Rahal Wijewardene

Client: American Red Cross via Frontier Design Group

• Designing and facilitating a cross-functional leadership cohort journey using Miro to synthesize client pain points, prioritize interventions, and align decision-makers around shared CX goals
• Building an adaptive service design roadmap and initiative charter outlining 30-60-90 day priorities and long-term transformation strategies grounded in client personas and “jobs to be done”
• Leading scenario-based process improvement sprints to test, iterate, and validate experience innovations across disaster response and casework systems
• Co-authoring the American Red Cross Change Playbook to codify customer-centered governance models, decision frameworks, and implementation protocols for field and national teams
• Developing stakeholder socialization and onboarding tools—including CX principle decks, feedback loops, and internal comms materials—to scale engagement and embed client-centered practices across the organization

• Led a team of 6 contractors to drive organizational design, change management, and human-centered design initiatives, aligning efforts with agency goals and fostering continuous improvement.
• Collaborated with Directors to assess team performance by designing and facilitating workshops, focus groups, and other engagement sessions to provide actionable recommendations and data driven results.
• Developed and executed change management strategies, including communication plans and resistance mitigation tactics, using empathy to guide employees and sponsors through successful change adoption.
• Established and managed a Project Management Office (PMO) to track Executive Order-related actions, streamlining progress monitoring and reporting for directors across the agency to the Principal Assistant Deputy Secretary.
• Applied expertise in customer experience and human-centered design to optimize processes, enhancing service delivery and creating a more user-centric approach within the agency.

• Advised Fiscal Service clients on digital experience best practices including website design, resource creation, and translating CSAT results into an actionable framework and provide staff augmentation support for operations
• Led delivery of 3 stakeholder experience workstreams to provide client with innovative and tactful solutions to engaging with and managing their customers and vendors.
• Utilized Agile Project Management methodologies to lead a team of 8 resources to meet 100% of client expectations on a $2.5M contract with the Dept. of the Treasury.
• Contributed to Guidehouse's revenue generation by leading 4 Business Development initiatives (i.e. RFIs and RFPs) with past performance material for a cumulative award amount of $30M.
• Guided junior practitioners in the firm on Customer Experience and Change Management best practices while serving as a mentor for career growth and development.

• Engaged Government stakeholders by designing, hosting and facilitating 15 experience design sessions related to Federal Financial Management, increasing stakeholder participation by 35%.
• Directed web designers to improve layouts, targeting user adoption and satisfaction, by utilizing Human Centered Design principles, driven by user insights, resulting in a 24% increase in customer satisfaction.
• Monitored and maintained client's digital web presence including design and content edits to website, working as an intermediary between our design team and developers to make updates to sites based on Voice of the Customer feedback.
• Designed and developed 18 digital resources including animated videos using Vyond, customer journey maps in Adobe InDesign, persona diagrams, one-pagers, and more to aid in customer retention, stakeholder understanding and guidance along their customer journey.

• Designed and led a campaign which resulted in 90% buy-in for Future of Work/Return to Office plans among 4000+ employees, cutting change resistance by 37% and achieving the highest intranet engagement.
• Implemented two IT Agile Tribes, boosting project completion by 20% and productivity by 15% through effective stakeholder buy-in and communication strategies.
• Enhanced HR change management with communication plans, leading to a 30% boost in initiative success and 25% fewer issues.
• Created Workplace Analytics dashboard, improving work-life balance by 25% and meeting effectiveness by 19%.
• Facilitated transition of 400+ resources into Agile Tribes, achieving 25% faster time-to-market and $2M in cost savings while optimizing IT processes for a 20% efficiency gain.
• Designed curricula that received a 95% satisfaction rate, fostering a 20% increase in employee engagement through increased learning initiative support.

• Prepared the candidate for over 30 public speaking engagements, resulting in an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 for speaking effectiveness.
• Engaged with >5,000 stakeholders (voters, donors, executive staff, and media) by developing effective communication campaigns utilizing platforms including: face-to-face, email, social media, and phone interactions; resulting in over 2,000 contributions and 100 + endorsement from a diverse range of community stakeholders.
• Created over 100 promotional materials, including 10 video projects, 30 graphics, 20 PowerPoints, and 40 write-ups, resulting in over 1,000+ social media shares.
• Improved internal communication within the campaign by chairing 20 weekly cross-functional status meetings and producing 10 reports and newsletters, resulting in a 30% increase in team collaboration and efficiency.

• Increased candidate's presence within social media by over 200% increasing likes, post follows, comments, reactions and engagements from 50 engagements a day to over 1200 engagements per day.
• Staffed the candidate and liaised with officials from caucuses, parties, interest groups and others to receive over 6 endorsements for the candidate within 2 months.
• Performed routine data analysis over viewing Facebook, Google and Web Analytics trends to create action and resource plans on campaign event successes and future potential.

• Facilitated client inquiries via phone and email, vetting the legal claims of prospective clients by collecting client information and drafting incident summaries within Salesforce to ensure a valued client experience and successful onboarding of new clients for the firm.
• Organized appointments and completed electronic signature processes using DocuSign while informing and updating clients verbally and/or via email on their case status to ensure effective communication and transparency between the firm and the client.
• Resolved problems and managed client's issues to ensure retention and customer satisfaction, by creating a sense of understanding and empathy when handling claims.