as a project manager to gather and restructure all projects (20+) in the pipeline.
- Set up intake and progress workflows in Notion, working closely with directors, the brand team, designers, and the marketing team.
- Led fast turnaround projects by gathering all necessary information and identifying resources.
Freelance Program Director
MetaLab
- Directed large-scale digital product projects with $2+ million budgets from research to post-launch, achieving a 98% on-time delivery rate.
- Streamlined operational workflows for both agency and client, cutting down project completion time by 20%.
- Led cross-functional teams in the development of scalable software solutions, resulting in a 10% increase in user engagement and satisfaction.
Director of Project Management
Fueled
- Revamped a hiring and review process to streamline staffing with company needs and create a career path for talents.
- Developed the evolution and vision for the project management department to become program management.
- Launched the company's first ESG-based investment client mobile application that included branding, vision, strategy, UX, design, and development.
Director of Program Management
Frog Design Inc.
- Oversaw over ten program managers at various levels, from associates to the director, and the business worth $20 million.
- Partnered with discipline leads, such as technology, creative, strategy, and industrial design to develop program plans, manage studio-wide rituals, and enhance operations for more transparent communication and efficiency.
- Led complex programs, such as platform and software development, experience strategy definition, and organizational activation by utilizing human-centered design and various PM methodologies.
Director of Program Management
Barbarian
- Oversaw over 14 project managers at various levels, from associates to the director, and the business worth more than $12 million.
- Led a planning and strategic arm of retainer clients to support product and program launches.
- Evaluated a resourcing process resulting in 75% budget savings on vendor usage.
- Spearheaded the creation of operational standards to delay reduction in deadline delays.
- Managed the largest client in the agency with a retainer of over $8 million, focusing on .com, eCommerce, creative, social, content, and experiential work within and outside of the retainer.
- Led complex projects in Agile as a scrum master with cross-functional teams.
- Created a capability matrix for the department, developed career paths for each direct report, and built a rotation program for talent retention and utilization.
Senior Digital Producer
Dentsu U.S. MB
- Led one-off complicated digital products and programs, including but not limited to rebranding, content, testing, digital and social.
- Supported new business and client onboarding by gathering requirements for new clients for all digital projects.
- Managed multiple projects at a time with budgets of over $4 million.
Senior Project Manager
Ogilvy
- Managed over two million digital, web, games, and multimedia projects with multiple phases and disciplines for clients like Time Warner Cable and Coca-Cola.
- Created or updated project plans, defined sprints, led daily calls, and tracked finances with burn reports.
- Managed vendors, stakeholders, and clients through daily calls and emails. Identified project risks and discussed the impact with senior management.
Web Producer
McKinsey & Company
- Oversaw the site development and management of subdomains on McKinsey website.
- Served as the web analyst of the team. Implemented search engine optimization (SEO), researched social media tools to demonstrate McKinsey's thought leadership, and searched for new technologies for better content management and user experience.
- Determined a budget and drafted communication briefs and proposals. Liaised between clients, designers, the IT team, a proofreader, and other staff throughout project lifecycle(s).
- Participated actively in the digital strategy team, working mainly on content migration, the client's content management system (CMS) experience, and design management.
- Trained new users on CSM usage and troubleshooting CMS through HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.
Project History
Mobile Game and Website Development Projects
Managed projects such as mobile game development, website redesign and platform migration, portal design and development, and physical computing.
• Managed over eight stakeholders and 28 developers for a major portal redesign.
• Picked up an over-budget, delayed the mobile game project, reassessed the level of effort by redefining MVP, and created estimates for the incremental budget.
• Managed a retained team of 31 members from various disciplines as a part of our operation .com work.
Samsung Site Redesign and Replatform
http://www.samsung.com/usLed and managed the migration of the Teamsite to the AEM transition project. Headed the development and analytics teams to define trends and propose new projects.
Fanta Fruit Fight
Ensured the constant flood of stakeholder feedback to be either implemented or postponed for a later sprint.
Education
Master of Fine Arts Degree in Design and Technology
Parsons School of Design | The New School - New York City, United States
Bachelor's Degree in Communication and Design
Bilkent University - Ankara, Turkey
Skills
Tools
Slack, Zoom, Jira, Asana
Paradigms
Management, Agile, Scrum, Agile Project Management
Other
Project Management, Program Management, Scope of Work (SOW), Scope Management, Digital Advertising, Team Management, Project Planning, Digital Project Management, Gantt Chart, Storytelling, Presentations, Design, Smartsheet, Leadership, Training Content, Internal Communications, Technical Project Management, Cross-functional Collaboration, Stakeholder Management, Process Flows, Websites, Vendor Management, Product Owner, Digital Product Design, AIOps, Production, B2B Marketing, Risk Management, Marketing Campaigns, Startups, Fintech
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