Blanca Sierra-Sierra
Summary
I am a highly dedicated, energetic, and results-oriented Certified Change Management Professional with the aptitude to solve highly complex assignments and manage enterprise-wide projects. My professional career started in Mutual Fund Accounting and Investment Operations, where attention to detail, complex analysis, accuracy, and precision are necessary to be successful in a fast-paced environment. In my current role as Assistant Director in Sales Enablement, I am responsible for developing change strategies for new product introductions, enhancing existing products, and preparing for regulatory changes impacting the Risk Products Portfolio. Experienced in managing multiple projects simultaneously and creating standardized playbooks for different levels of change. My Clifton's strengths are achiever, relator, learner, strategic, and responsibility.
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Assistant Director Sales Enablement
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
03.2023 - Current
- Executed on the Risk Product vision by developing change strategies to roll out new products, enhance existing products, and prepare for regulatory change impacting the risk product portfolio. Created, led, and executed a two-year change management plan for the product introduction of Survivorship Variable Universal Life Plus (SVUL Plus). Additional change projects: New Funds expansion for Variable Life and Variable Annuities, New York Reg 187, Subadvisor changes, and tailored shareholder report mailings.
- Created and built efficient change management structures that support an integrated delivery approach, and provide direction and oversight to one or more change teams to ensure predictable execution and realization of benefits.
- Influence business sponsors and change teams to create integrated deployment strategies and plans.
- Educated, influenced, aligned, and coached senior business leaders and project teams to create and implement effective change strategies and plans.
- Identified potential people-related risks, anticipated points of resistance, and developed and recommended specific plans to mitigate or address the concerns.
- Provided insight to the project and senior leaders about the potential impact of decisions on the effectiveness of the overall change strategy.
Change Management Assistant Director
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
03.2023 - Current
- Recommend readiness plans and continually monitor, and adjust readiness activities as needed based on results, stakeholder, and leadership feedback.
- Develop over-arching, foundational, positioning message and desired behavior strategy partnering with cooperate communications to inform and oversee the communication strategy.
- Develop feedback and metrics approach in partnership with Experience Leads to measure, rollout, and pilot success.
- Define and execute adoption strategies and plans.
- Partner with Corporate Communications, field training teams, Performance teams, and Change Management office.
- Drove, led, and delivered on elevated Digital Purchase Experience AIP outcomes while demonstrating core competencies such as: conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, communication, strategic collaboration, team building, strategic planning, problem solving, and leading without authority.
- Led change management activities required to deliver 23 capabilities to enable 50% Straight Through Processing (STP) on eligible Life applications, along with 7 transformation capabilities to meet AIP target.
- Established, led, and orchestrated pilot activities across upwards of 7 offices and 1,750 advisors and teams to validate and test the field experience, client experience, change strategies and technology.
- Led change management activities required to maximize applications submissions to be eligible for STP. Resulting in nearly 50% reduction in cover letter usage (20% to 11%), requiring extensive 1x1 interaction with high usage network offices and robust collaboration with home office teams. Resulting in ~ 7,000 STP applications and 25,000 partial STP applications (6/13 – 12/31).
- Learned and led the DEL survey work on behalf of the digital purchase experience, resulting in a baseline measurement of the field sentiment of our field experience, and providing invaluable insights and feedback to support future enhancements and change management strategies.
- Led the Enroll Wealth change management experience in the digitization of asset movement forms, via the adoption of the Supervision Queue. Implemented strategic adoption strategies, resulting in 98% adoption of the Supervision Queue, surpassing the OKR goal.
- Led the Wealth Field Advisory Committee, ensuring the voice of the field was represented in the design and deployment efforts. In this work, I demonstrated the ability to look more broadly across the purchase experience and leverage the synergies and opportunities to expand the Wealth pilot work from one office to four offices. This created very valuable pilot feedback that improved the end product for the field.
Wealth Org Change Consultant
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
12.2019 - 04.2021
- Created and executed a strategic, thoughtful engagement and communications plan for Wealth Changes impacting the field, bringing along key Field and Home Office stakeholders to enable them to lead through the change.
- Created and executed a strategic implementation plan that will guide various Home Office and field members impacted by the change through a guided, supported, and measured plan.
- Created and managed tools for measuring change success.
- Partnered with business leaders and initiative teams within the Wealth group to influence how changes impacting the field (people, process, technology, and/or culture) are planned, supported, and executed in order to realize favorable business outcomes.
- Collaborated with leaders, stakeholders, sponsors, project managers, and product owners to develop the overall strategy for navigating change, identifying the scope and impact of change within the context of the day-to-day experience of the end user.
- Lead Change Management Consultant for the PCG initiative, FolioDynamix Trading Tool. In this role, I demonstrated my ability to lead and manage large, highly complex assignments, manage cross-department and multi-department projects, prioritize work, and handle multiple tasks simultaneously while working under pressure and meeting tight deadlines.
