Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Professional Memberships
Accomplishments
Certification
References
Timeline
Generic

Nickolette Cole

KC,MO

Summary

  • Passionate, results driven Technology executive and strategic leader with over ten years of experience in technology and sixteen years in program delivery.
  • Accomplished at handling rapidly changing company, customer and project demands through strong partnerships.
  • Proven leadership building out teams and elevating talent. Highly focused on mentoring and growing people.
  • Demonstrates outstanding ability to motive peers and subordinates, keeping a high team morale while meeting aggressive deadlines and delivering on highly complex project requirements.
  • Possesses excellent problem-solving, organizational and decision-making abilities.
  • Rare people person in an IT world that excels at driving consensus decisions across competing organizations.

Overview

18
18
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Director

H&R Block World Head Quarters
Kansas City, MO
12.2016 - Current
  • Technology Director leading engineering teams delivering and supporting $491 million financial product portfolio through online, virtual and retail tax channels for an industry leading tax and technology company.
  • Lead across co-located teams in both the U.S. and India of more than 80 people with an annual budget of $4 million.
  • Strategic thought leadership focused on three-year road map creation across critical programs and initiatives focused on client retention, growth and revenue generation.
  • Partner with key stakeholders across the company and external vendor management for multi-million dollar programs.
  • Leveraged trends in customer marketplaces to shape solutions and approaches.
  • Trained multi-level employees for management, program management and analyst positions.
  • Anticipated future trends using strategic planning resulting in balancing risk-taking with continuous innovation.
  • Collaborated with and mentored technology staff, promoting synergetic partnerships, credibility and teamwork.
  • Designed contingency planning, formal training and employee development plan to increase staff quality performance.
  • Attended ongoing seminars, workshops and continuing education courses to remain current in emerging technology and advancements.

Technology Manager

H&R Block World Head Quarters
Kansas City, MO
03.2014 - 12.2016
  • Technical resource manager for a team Program Managers and IT Business Analyst's supporting Tax Retail and Financial Services programs at H&R Block generating $65 million revenue annually.
  • Oversaw an annual budget of $3 million to support the various products offered to clients year-round including prepaid debit cards, tax refund advances and loans and the various applications and tools used to run and support those products.
  • Provided leadership and guidance to other Project Managers around the Agile process and methodology as a subject matter expert.
  • Monitored integration impact from other teams to our applications due to server patching, project enhancements, or other scheduled hardware and software maintenance activities.
  • Led consistent knowledge training and awareness for PCI Issuer standards around our prepaid debit card program and key system impacts and changes that may be required to ensure we are compliant with industry security standards.
  • Consult with 3rd party vendors from a technical integration perspective to ensure up time, quality and contract standards are being met in support of our programs.
  • Created presentations detailing actionable technical improvements to maximize resources.
  • Recruited and developed new IT department team members.
  • Completed thorough risk assessments and deployed management and response strategies to prevent roadblocks.
  • Kept project teams on-task with proactive control of budgets, schedules and scopes.
  • Produced status reports for customers and senior management.

IT Program Manager

H&R Block World Headquarters
Kansas City, MO
10.2011 - 03.2014
  • Provided leadership and guidance for team responsible for system design, quality testing, production implementation and ongoing support for HRB Financial Services programs using Agile/Scrum methodology.
  • Communicated through various means with impacted stakeholders to review development work, track status and coordinate integration with other technical teams.
  • Directed complex projects across the organization, including process improvement initiatives and crucial projects for the HRB Bank across multiple release schedules for high volume applications.
  • Provided product knowledge and technical system understanding working alongside architecture design team to ensure efficient design, product development and project implementation across the program and all impacted systems.
  • Partnered with business stakeholders and company executives to monitor performance and develop a long-term program road map to identify key strategic initiatives.
  • Provide best practices documentation, support and continuous identification of improvement areas for Agile within the organization to gain consistency across all IT teams.

Sr. Project Manager

DST (Argus) Health Systems
Kansas City, MO
09.2007 - 10.2011
  • Facilitated projects for customer implementations, internal business process improvements, new system enhancements and migrations for internal company workflow systems.
  • Led companywide project for Year End efforts impacting all customers for a competitive Pharmaceutical Benefits Management company handling insurance claims system for industry leading insurance companies.
  • Provided product knowledge and technical system understanding to ensure efficient design, product development and project implementation.
  • Gathered, defined and documented risk assessments, recommendations of products/service alternatives and system enhancements based on project scope, and provide cross selling support to Business Relationship Managers.
  • Prepared presentations for customers and staff members detailing project scope, progress and results.
  • Monitored design processes from conceptual phase through construction.
  • Documented existing and new processes impacted during project duration.
  • Management of co-located and virtual project teams.
  • Oversaw budgets for project, tracked expenses and timelines and communicated with key stakeholders on milestones.
  • Updated project plans based on changing objectives, specifications and staff availability.

Education

Bachelor of Arts - Applied Organizational Leadership

Mid-America Nazarene University
Olathe, KS
05.2012

MBA - Executive Leadership

University of Missouri - Kansas City
Kansas City, MO
05.2018

Skills

  • Skillful communicator able to present to various levels of leadership
  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
  • Mentoring, career growth and development
  • Demonstrates outstanding ability to motive others
  • Change Leadership
  • Program Management
  • Application & Software Delivery
  • Strategic Planning
  • Risk Analysis & Management
  • Budgeting and Cost Control
  • Performance Management
  • Resource planning
  • Recruiting, Staffing and Administration
  • Business Development
  • Process Improvement
  • Agile and DevOps methodologies

Professional Memberships

  • H&R Block Women's Network - Communications/PR Committee Co-Chair
  • UMKC Executive MBA Alumni Admissions Council Member
  • Kansas City Women in Technology Member

Accomplishments

  • H&R Block 2018 - Best of Block Award Recipient
  • H&R Block 2015 – Graduate HRB Bloch Leadership School (UMKC)
  • H&R Block 2015 - Company Top Performer Award from CEO
  • H&R Block 2013 - IT Leadership Award for focus on Agility from CIO
  • Argus 2012 – Two-time recipient of Rising Star Award

Certification

  • The Washington Campus – Certificate Managing Business, Government and Public Policy – May 2017
  • Bloch Leadership Development Program Certification – September 2015
  • Certified Scrum Master – Agile – March 2012

References

  • Available upon request

Timeline

Director

H&R Block World Head Quarters
12.2016 - Current

Technology Manager

H&R Block World Head Quarters
03.2014 - 12.2016

IT Program Manager

H&R Block World Headquarters
10.2011 - 03.2014

Sr. Project Manager

DST (Argus) Health Systems
09.2007 - 10.2011

Bachelor of Arts - Applied Organizational Leadership

Mid-America Nazarene University

MBA - Executive Leadership

University of Missouri - Kansas City

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Nickolette Cole