Todd Rusher
North Royalton,Ohio
Summary
IT professional with 15 years of experience leading IT teams and driving transformative change in health insurance, benefit administration, and banking sectors. Expertise in collaborating with business stakeholders to enhance team performance and meet customer service targets. Strong leadership skills complemented by effective communication, planning, and organizational abilities, focused on optimizing processes and increasing productivity.
Overview
25
25
years of professional experience
Work History
Manager, IT Infrastructure (Mainframe, Midrange)
Medical Mutual of Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
04.2025 - Current
- Led operational teams for mainframe and mid-range systems, achieving 99.99% uptime.
- Negotiated staffing agreements, reducing costs for support staff.
- Drove projects that decreased disaster recovery time by 66%.
- Transitioned disaster recovery testing to an in-house solution, enhancing availability and lowering costs.
- Implemented capacity-on-demand mainframe hardware for disaster recovery at Chicago data center.
- Collaborated with Database Administration to deploy new backup and restoration tools.
- Updated disaster recovery and data retention documentation to ensure compliance.
- Coached team members to enhance job performance and cover additional roles.
Director, IT Infrastructure
Medical Mutual of Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
12.2022 - 04.2025
- Partnered with other IT leaders to create a multi-year IT infrastructure transformation, including the replacement of legacy telephony, introduction of Site Reliability Engineering, and DevOps practices.
- Directed daily operations related to computer networks, telecom systems, printing, and mail delivery.
- Responsible for the maintenance and support of distributed (IBM i, Linux, Windows) and IBM z mainframe systems.
- Implemented Five9 cloud-based contact center platform to replace outdated legacy technologies.
- Outsourced print and mail operations, generating over $12 million in savings from 2023 to 2025.
- Developed strategy for enhanced disaster recovery capabilities.
- Coordinated integration of three acquisitions into the Medical Mutual network and telecom infrastructure, ensuring seamless IT migration.
- Managed relationships between Medical Mutual and its data center vendors (Ark and Equinix).
- Collaborated with senior leadership to set long-term objectives for the company.
- Created detailed operating plan budgets, based on project timelines, goals, staffing needs, and other requirements.
- Tracked actual expenses and compared them with the projected spend to identify areas of future cost reduction.
- Identified opportunities for improvement in operational performance metrics.
- Established and leveraged relationships to negotiate favorable agreements with external partners (vendors, contractors, and consultants) and internal team members.
Manager, IT Infrastructure – Network & Telecom
Medical Mutual of Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
02.2018 - 12.2022
- Successfully completed data center migration of all production applications with zero downtime.
- Integrated Superior Dental Care into Medical Mutual’s core systems efficiently.
- Modernized network infrastructure to achieve redundant links with high speed and low latency.
- Upgraded telephony infrastructure across all facilities, ensuring scalability without downtime.
- Coordinated installation of network and telecom technology at over 10 new office locations.
- Decommissioned four office facilities and three data center sites within a six-week period (Feb-Mar 2020).
- Expanded VPN capacity for 1,200 in-office employees to enable remote work.
IT Security Specialist – Project Manager
Medical Mutual of Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
08.2015 - 02.2018
- Partnered with Legal Department to create the company's first cyber incident response plan and playbook.
- Coordinated risk assessments and ethical hacking tests to identify system vulnerabilities.
- Coordinated project approval meetings to ensure compliance with governance processes.
- Redesigned security reports to align with NIST standards.
- Facilitated preparation of comprehensive monthly security management reports, including executive summary and risk dashboard.
- Led the project to implement NetScaler web application firewall (WAF) policies for all external websites.
- Managed data loss prevention controls using Symantec Data Loss Prevention software.
Manager, Software Quality Assurance
Mercer / Innovative Process Administration
Brecksville, Ohio
06.2008 - 07.2015
- Managed over 70 releases for Auto-Bene benefit enrollment platform, including 24 major updates and 50 minor revisions.
- Established software testing Quality Assurance (QA) department to enhance development processes.
- Expanded QA team from four to 15 full-time members, including co-located and offshore staff.
- Developed formal software development methodology to standardize practices across teams.
- Implemented SSAE-16 compliant processes for Engineering and QA departments.
- Introduced automation in testing with HP Quick Test Professional and Selenium for efficiency.
- Automated generation of depersonalized test data to improve testing accuracy.
- Trained staff on software QA principles and project management best practices.
Business Systems Analyst /IT Project Manager
National City Corporation (now PNC Bank)
Strongsville, Ohio
07.2003 - 06.2008
Software Developer & Corporate Trainer
FNIS Empower / Eastern Software Corporation
Sharon, Pennsylvania
04.2001 - 07.2003
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
University of Mount Union
Alliance, Ohio05.2001
Skills
- Strategic planning
- Team leadership
- Cross-functional team management
- IT project management
- Risk management
- Disaster recovery
- Incident response planning
- Mainframe systems
- Network infrastructure
- Cybersecurity protocols
- Software testing
- Process optimization
- Cost reduction strategies
References
References available upon request.
Timeline
Manager, IT Infrastructure (Mainframe, Midrange)
Medical Mutual of Ohio
04.2025 - Current
Director, IT Infrastructure
Medical Mutual of Ohio
12.2022 - 04.2025
Manager, IT Infrastructure – Network & Telecom
Medical Mutual of Ohio
02.2018 - 12.2022
IT Security Specialist – Project Manager
Medical Mutual of Ohio
08.2015 - 02.2018
Manager, Software Quality Assurance
Mercer / Innovative Process Administration
06.2008 - 07.2015
Business Systems Analyst /IT Project Manager
National City Corporation (now PNC Bank)
07.2003 - 06.2008
Software Developer & Corporate Trainer
FNIS Empower / Eastern Software Corporation
04.2001 - 07.2003
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
University of Mount Union