- Partnering closely with Wealth Communications, the Field Training Team, the Performance Teams, and the Change Management Office.
- Responsible for creating an ad hoc field focus group for field co-creation support with the FolioDynamix Trading Tool initiative.
- Strategically developed selection criteria for Wealth Management Advisors' participation.
- Partnered with a Wealth Product subject matter expert to select advisors with diverse trading books of business, to obtain a holistic view of trading needs.
- Strategically planned topics and led meetings. Ensuring that topics and guest presenters are timely coordinated to move work forward and obtain timely decisions from the field.
Top Advisor Support Senior Specialist
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
10.2019 - 12.2019
- Service Northwestern Mutual’ s top 250 wealth management advisors and staff with all areas of investment operations: new account opening, maintenance, trading, and asset movement.
- Responsible to help and guide wealth management advisors trade client accounts, Multi Account Management (MAM) trading, and conditional order trading.
- Responsible to help advisors resolve compliance violations and offer alternative solutions to keep client’s account within compliance guidelines.
- Collaborate in projects to prioritize items from our system enhancement list. Duties included reading our system vendor’s release notes and identify items from our enhancement’s list.
- Responsible for testing and creating testing scenarios to ensure new releases worked accurately in production.
- Identify opportunities for improvement and advocate to deliver valuable solutions and alternatives.
Account Maintenance Specialist
Northwestern Mutual
Franklin
04.2019 - 05.2019
- Service financial advisors and District Network Officers in operational tasks to ensure client needs are met.
- Responsible for verifying my advisors were compliant in managing their clients’ investment accounts and adhere to the Advisory program guidelines, and compliance regulations.
- Responsible for creating workflow procedures for operational processes during and after a system conversion.
- Responsible for approving field exceptions for our goal modification process which consist of asset allocation, risk profile, and fee changes.
Account Maintenance Service Rep III
Northwestern Mutual
Franklin
06.2018 - 03.2019
Account Maintenance Service Rep II
Northwestern Mutual
Franklin
02.2017 - 06.2018
- Independently reviewed new account documents for accuracy and completeness.
- Followed specific screening data and made decisions to approve clean cases or initiate follow-up for cases that needed further analysis.
- Participated in daily process improvement initiatives. Reviewed existing procedures as well as created new ones.
- Operated in a timely and efficient manner to ensure service levels were met.
- Adhered to deadlines/cycle times as well as communicated in a direct manner developing negotiation, and persuasion skills.
Mutual Fund Accounting Sr. Analyst
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
03.2016 - 02.2017
- Strong knowledge in processing domestic and foreign cash and security transactions, derivatives (futures), and total return swaps, for equity and fixed income funds.
- Prepared and analyzed Schedule of Investments and financial statements for Semi-Annual and Annual Reports.
- Ran data queries to analyze monthly compliance reports.
- Researched, analyzed, and processed various corporate actions such as stock splits, cash/stock mergers, exchanges and spin offs as part of the corporate actions team.
- Obtained ability to identify concerns and analyze for accuracy and precision.
Mutual Fund Accounting Analyst
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
12.2014 - 03.2016
Mutual Fund Accounting Intern
Northwestern Mutual
Milwaukee
06.2014 - 12.2014
Education
B.A. - Management Accounting
Alverno College
Masters of Business Administration -
Alverno College
Skills
- Change management
- Stakeholder engagement
- Conflict resolution
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Emotional intelligence
- Financial administration
- Data analysis
- Problem-solving aptitude
- Strategic planning
Certification
- 2020, Prosci Certified Change Management Professional
- 2018, Low-Effort Service Experience Rep
Activities
- 2022-2023, Member and communications lead for CXD D&I Council
- 2022, Hispanic ERG Governance Board Member
- 2023, Hispanic ERG Leadership Team member and Treasurer
Languages
Spanish
Native/ Bilingual
English
Native/ Bilingual
Timeline
Assistant Director Sales Enablement
Northwestern Mutual
03.2023 - Current
Change Management Assistant Director
Northwestern Mutual
03.2023 - Current
Wealth Org Change Consultant
Northwestern Mutual
12.2019 - 04.2021
Top Advisor Support Senior Specialist
Northwestern Mutual
10.2019 - 12.2019
Account Maintenance Specialist
Northwestern Mutual
04.2019 - 05.2019
Account Maintenance Service Rep III
Northwestern Mutual
06.2018 - 03.2019
Account Maintenance Service Rep II
Northwestern Mutual
02.2017 - 06.2018
Mutual Fund Accounting Sr. Analyst
Northwestern Mutual
03.2016 - 02.2017
Mutual Fund Accounting Analyst
Northwestern Mutual
12.2014 - 03.2016
Mutual Fund Accounting Intern
Northwestern Mutual
06.2014 - 12.2014
B.A. - Management Accounting
Alverno College
Masters of Business Administration -
Alverno College
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