PhD program (unfinished thesis) - Computational Linguistics / Artificial Intelligence
Université De Montréal
Montreal, Canada
Alma Kharrat
Seasoned Program Manager; Customer Experience Architect
Buckeye,AZ
Summary
Seasoned Program Manager with over 20 years at Microsoft, excelling in customer experience, design thinking, coaching, readiness, and business architecture. Extensive experience in leading cross-functional teams to develop and launch large-scale programs, enhancing collaboration and trust. Backed by a technical foundation in software development and multilingual communication skills, I am committed to driving organizational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Holder of U.S. patents and recipient of multiple awards for customer focus excellence.
Education
Master of Arts - Linguistics
Université Saint-Joseph
Beirut, LebanonSkills
Extensive experience in cross-functional, cross-group program management
Virtual team building and leadership
Adaptable and creative, holder of two US patents
Ability to bring clarity in ambiguous and evolving environments
Design thinking readiness and coaching
E2E customer experience mapping, strategy and design
Stakeholder management, including at CVP and EVP level
Multicultural and exceptional communications skills (native proficiency in English, French, Arabic and Spanish; knowledge of Italian and German)
Technical background (computational linguistics, including multilingual proofing tools, and rule-based machine translation)
Timeline
Customer Experience Consultant for Microsoft
McorpCX
01.2020 - 06.2022
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft CSEO
01.2017 - 1 2019
Customer Experience Architect
Microsoft Strategic Enterprise Architecture
01.2015 - 12.2017
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft TWC
01.2010 - 01.2012
Computational Linguist / Dev Lead
Microsoft Office
01.1999 - 01.2007
Design Excellence Delivery Manager
Microsoft IT
1 2012 - 1 2015
PhD program (unfinished thesis) - Computational Linguistics / Artificial Intelligence
Université De Montréal
Master of Arts - Linguistics
Université Saint-Joseph
Work History
Customer Experience Consultant for Microsoft
McorpCX
01.2020 - 06.2022
- Worked as customer experience consultant for Microsoft Human Resources (HR) to a) define post-COVID hybrid work modalities for different employee segments; b) distill career development needs for partner-level leaders while minimizing time and effort required of them to achieve their leadership goals; c) built design thinking course and coached HR practitioners to improve end-to-end employee experience.
- Defined success metrics with stakeholders, facilitated workshops and focus groups, and conducted interviews with senior leaders to distill employee needs in alignment with business objectives.
- Improved employee experience by 35% within first six months.
- Synthesized results and proposed data-driven recommendations and solutions to stakeholders.
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft CSEO
01.2017 - 1 2019
- Managed cross-org, cross-functional programs and initiatives.
- Defined and executed change management and communications strategy for practitioners and senior leadership.
- Planned and facilitated workshops to map employee experience throughout entire lifecycle.
- Used data to drive decision-making in developing solutions.
- Led community of practitioners to accelerate adoption of new onboarding practices aiming at improving new employee satisfaction and retention.
- Improved employee onboarding experience by 30% in first quarter.
Customer Experience Architect
Microsoft Strategic Enterprise Architecture
01.2015 - 12.2017
- Led initiatives aimed at enhancing customer satisfaction. One notable project involved redesigning a connected customer experience across IT, resulting in 30% increase in satisfaction within one quarter.
- In addition to persona building and customer journey mapping, modeled business capabilities (people, process, technology & information) that support critical touch points across multiple functions and organizations.
- Defined customer experience (CX) strategy and redesigned experience in alignment with business strategy and objectives.
- Partnered with sales, marketing, and operations to ensure alignment across functions and organizations.
- Effectively engaged stakeholders at all levels.
- By integrating feedback mechanisms and conducting regular performance evaluations, consistently achieved improvements in key metrics including Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Design Excellence Delivery Manager
Microsoft IT
1 2012 - 1 2015
- Performed IT capability scope and impact analysis and partnered with multiple leads to map business capabilities.
- Partnered with leaders in stakeholder management, change management and readiness to roll out design excellence initiative across Microsoft IT.
- Operationalized proven practices for requirements elicitation, scenario-focused engineering, and service design to support business outcomes in alignment with business strategy.
- Accelerated adoption among engineering teams to 90%, leading to 45% productivity increase among employees and greater clarity and agility in development process.
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft TWC
01.2010 - 01.2012
- Fostered a culture of empathy, and innovation through promoting design thinking practices and readiness, and guided cross-functional teams through entire design thinking process, from problem framing to ideation to prototyping and testing.
- Worked closely with various teams to establish clear success metrics and provided regular progress reports to ensure alignment with organizational strategy and objectives.
- Increased design thinking adoption by 50% within inaugural year, leading to development of products and services that met explicit and distilled (non-explicit) customer needs.
- Curated design thinking content library and facilitated tailored coaching sessions.
Computational Linguist / Dev Lead
Microsoft Office
01.1999 - 01.2007
- Analyzed corpora to identify patterns of grammar errors in the French language, informing data-driven decision-making.
- Implemented code to flag French grammar errors and suggest corrections to users while reducing noise (false flags) and maintaining good coverage; achieved remarkable results, with precision of 87% and notable coverage of 95%.
- Partnered with product manager to provide expert guidance on linguistic issues in alignment with user needs throughout lifecycle, including during design, prototyping, and user testing.
- Shipped v1 and v2 of French grammar checker that shipped in Microsoft Office and Windows.
- Was awarded two US patents for inventing two innovative functionalities in French grammar checker.
Patents
- Critiquing Clitic Pronoun Ordering in French (2009), Developed an innovative algorithm that enhances the accuracy of grammatical structures in French language processing tools. This patent significantly improved user experience and text accuracy in Microsoft’s Office grammar checker, supporting clearer communication for French-speaking users globally.
- Correcting the Incomplete Negation Error in French (2008), Pioneered a method to detect and correct common negation errors in French text processing. This breakthrough has been integral in refining the linguistic accuracy of a common grammar error in French, thereby enhancing the customer experience for academic and professional uses.
Academic Memberships
Advisory Board Member of John Benjamins Publishing Company (NLP Book series) for several books on machine translation, natural language processing and language modelling.
Awards
- Gold Star, Customer Experience (Engineering Excellence, Trustworthy Computing)
- Excellence Award, Delight the Customer (two years in a row) (Microsoft IT)
- Scholarship, PhD program, Université de Montréal, Canada
Patents
- Critiquing Clitic Pronoun Ordering in French (2009), Developed an innovative algorithm that enhances the accuracy of grammatical structures in French language processing tools. This patent significantly improved user experience and text accuracy in Microsoft’s Office grammar checker, supporting clearer communication for French-speaking users globally.
- Correcting the Incomplete Negation Error in French (2008), Pioneered a method to detect and correct common negation errors in French text processing. This breakthrough has been integral in refining the linguistic accuracy of a common grammar error in French, thereby enhancing the customer experience for academic and professional uses.
Academic Memberships
- Advisory Board Member of John Benjamins Publishing Company (NLP Book series) for several books on machine translation, natural language processing and language modelling.
- Program Committee member of ACTA Press (a scientific and technical publishing company)
- Member of Program Committee of the Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics (CICLing)
- Member of the Program Committee of Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing
Awards
- Gold Star, Customer Experience (Engineering Excellence, Trustworthy Computing)
- Excellence Award, Delight the Customer (two years in a row) (Microsoft IT)
- Scholarship, PhD program, Université de Montréal, Canada
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience