Luke Sims, Project Manager in Chicago, United States
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Luke Sims

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Chicago, United States

Toptal member since June 20, 2022

Bio

Luke has been building and leading teams his entire career. From the military sector to working with Fortune 500 customers on multiyear programs, Luke's superpower is creating structure and clarity that allow customers to achieve their desired outcomes on time and within budget.

Expertise

  • Agile Project Management
  • Jira
  • Organizational Change Management (OCM)
  • Product Development
  • Program Management
  • Project Management
  • Scrum
  • Strategy

Work Experience

Senior Engagement Manager

2020 - 2022
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Led discovery sessions and crafted a $2.4 million statement of work for a 3-year, $30 million strategic program targeting a Fortune 200 manufacturer. Handled delivery across three workstreams and AWS, customer, and partner consulting firm teammates.
  • Spearheaded a cloud security accelerator for a Fortune 50 healthcare provider, leading AWS services implementation and a DevOps modernization effort across two teams. Increased security maturity by 10% over four months.
  • Led a top-5 private equity firm's first cloud migration, shutting down an entire data center in the APAC region, building a long-term cloud roadmap for the company, leading to over $400,000 in annual savings and $2 million of qualified opportunities.

Consultant

2018 - 2020
Slalom
  • Acted as a program manager for a multi-million dollar Salesforce product. Built the roadmap, delivered five workstreams across two development teams, and delivered mobile and desktop feature enhancements.
  • Led a geographically dispersed team of eight to increase adoption of a custom Salesforce portal by 12% over three months at a multi-billion dollar cybersecurity firm. Acted as a scrum master, reporting directly to the CIO.
  • Managed a 2.4 million project at the fourth-largest health insurer in the United States. Led a team of 24 on a delivery timeline condensed by 40% for one of their most strategic accounts with 347 thousand members.

Captain

2014 - 2018
United States Army
  • Mentored and evaluated 13 direct reports with a total organization of up to 45. Recommended individuals for follow-on positions based on their performance and potential; 92% of soldiers were selected for promotion.
  • Performed a specialized leadership role reporting directly to the battalion commander, after being rated as the number one of seven company officers and in the top five officers who worked with the battalion commander during his 17-year career.
  • Operated with NATO allies in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland to design and execute complex projects as a member of an international, multi-lingual team. Led over 300 fire missions involving over 750 people.

Salesforce Portal for Cybersecurity Company

Launched a customer facing portal that allowed customers to directly manage their accounts, track orders, and request additional support when needed.

Managed a five-person development team and interacted with multiple customer teams, including weekly status updates with the CIO. Led the in-depth discovery period, then drove the delivery over six months, handling specific adoption efforts internally and externally.

Cloud Transformation for Fortune 500 Manufacturing Company

Launched over 15 new features spanning cloud foundations, data management, and cloud security and received additional funding to support increased data modernization efforts.

Managed over 20 personnel across three different companies involved in delivering this multi-year program. Developed and implemented a three-tier governance framework enabling clear communication and expectation management.

Healthcare Cloud Security

Increased the cloud security posture of a Fortune 500 healthcare company through strategic implementation of cloud security features across five core epics.

Managed a five-person development team to increase the cloud security posture of a healthcare organization. Worked directly with the director of cloud security and reported up through the CISO. Completed long-range planning sessions to outline features prioritization and managed the daily execution to include training a customer scrum master.
2020 - 2022

Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Strategy and Economics

Kellogg School of Management – Northwestern University - Evanston, IL, USA

2011 - 2014

Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business and Economics

Wheaton College - Wheaton, IL

JUNE 2020 - PRESENT

AWS Solutions Architect – Associate

AWS

MAY 2020 - PRESENT

Advanced Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance

NOVEMBER 2019 - PRESENT

AWS Cloud Practitioner

AWS

MAY 2019 - PRESENT

SAFe 4 Agilist

Scaled Agile

FEBRUARY 2019 - PRESENT

Certified Salesforce Administrator

Salesforce

NOVEMBER 2018 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Master

Scrum Alliance

Tools

Jira, Zoom, Trello, Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft Project

Paradigms

Scrum, Agile, Agile Project Management, Azure DevOps, Requirements Analysis, Organizational Change Management (OCM)

Platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Industry Expertise

Real Estate

Other

Business Management, Strategy, Operations, Team Building, Delivery, Program Management, IT Project Management, Project Management, Sprint Planning, Stakeholder Management, Requirements & Specifications, Project Scheduling, Distributed Team Management, Backlog Management, Discovery Workshops, Strategic Planning, Business Process Re-engineering, Process Improvement, Process Mapping, Process Optimization, Business Processes, Business Process Optimization, Cloud, Process Improvement Project Management, Business Strategy, Marketplaces, Two-sided Marketplaces, eCommerce, Product Development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Product Management, Microsoft Teams, Economics, Marketing, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Security

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