Hillary Skeffington
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Denver, CO, United States
Toptal member since June 7, 2021
Hillary is a driven agile project manager delivering products for fintech start-ups in unprecedented, tight deadlines. She implemented a debit card program in Brazil with over 7,000 users within six months, averaging ~$40,000 in transactions weekly, and an urgent, cross-functional project within three months that saved the company ~$100,000 per month. Hillary excels in building and integrating billing systems, payment gateways, and card payment products.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Delivery
- Agile Product Delivery
- Agile Project Management
- Card Payments
- Cryptocurrency
- Implementation
- Implementation Project Management
- Payment APIs
Work Experience
Technical Project Manager
Pie Insurance
- Integrated with Stripe ACH. In the first week, the number of customers that successfully used Stripe ACH as a payment method tripled, saving the company significant amounts in fees.
- Managed three engineering squads (five developers per squad) using Agile methodologies to ensure consistent team delivery velocity. Squads consistently delivered 89-100% of the sprint goal.
- Delivered an in-house billing system within a strict time frame of six months by breaking down the project into milestones with achievable dates, managing scope, balancing resources, and managing stakeholder expectations.
Project Manager
Xapo
- Delivered an urgent, cross-functional project within three months (two weeks spent curating the project plan) that saved the company approximately $100,000 per month.
- Managed 2-3 cross-functional programs simultaneously at any given time.
- Delivered integrations with outsourcers to expand financial services to users.
- Managed a multi-project program to expand Xapo’s banking network enabling more business opportunities.
- Established and continued to maintain company-wide frameworks and policies regarding project execution, documentation standards, and knowledge base requirements aligned with banking license regulations.
Senior Implementation Lead
Xapo
- Implemented a debit card program in Brazil within seven months. In the first six months of going live, the program had over 7,000 users averaging approximately $40,000 USD in transactions weekly.
- Implemented a prepaid Mastercard program in Argentina in as little as six months.
- Led a team of four implementation leads in which we collectively delivered four card programs (Mastercard, Visa, Discover/Elo) in the USA, Europe, Argentina, and Brazil.
- Developed a standardized, plug-and-play framework for onboarding and integrating with white label payment providers in an approximately three months and compliant with EBA outsourcing regulations.
- Managed external partnerships to deliver payment card programs, which included conducting 4-week onsite workshops with development teams.
- Developed and executed two high-risk implementations on time and on budget, ensuring alignment and synchronicity between teams, driving UAT, delivering products to market, and maintaining the operation of products once live.
Product Analyst
Xapo
- Engaged with 10-15 new partners to grow the debit card program globally and enhance its service offering.
- Executed a beta program for a US debit card program engaging with 200 users.
- Led various marketing initiatives, which included launching weekly campaigns to a user base of 3,000+ users over the course of two months.
- Provided operational support to the customer support team by creating 20+ work flows between the customer support and engineering teams.
- Completed approximately 20 user interviews gathering valuable product insight and feedback, which contributed to defining the debit card product roadmap in terms of features.
Customer Success Team Lead
Xapo
- Provided support to a user base of 50,000 cardholders by leading a team of four customer support representatives.
- Handled 150+ emails daily with duties assigned to troubleshooting payment card issues.
- Trained and onboarded four new customer representatives remotely, worldwide.
- Designed and implemented a dispute management system.
- Developed and executed support training materials tailored to a remote, international support team.
- Engaged on a daily basis with a card issuer as the primary relationship manager.
Project History
Launched a 3-month G2M Software Implementation Plan
Designed a software implementation plan for a white label API that enabled my team to launch local payment services in Latin America in as short as three months.
The first implementation in Brazil took seven months and yielded 40,000 weekly transactions within the first six months. The second one in Argentina took only three months due to the standardization of the APIs and implementation plan. Skills included contract procurement, resource management, implementation planning, process definition and management, and product delivery management.
Sunsetting of Software Systems
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6618895717974978561/Phased out five outsourced software systems to transition to one in-house system increasing product efficiency and performance. Completed in 4-month saving the company $100,000 monthly.
I managed the project from its genesis (understanding existing workflows, SLAs, contract timelines, user experience impacts), coordinating timelines to shut down services (sending out user notification emails, and development team coordination between mobile apps, operations, and back end), and removing legacy code from back-end systems.
The project was implemented in four months due to contractual requirements. All deadlines were met, meaning we achieved both an on-time and on-budget project execution.
Stripe ACH Payment Method Implementation
Implemented Stripe ACH within a one-month timeframe, improving user experience by offering a faster, more reliable payment option for a B2C product tripling user acquisition in the first week.
Credit card payment incurred high fees, making it an unideal option for the business and its users. Within one week of integrating with the Stripe ACH API, the acquisition to use ACH as a form of payment tripled, resulting in fewer customer inquiries and a better self-serve user experience for customers.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in International Relations
University of Colorado - Boulder, Colorado, USA
Certifications
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Asana, Postman, Salesforce, Stripe Checkout
Paradigms
Agile Project Management, Implementation Project Management, Agile Delivery, Kanban, Management, Cross-platform
Other
Implementation, Card Payments, Cryptocurrency, Agile Product Delivery, Payment APIs, Online Payments, Scrum Master, Jira Administration, Smartsheet, Product Delivery, APIs, Stakeholder Management, Resource Management, Product Owner, Project Management, PCI Compliance, Product Marketing, User Research, Projects, API Integration, Customer Success, Customer Insights, Software Implementation, Cryptocurrency Wallets, Mobile UX, Back-end, Outsourcing, Product Management, Stripe API
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