KIMBERLY SEBASTIAN, Ph.D.

Institutional Strengthening & Strategic Direction

• Led organizational transformation that strengthened financial stability, accreditation readiness, and institutional culture across a multi-college nonprofit system.
• Developed and implemented a renewed mission, vision, and strategic direction, aligning leadership, operations, and academic priorities around long-term institutional sustainability and student success.
• Mentored and guided senior leadership in strategic planning, institutional growth, and cross-campus collaboration.

Financial Stewardship & Operational Performance

• Strengthened fiscal performance through strategic budgeting, cost management initiatives, and improved resource allocation.
• Developed annual financial forecasts and performance monitoring systems to ensure alignment with organizational goals and fiscal sustainability.
• Reduced operational expenses through process optimization and administrative efficiency improvements.

Academic Innovation & Workforce Alignment

• Advanced strategic initiatives aligning academic programs with regional workforce and community needs, strengthening graduate employability and institutional relevance.
• Streamlined operational processes to improve faculty engagement and student satisfaction.

Strategic Partnerships & Community Impact

• Expanded institutional partnerships with local organizations, employers, and community leaders to strengthen student outreach, support services, and workforce pathways.
• Enhanced nonprofit branding and institutional visibility through collaborative partnerships and community engagement initiatives.

Governance, Compliance & Accountability

• Navigated complex regulatory environments and maintained full compliance with accreditation and nonprofit governance standards.
• Established a culture of accountability and performance excellence by implementing clear expectations, leadership alignment, and performance monitoring systems.

• P&L ownership focused on achieving margins and net new student growth for the largest undergraduate program in the School of Business.
• Provide data-driven portfolio analysis and guidance to shape the vision and strategy of the program.
• Drive a culture of continuous experimentation, measurement, and learning from data to improve product quality and delivery to students.
• Effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams to create innovative and competitive curricula.
• Communicate to improve and promote teamwork, decision-making a problem-solving.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to gain buy-in, trust and support of others.

• Lead and develop high-performing virtual team of 24 Program Mentors within the Masters of Accounting and Bachelor of Accounting programs to achieve core business objectives through analyzing student interactions and faculty behavior.
• Analyze qualitative and quantitative outcomes to provide recommendations for continuous improvement.
• Develop and implement strategies to improve program and faculty performance.
• Collaborate with leadership and faculty across College of Business on best practices, change management initiatives, and process improvement.
• Exceeded all key performance indicators for on-time graduates, retention, and student satisfaction.
• Increased overall student satisfaction from 27% to 63% over 12 months
• Increased on-time graduates from 37.9% to 43.5% over 12 months
• Program recognized for exceptional performance in FY21

• Spearheaded design, development, and integration of organizational structure including vision, strategic direction, role creation, and implementation of Performance Support and Process Improvement department.
• Responsible for all sales channels, customer care, and multi-channel behavioral and process improvement for $4B wireless carrier.
• Size of the sales operation included 270 corporate stores, 650 dealer doors, and 2500 national retail locations.
• Customer care centers included over 1100 seats at four internal sites and six outsourced sites handling approximately 1M interactions per month.
• Directed and mobilized all operations related to speech analytics, call quality, sales process, enablement, and sales performance reporting, analysis, processes, systems, and associate performance models.
• Led and developed high-performing virtual teams across the enterprise to achieve core business objectives including sales and contact center operational performance indicators through analyzing customer interactions and associate behavior.
• Delivered key insights, recommendations, and outcomes based on analysis for 75 policies in 2016.
• Sought out as mentor and coach for business professionals.
• Created, developed, and implemented evolved sales process and enablement functionality including CRM capabilities.
• Implemented innovative programs utilizing speech analytics to enhance behavioral quality program, products, and services.
• Developed strategies and training to drive adoption of tools and increase sales productivity and customer engagement through continuous improvement processes.

• Led remote team of leaders and analysts responsible for observing and analyzing over 130k customer interactions per month through NICE contact observation system and Nexidia call analytics tools for four internal contact centers and certification of four BPOs.
• Created and delivered a quality assurance program outlining associate behavior and expectations along with coaching practices that drive customer engagement; decreased customer defects and grew revenue attainment.
• Increased employee engagement by creating development activities that resulted in a 97% positive response rate, a 37% year-over-year increase, in the annual associate engagement measurement.
• Restructured quality organization to maximize effectiveness and focus efforts on providing qualitative and quantitative analysis in order to identify and recommend opportunities to improve operational and leadership practices to drive the business.
• The team drove nearly 45 business and process improvements in the first 12 months post-implementation equating to nearly $500k in cost savings.

• Responsible for operations of multiple channels including company-owned locations, independent agent locations, and business-to-business sales team.
• Set long- and short-term strategic guidance to improve culture in order to achieve market sales and budget objectives resulting in six consecutive months exceeding revenue objectives.
• Strategically integrated brand within the community through volunteerism and sponsorship events to enhance awareness of the organization.
• Collaborated with engineering, marketing, and human resources to deliver key initiatives and objectives.
• Developed recruiting strategy to attract diverse and quality talent as well as created and facilitated training in the development of leaders and associates.

• Responsible for the leadership and direction of 13 retail locations consisting of over 120 leaders and associates.
• Collaborated with marketing and engineering teams to ensure achievement of business metrics.
• Assisted in strategically leveraging media and community involvement through volunteer activities and local sponsorship events to develop positive image for the company.
• Successfully developed and implemented sales and marketing plan resulting in exceeding sales targets by 40% within first six months.
• Oversaw designated sales operations and ensured all company policies and procedures are followed.

• Led 22-member team auditing third-party invoices with $18M in monthly cost of sales expense.
• Resolved inaccurate billing through negotiating and partnering with vendors, successfully negotiated over $40M in overage discrepancies.
• Liaison between business department and IT support regarding transitioning manual processes to electronic system processing.

• Collaborated across organization to drive standards of excellence, promote consistent and strong brand image, and deliver an "Ideal Customer Experience."
• Reviewed and audited business processes for exposure to revenue loss through database analysis of Point of Sale and other systems to ensure processes were efficient and effective.
• Identified barriers or obstacles hindering sales channels from performing at higher levels resulting in creation and facilitation of training, education and coaching.
• Partnered with process owners to modify processes as needed; suggested improvements and recommended changes based on current operating efficiency and financial impact of process.
• Developed standard queries and reported to aid management in understanding and improving sales channel performance.
• Analyzed sales activity data to identify and resolve commission payment discrepancies.
• Key contributor in transitioning regional commissions’ team to centralized processing in order to provide consistency and enhance processing across the company.