Program Leadership
Practical leadership for complex ERP programs.
I help higher education, healthcare and research organizations turn an Oracle transformation into coordinated work across finance, research administration, HR, payroll and IT. My role brings together program direction, governance and hands-on delivery support, from planning through readiness and stabilization.
When to bring me in
You are planning a new ERP program and want experienced leadership from inception to establish scope, governance, decision rights and an integrated roadmap.
You are selecting or mobilizing an implementation partner and need alignment between institutional priorities, delivery responsibilities and executive decisions.
Your implementation is underway and needs coordinated workstreams, clearer decisions or stronger oversight of testing, cutover and go-live readiness.
You need program leadership for the full lifecycle, interim leadership during a transition, or a more consistent PMO and steering committee cadence.
Relevant project experience
My experience spans multiple full-lifecycle ERP implementations for universities and academic medical centers, with roles in program direction, finance architecture and functional PMO leadership. I have worked across planning, governance, implementation, readiness and stabilization. The projects below are selected examples of that broader experience.
R1 research university | ERP and HCM program direction
I directed a full-lifecycle Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM program, coordinating governance across finance, payroll and HR. The work included multi-cycle system integration testing readiness, root-cause risk analysis and executive decisions about delivery trade-offs.
Public university | Finance architecture and functional PMO
As finance architect and functional PMO lead, I coordinated workstream managers, cross-functional testing and implementation partner alignment across General Ledger, Grants, Projects, procure-to-pay, Fixed Assets and EPM.
These examples describe prior work. Client identities are withheld to protect confidentiality.
How I lead the work
1. Establish the mandate. Clarify outcomes, responsibilities, executive sponsorship and decision rights. Understand the commitments already made and where the team needs help.
2. Connect the plan. Bring workstream milestones, dependencies, resources and readiness criteria into an integrated view. Use documented current and future-state business process maps to expose cross-functional handoffs, control points and ownership. Connect those decisions to design, testing, training and operational transition.
3. Manage with evidence. Use tools such as Smartsheet and Jira, matched to the institution’s environment, for project management and test tracking. Connect milestones, dependencies, test execution, defects and backlog items with named owners and due dates. Maintain risk, issue, assumption and decision logs, escalation paths and executive dashboards that distinguish completed work from unverified status.
4. Govern progression through phase gates. Establish phase gates with agreed entry and exit criteria for design, testing, cutover and go-live. Review deliverables, test results, data readiness and organizational impacts before leadership approves progression. Record unresolved risks, conditions and accountable owners rather than treating a calendar milestone as proof of readiness.
5. Plan for life after go-live. Build knowledge transfer, a maintained knowledge base and multimodal training into the delivery plan. Help define the post-production support model, hypercare exit criteria and business ownership for Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP’s quarterly release cycle, so operational teams can manage testing, adoption and improvements after the implementation team leaves.
What an engagement can include
An integrated program roadmap, workstream dependencies and documented business process maps.
A governance structure, meeting cadence and decision-making process.
Proactive Risk, issue and decision management.
Smartsheet/Jira project and test tracking, executive reporting and evidence-based phase-gate criteria.
Interim program direction, knowledge-transfer planning and post-production support readiness.
The scope and deliverables are tailored to your program’s stage, existing team and priorities.
Start with the next decision
Tell me where your program stands, what is getting in the way and where leadership support would make a difference.