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Deborah R Ballard |
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Professional experience |
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Profile |
Debbie
Ballard is an IT Architect in Business Analytics and Systems in
the Smarter Solutions Practice. |
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Employer History |
02/1999 - To date IBM Global Services, United States of America Sr IT Architect
Consulted
for Clients, established requirements, and planned solutions. Led
engagements, including Project Management, coordinated of IBM,
Client, and 3rd party resources.
09/1997 - 02/1999 Prudential Insurance, United States of America IT Architect & Technology Evangelist Corporate Information Technology division in support of all other divisions including Banking, Securities, Real Estate, Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Mutual Funds, and Compliance Management. Introduced new technologies including CORBA, DCOM, Linux, ActiveX, Java Beans, and RMI. Was accountable for overall connectivity of 100,000 workstations, several thousand servers. Wrote proposals, reviews, participated in standards committees, and made presentations to committees and management. Identified and implemented emerging technologies, evaluation of vendor proposals, architectural analysis of proposals. Cost/Benefit analysis (ROI, ROE, TCO, Risk Analysis), including identification of competing technologies. Provide both tactical and strategic recommendations and guide their implementation.
01/1997 - 09/1997 Large Consulting Firm - National Practice IT Architect and Consultant Member of the Center for Systems Architecture. Performance Engineering team on a series of benchmarking and performance enhancement assignments. Houston, San Francisco, Rochester New York, Boston, and New Jersey. Led team for performance tuning of Web Servers for E-Commerce, Switching Systems for PDA/data collection systems, and Financial Services functions. Assignments range from 2-8 weeks in duration. Developed tools and sales-kits to support promoting the practice.
05/1995 - 11/1996 Major Publisher, Financial Wire Services Director of Electronic Distribution Led using hands-on project management and overall responsibility for distribution of all electronic products. Products included MarketScope, Stock Reports, feeds to numerous wire services and custom databases. Wrote specifications and utilities for these functions. Trained operations team in Internet technologies, including security, routing, and operations. Coordinated efforts with Clients and Vendors. Initiated Transition to Internet and World Wide Web. Coached other divisions in Internet adoption. Trained Network Administrators for transition from DECNet and BSC-3270 to TCP/IP and T1 Frame Relay
01/1993 - 05/1995 Dow Jones Information Services, United States of America Alliance Developer Program Manager
Responsible
for developing new distribution strategies including; Publish and
Subscribe news feeds. Mainstream Satellite and FM distribution.
CD-ROM distribution. X.25 multicast news feeds. Led the effort to
put the first national brand publisher on the Internet. Introduced
Web to management and staff. Provide support for new product
development. Eventually managed 25 concurrent projects. Introduced
Winsock, Trumpet (Winsock Implementation), Cello, Mosaic, and
Netscape.
11/1991 - 12/1992 Consulting for IBM Boulder, Softtronics, IBM Kingston, United States of America Unix, X11, and Internet Consultant Consulted for IBM and other client companies on projects focused on the commercialization of Open Systems and Open Source technology including the Internet. Projects included development of Remote Procedure Calls and multi-platform hierarchical storage management, adoption of Open Source Software and Software Reuse Strategies by IBM, and implementation of X11/R4 on IBM ESA Mainframes (groundwork for OS/390). Led development of “Internet For the Rest Of Us” package, including discussions, which led to Lynx, Opera, and Cello HTML browsers (predecessors of Mosaic and Netscape).
02/1990 - 11/1992 Great West Life Assurance Company, United States of America Senior Technical Specialist / IT Architect Responsible for technical infrastructure and architecture of 5 divisions, 100 Sun Workstations and Windows Personal Computers, 50 UNIX servers and 5 mainframes. Lead Development of system integration facilities. Recommended, Promoted, and Established Enterprise IT Standards.
