Mirca Alvarez
New York,NY
Summary
Seasoned Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Specialist with a background in developing, implementing, and maintaining disaster recovery strategies for businesses of varying sizes. Possess strong skills in risk management, business continuity planning, and crisis management. Previous work led to significant improvements in overall operational resilience and preparedness against potential disasters. Demonstrated ability to adapt plans to changing situations, while ensuring minimal disruption to critical functions.
Overview
6
6
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Incident Management & Business Continuity
New York Times Co
New York, NY
05.2024 - 03.2025
- Developed, tested, and maintained business continuity plans to ensure organizational resilience.
- Directed tabletop exercises simulating operational challenges to strengthen preparedness.
- Conducted business impact analyses (BIA) to identify critical functions and prioritize recovery efforts.
- Provided real-time incident response support (using PagerDuty and Microsoft Teams), coordinating cross-functional teams during disruptions to minimize business impact.
- Developed a Disaster Recovery (DR) program from the ground up, ensuring alignment with business continuity, and IT resilience strategies.
- Conducted a comprehensive analysis of company applications and infrastructure to assess criticality, recovery time objectives (RTO), and recovery point objectives (RPO) to build an effective DR framework.
- Collaborated with IT, cybersecurity, and infrastructure teams to identify application dependencies, and develop recovery workflows for critical systems.
Third Party Risk Management Management
Webster Bank
New York, NY
02.2023 - 05.2024
- Conducted statistical analysis and risk evaluation using Coupa portfolio management software to identify potential security, compliance, and operational risks in third-party vendors.
- Evaluated third-party vendors for adherence to regulatory requirements, minimizing exposure to potential risks.
- Reviewed contracts weekly to ensure proper reflection of ongoing risk management initiatives.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to evaluate third-party contracts, identify key risks, and implement necessary safeguards.
- Reviewed and analyzed third-party audits and reports, ensuring compliance with industry standards, regulatory requirements, and internal policies.
- Maintained third-party risk documentation, including risk assessments, business continuity plans, and vendor performance reports.
- Prepared regular reports for senior management and stakeholders on third-party risk status, highlighting key risks, and mitigation efforts.
Senior Analyst Business & Disaster Recovery
Webster Bank
New York, NY
12.2022 - 05.2024
- Establish and sustain business continuity plans (20+ plans) to improve, maintain, and restore critical business functions.
- Designed and facilitated tabletop exercises for cross-functional teams of 30 or more employees.
- Developed detailed after-action reports and recommendations for process optimization, contributing to enhanced emergency preparedness.
- Coordinate yearly RNS tests (Rapid Notification System) through Everbridge.
- Contributed to organizational growth by identifying opportunities for process improvement in disaster recovery initiatives.
- Implement the structure and execution of the planning, coordination, and facilitation of DR testing for internal applications and external vendors.
- Organize test scripts and DR documentation.
- Analyzed post-DR testing data to identify areas of improvement in existing recovery plans and strategies.
- Developed training materials and facilitated workshops to educate staff on disaster recovery best practices and testing.
- Generate monthly reports and executive summaries, providing operational resiliency updates for monthly executive meetings and audit reports.
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Associate
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
New York, NY
09.2019 - 12.2022
- Coordinate and review disaster recovery (DR) testing with IT, and manage business continuity planning projects.
- Orchestrated functional and regression testing for over 500 applications.
- Coordinate updates to support all plans and procedures.
- Assist in the administration of Emergency Response Plans.
- Oversaw annual BCP strategy testing, and reported on test result metrics.
- Develop BCP program governance standards, policies, and procedures.
- Designed and administered a training program for yearly disaster recovery application testing, run book creation, and execution.
- Developed an in-house disaster recovery site with dashboards (QlikView), test guides, and other resources through SharePoint.
- Amplified the compliance of 10 area groups by reporting monthly metrics on risk occurrences.
Education
Business
McKinsey Black Accelerated Honors
New York, NY01-2022
Investment Operations
Year Up United
New York, NY08-2019
Skills
- Business Continuity Planning (BCP)
- Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP)
- Risk assessment
- Incident response
- Crisis management
- Data analysis
- Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
- Crisis management
- Emergency Preparedness and Response
- Regulatory compliance (eg, FFIEC, SOC 2)
- Vendor Risk Management
- Cybersecurity Resilience
- Testing and tabletop exercises
- Crisis communication
- Problem-solving and critical thinking
- Project Management
- Training & Awareness Programs
Tools & Software:
- Mass notification tools (Alert Media, Everbridge)
- Fusion Risk Management,
- SAI360
- Coupa
- QlikView
- Microsoft 365 Suite
- Google Suite
- Pager Duty
- Jira
Certification
- Certified Business Continuity Professional (ABCP), DRI International May 2020
- Creation & Branding, Operations & Supply Chain, LVMH December 2024
References
References available upon request.
Timeline
Incident Management & Business Continuity
New York Times Co
05.2024 - 03.2025
Third Party Risk Management Management
Webster Bank
02.2023 - 05.2024
Senior Analyst Business & Disaster Recovery
Webster Bank
12.2022 - 05.2024
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Associate
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
09.2019 - 12.2022
Business
McKinsey Black Accelerated Honors
Investment Operations
Year Up United
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