11/1987 - 12/1989 Federal Express aka FEDEX, United States of America Senior Programmer Analyst
Led
the effort to make the “SuperTracker” (predecessor to PDAs)
reliable and fault tolerant. Helped to design and implement
strategic information systems that made it possible to predict and
manage resource allocation in real-time (predecessor to Supply
Chain Management). Contributions to my teams ultimately led to
savings of $2 million/day. Led comprehensive evaluation of LAN/WAN
strategies to integrate Mainframes, Minicomputer Servers,
Workstations, and Personal Computers. Team efforts led to Malcolm
Baldridge award.
07/1982 - 11/1987 Computer Concoles Inc (now Northern Telecom), United States of America Senior Software Engineer Performed analysis, design, implementation, testing, support, and integration of directory assistance systems on proprietary systems based on IMS and on Open Systems based on UNIX and Intranet technology. Developed databases, operating systems, and applications for clusters of distributed processing systems of up to 1000 CPUs in fault tolerant (99.997% uptime) configurations. This work led to many of the standards now used on the Internet and Intranet. Part of a “special forces” unit dedicated to quickly resolving breakdowns resulting from capacities that doubled every 6 months.
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Assignment History |
01/2015 - To date 6 months EY (fka Ernst & Young) ATM PE/RE Tax Space
Project
Description: As an Infrastructure Architect, Debbie was
responsible for identifying the technical and non-functional
requirements for the project and work with the IBM Cloud Services
organizations to design and implement a solution that would enable
a quick entry at a lower cost, with the ability to scale to
roughly 100 times the load and performance over the next 5
years.
04/2014 - 12/2014 9 months Oncor Electric Delivery Mainframe Migration Program - BPM Integration
Project
Description: Oncor wanted to replace their legacy mainframe
application with CC&B, IBM Business Process Manager Advanced
Edition, Sterling Business Integrator, and Operational Decision
Manager.
10/2013 - 03/2014 6 months PECO Meter Failure Analysis and Repair Tracking
Project
Description: Lead Architect and technical lead for BPM
project. The primary goals of this project were to create a
business process that could be used to automate a complex process
for reviewing leads that indicated possible meter failures, to
help determine cause and remediation. In addition, the process
would reduce the workload by automating the identification of
false positives and duplicate leads.
01/2013 - 09/2013 9 months State Farm Insurance Legacy Migration of Customer Support Systems
Project
Description: Objective was to develop a plan to implement
roughly 44 integrations between the STG product and the various
Enterprise Data Centers (DCs).
11/2012 - 01/2013 3 months Major Soft Drink Distributor Bid & Proposal - Legacy PICK/U2 Migration
Project
Description: Bid and Proposal work - assess RMS application,
implemented on PICK/U2/Universe, as well as current integrations
to.NET, and identify ways to improve performance, stability, and
better integration.
08/2012 - 10/2012 3 months LL Bean Sr Integration Consultant Project Description: Provide documentation for staff and processes for an Integration Center of Excellence which included integration based on messages and services (WebSphere Message Broker) and governance (Web Services Registry and Repository) as well as ETL based integration using InfoSphere Information Server (IIS). Also worked with team and client to support implementation of the WebSphere Message Broker Accelerator pack provided by GBS.
02/2012 - 08/2012 7 months Fannie Mae Business Process Management & Integration
Project
Description: Technical Lead and Lead Architect for multiple
projects based on WebSphere Lombardi Edition BPM solutions,
including integration with other back-end systems and services.
Provided technical leadership as well as some project management
functions including work breakdown, sprint backlog, scrum lists,
and functioning as scrum master for both projects.
05/2011 - 02/2012 10 months New York Life BPM for WebSphere Portal OBA
Project
Description: Lead initial BPM effort at New York Life Service
Portal project. Led effort to integrate WebSphere Lombardi Edition
with WebSphere portal within the New York Life Enterprise Security
Infrastructure. This included several overlapping Agile projects
using Lombardi Methodology with support for Methodology used by
Portal. This included both inbound and outbound web services
interfaces as well as other integration interfaces.
03/2011 - 05/2011 3 months IBM Procurement Systems
Project
Description: rovide a solution for integrating IBM’s
procurement systems, including integration with front-end user
interfaces, IBM data warehouses, and SAP systems.
01/2011 - 03/2011 3 months Garden and Tractor Equipment Manufacturer Business Rules Proposals
Project
Description: Review client requirements, as well as future
plans and “Wish Lists” in terms of business rules and asses
the ability of JRules, in combination with WebSphere Commerce
Server, to help meet these special business rule
requirements.
12/2010 - 01/2011 2 months Walmart Managed Web Services
Project
Description: Help Walmart and IBM team integrate external
Walmart managed Web Services and other legacy services into the
Lombardi Business Process Management system.
07/2010 - 11/2010 5 months Bid & Proposal Solutions Bid & Proposals
Project
Description: Participated on Bid and Proposal Solutions
for
03/2010 - 06/2010 4 months NJ Courts PDT Integration Project Description: Create integration between hand-held PDT devices and IBM mainframes using Messasge Broker and Lotus Expiditer MQTT transport. This allowed reliable messaging from the PDT to the administration database, as well as the ability to search the mainframe for outstanding warrants, and the ability to send out alerts for such things as stolen vehicles.
09/2009 - 03/2010 7 months QVC Cable Network & Web Sales QVC Order Commerce Server Portal
Project
Description: Responsible for configuring high performance
clusters, message queues, WebSphere Message Broker, and back-end
interfaces to support high availability and high reliability using
MQ Clusters and HACMP Fail-over capabilities.
06/2009 - 08/2009 3 months Various Clients Bib & Proposals Project Description: Evaluated RFP and RFQ requests and worked with IBM teams to provide solution design and pricing, especially for the integration portion of the design. Solutions included solutions based on WebSphere Process Server, FileNet, and JRules, with Integrations to SAP
03/2009 - 04/2009 2 months Federal Reserve Bank Cash Processing modernization
Project
Description: Analyzed the viability of the Standard Cash
Application and related cash applications. Identified the risks
and provided mitigation strategies. Provided plans that would
extend of the viability to 2014 if necessary.
01/2009 - 03/2009 3 months Moodys Financial Services Report Distribution Integration
Project
Description: Moodys wanted to provide web services to their
clients and manage who had obtained which services, and be able to
notify those clients when a rating had changed.
11/2008 - 12/2008 2 months Ericsson WebSphere Process Management & Integration
Project
Description: Ericsson wanted to create a Next Generation
Information System (NGIS) based on SOA, SOMA, and Virtualization,
to replace their existing integration solution. This included a
transition from SeeBeyond to WebSphere, including Message Broker,
Enterprise Service Bus, Process Server and Services Repository and
Registry.
06/2008 - 11/2008 6 months Al Inma Bank Banking System Financial IT Architecture
Project
Description: Provide leadership in developing architecture and
infrastructure for a large banking system, including integration
of solutions provided by several vendors providing industry
specific solutions such as regulatory compliance, integration with
ATM and Credit Card vendor networks, and exchanges (SWIFT, SAMA,
SARIE, and FOREX).
01/2008 - 06/2008 6 months General Motors -
Project
Description: Designed and coordinated efforts to create and
integrate a lead management system which helped capture leads from
dealers, and manage those leads, and allocate incentives based on
delivery. The goal was to turn more of the “Be Back” shoopers
who might buy a different makers product, into a buying customer.
This included leads generated via the Web, other Web vendors,
dealerships, and the corporate call center.
10/2007 - 01/2008 4 months California Department of Corrections Bid & Proposals
Project
Description: Coordinate with multiple vendors on the
implementation of an SOA based solution to help coordinate and
monitor health care in jails, prisons, and other correctional
facilities.
09/2007 - 10/2007 2 months National Australia Bank NAB Farm Mortgage Processing
Project
Description: Review business requirements, formulate
architecture, document architecural choices, price reccomended
architecture and alternate solutions.
08/2007 - 09/2007 2 months Federal Reserve Bank -
Project
Description: Project Description: Bid and Proposal for
Architectural Review of BCS-3000 currency counting system, and
it’s interfaces to the rest of the bank’s auditing and control
systems.
03/2006 - 07/2007 17 months ViewPointe Check Image Exchange ViewPoint Check Image Exchange Project Description: Primary responsibility as Lead architect to create high performance archive using clusters of databases to achieves 7,000 transaction per second performance on a 1 petabyte archive used to exchange check images between banks in compliance with Check21 regulations. Architecture included integration with established Information On-Demand Database/Tape archive libraries to access long term storage. Access included interactive access via WebSphere on Linux and bulk access using C++ Objects on AIX.
09/2005 - 03/2006 7 months SunTrust B2B Audit and Enhancement Proposals Project Description: Primary Responsibility was to audit the current B2B architecture, identify the available documentation, and organize it and summarize it in a manner that would allow an offshore team to quickly identify the application, identify errors and issues, and contact the appropriate support teams. Systems included in the audit included MQSeries, DB2, WebSphere, WebSphere Business Integrator, and Infrastructure including networks, server configuration, and SAN configuration.
11/2004 - 09/2005 11 months Missouri Department of Transportation Identity Management and SSO Project Description: Primary Responsible for implementation of Portal security based on IBM Tivoli Directory Server, Access Manager, Identity Manager, and Directory Integrator. Provided support for MQSeries, DBA, AIX and Windows administration, provided accelerator tools to facilitate highly effective coordination between teams and team members, and provided mentoring in MQ, WebSphere, Portal, and LDAP for various team members. Project included coordination between multiple agency departments, multiple vendors, and multiple subcontractors.
07/2004 - 11/2004 5 months Bloomberg Financial Services - Project Description: Primary responsibility was to train and support a team of developers creating a business oriented clustered solution for providing time-sensitive information to users and supporting reliable interactive support. This included support of the Portal Team, training and supporting teams to use MQSeries in multiplatform environment which included C, C++, Java, Solaris, Linux, Windows, and proprietary systems. Messaging systems were based on MQ including JMS and MQ-Base, along with XML parsers based on SAX2. This included distributed and coordinated updates of multiple distributed XA and direct (non-XA) systems.
03/2004 - 08/2004 6 months US Federal Government Agency Intelligence
Project
Description: Details are Top Secret - generally:
08/2003 - 03/2004 8 months Zurich North America P&C Claim Management & Integration Project Description: Manage and coordinate the establishment of large-scale real-time offshore connectivity solutions. This includes providing teams in Bangalore India with the ability to interactively develop and test on Client development and target systems. This included development tools for WMQ, WMQI, DB2, and interactive shell access as well as interactive access to mainframe development systems. Due to the demands of both environments, the solution required detailed attention to security, network connectivity, availability, automated recovery, and minimal operator intervention. Costs also had to be kept to a minimum to maximize the benefits of offshore development and testing.
07/2001 - 08/2003 26 months IBM BTCIO Business to Business Integration
Project
Description: Provided complete architectural review of a
Business to Business solution, focusing primarily on the gateway
technologies between the manufacturer and various client
companies, provided recommendations for implementation, platforms,
security, performance, and availability as well as enhanced remote
administration and diagnostic capabilities to minimize travel
requirements. Led implementation efforts and trained developers,
client operators and administrators in technologies. Solution
included MQSeries, SecureWay, LDAP, MQSI, Websphere, Partner
Agreement Manager, Tivoli, DB2, and administration servers.
Platforms included Windows NT, Windows 2000, AIX, and OS/390.
Coordinated the efforts of up to 100 people in various locations
including UK, NC, CT, CA, CO, Canada, and India.
04/2001 - 06/2001 3 months Banorte Integration Strategy Project Description: Review IT Architecture projects within the bank. Formulate an Integration strategy formulate a proposal.
02/2001 - 04/2001 3 months Amica Insurance Enterprise Integration Project Description: Provided complete architectural review of several divisions and formulate an architecture to integrate the various divisions using combinations of MQSeries, MSQI, with some DCOM or CORBA to enable superior transactional integrity. Developed integration solutions and led performance enhancement efforts.
05/2000 - 12/2000 8 months MetLife MQSI Enterprise Integration Project Description: Provided architectural design for implementation of integration between Client Company and financial information provider. Solution involved a combination of CICS, CORBA, XML and MQSeries using Java RMI/IIOP, SAX, and DOM. Led the implementation of the solution and integration into the client enterprise environments. Coordinated with teams in NYC, Colorado, and Florida.
01/2000 - 04/2000 4 months Quest Communications IMS Legacy Integration Project Description: Provided architectural review and proposal for integration of Telephone company systems including IMS and UNIX systems to an external web or MQSeries based interface for Pressler Act Compliance allowing other carriers to offer combined services.
06/1999 - 12/1999 7 months Alaska Communications Company Pressler Act Service Integration Project Description: Provide complete architectural review of the customer service infrastructure and design architecture for providing secure integration of the two companies to comply with the Pressler Act. This allowed the both companies to sell both cable and phone service, and to request service from the other company without giving away marketing information. Used primarily MQSeries, C, Visual Basic, COBOL, and C++ including templates and tools from IBM including support packs and Intellectual Capital structured for reuse. Led the Implementation team including both IBM and Client resources. Trained client staff in operations, diagnostics, technical support, and security procedures.
04/1999 - 07/1999 4 months CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield Architecture Review - HIPPA Project Description: Provide complete architectural review of health insurance, provide recommendations for integration and HIPPA compliance based on preliminary specifications based on MQSI. Implemented proof of concept and framework for implementation by IGS team.
02/1999 - 05/1999 4 months AT&T Wireless Enterprise Architecture Review Project Description: Provide complete architectural review of supply chain including network, infrastructure, platforms, security, and middleware as well as applications. Formulate a recommendation for architectural enhancements, and a budget and schedule for implementation. Recommendation was accepted and successfully implemented by an IGS team. Tools used included MS-Office, Structured Interviewing, GS-Method tools, MQSeries, Windows NT, UNIX, PICK. Met with teams in Minniapolis MN, Seattle WA, Oklahoma City OK, and Dallas TX.
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Key Skills |
Debbie
has most recently been doing work in Smarter Solutions,
including |
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Key Courses and Training |
Debbie
has taken formal corporate courses in Project Management,
Engagement Management, IT Architectures, Design methodologies, and
numerous IT development products. Training in Unix, Database,
Network, Windows, and mainframe, including programming,
administration, and architecture. |
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Education |
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Qualifications |
SELP, ILP, TMLP-I, TMLP-2, Wisdom Program in Leadership Training
Landmark Education Corporation, United States of America, 2011
Thesis Title: CEUs (200 CEUs) in Leadership Training Landmark Education, US - Community to Global leadership., 2011
Certified in Certified Master Architect
Object Managment Group, United States of America, 2001
Bachelors in Business, Performing Arts Management
Regis University fka Loretto Heights College, United States of America, 1978
IBM Certified Architect in Architect Certification
IBM, United States of America, 2001
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Languages |
English Fluent
Spanish Good
French Basic
Arabic Basic
Hindi Basic
German Basic
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Other relevant information |
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Publications |
Debbie Lawrence (aka Rex Ballard aka Debbie Ballard): Debbie’s Secret Life - Living in Stealth as LGBT, in: Book, Amazon Publishing, 2011
as Rex Ballard: 8000 articles on commercialization of Linux and Open Source Software, in: Comp.os.linux.advocacy, comp.os.linux.*, Usenet News, Google Groups, 1996
Rex Ballard: Blogs and Internet/web history, in: open4success.org, Web Site, 1996
as Rex Ballard: 7,000 articles on Internet Commercialization, in: Online Newpapers Mailing List, Online News Mailing List, E-mail - invitation only list of 8,000 publishers, 1992
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Membership in professional organizations |
International Executive Guild
member
IEEE
member
American Registry of Outstanding Professionals
member
Madison Who’s Who
IT Professional of The year
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Other job-related activities |
Ham Radio Operator since 1968 (WA0WMY)
Sponsor and Speaker in 12 Step program - 34 years
Legal
Name & Gender Change May 2014
Speaker and Blogger - Transgender Support Groups
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Date: 4-Jun-2015
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Resource Manager: Laura Roden