Louise Grubbs Crooks

• Technical Product Manager for the award-winning, self-service cloud data platform

• Defined feature capabilities and acceptance criteria for large scale upgrades and innovations, partnered with business leaders and technical managers to define roadmap, and collaborated with delivery teams for successful feature releases, responsible for customer adoption, risk and compliance review, build vs buy

• Specialized in features that leveraged data virtualization and federation, topics of metadata management and consistent integration patterns, including documentation of APIs as frameworks, and advising architects

• Served as business owner of the data catalog – the single source of truth for what data was on the platform, when and why, and liaison to the Chief Data Office on matters of data governance and metadata modeling

• Active as career mentor and coach, in Women in Technology (WIT) group, and served in several roles recruiting and developing technical team talent

• Special projects including cloud cost optimization and adoption of Scaled Agile Framework

Data Architecture and Machine Learning

• Established company’s first technology roadmap for AI and ML, prioritized and sequenced with business objectives

• Led construction of first cloud data solution that produced insights that reduced out-of-stock conditions, improving customer experience and increasing revenue

• Sponsored new Data Analytics Community of Practice -- individuals in data analysis roles in various business units collaborating on business insights, sharing tricks of the trade, and articulating common data and software needs

• Created a new team focused on machine learning and the evolution of enterprise data architecture to support it, specifically envisioning the transition to a cloud data platform

• Optimized processes for agile delivery, data and model pipeline automation, source control, feature engineering best practices, machine learning model development life cycle, and insight review through storytelling

• Launched Data Science internship program to fill the pipeline of skilled candidates for future data analytics positions

Technologies included Google Cloud Platform BigQuery, MongoDB, Python, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, Alteryx, Microsoft SQL Server

Advanced Analytics and Information Management

• Compiled the company's first Enterprise Data Model with detailed subject area for Customer data, which was incorporated into risk and security reviews as well as into onboarding for new marketing data analysts

• Introduced release management, putting all data warehouse and BI changes on a cadence, improving infrastructure teams' visibility into what was coming, reducing deployment mistakes, and when combined with release notes, led to greater recognition of teams' accomplishments and business value

• Defined architectural patterns and reference architectures for data warehousing including data ingestion, retention and archival, restartability, logging, schema versioning and API contracts, and access control

• Started data quality initiative, delivering dashboards, monitoring tools, sanity checks, defined data quality rules, benchmarks and KPIs for enterprise data

• Completed several important expansions of EDW using collaborative cross-functional teams, purpose-built for each project, utilizing prototyping and hyper-iterative development

Technologies included Microsoft SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS, Power BI, ESP scheduler, ER Studio

Data Services and Mainframe Systems

• Led transformation from department data mindset to enterprise data, liberating data from siloes, and driving for its full utilization to enable more informed decision making and improved business performance, through the creation of the Enterprise Data Warehouse

• Worked with CIO to define company’s data strategy, recognizing data as an asset and establishing the vision for data and analytics

• Developed and maintained technology roadmap for Enterprise Data Warehouse initiatives and technical debt reduction, using data quality measurements, SLAs and TCO to influence prioritization, demonstrating data-driven decision making

• Delivered company’s customer master data solution -- an application ecosystem that conformed, cleansed, merged, masterized, summarized, and segmented all customer information and offered a single 360-degree view of the customer for personalized marketing and customer-centric merchandising, and was recognized with the ‘True Grit’ award at the end of this 18-month project in April 2016

• Recognized at field leadership summit in March 2014 for delivering upgrades to company sales dashboard that seamlessly combined Online and In-store results that aided in the company's cultural transformation to a true omni-channel retailer

• Honored at field leadership summit in August 2014 for teamwork on Store Labor model project that resulted in 7% reduction in cost of the company's largest single expense, store payroll

Technologies included Microsoft SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, ESP scheduler

Business Analytics

• Rebuilt company’s sales dashboards using an application architecture which reduced costs of making changes to KPIs, targets, and other measures while expanding variety of dashboards offering actionable insights for store and field leadership

• Refined incident reporting, ensuring all stakeholders were aware of data systems issues and impacts in a timely manner, increasing transparency and, thereby, trust in reporting

• Completed report automation project to bring all key business reports under IT governance

• Delivered Master Data Hub, which hosted critical reference and master data in a centralized location, greatly reducing costs of data integration projects, as proved on new e-Commerce and POS projects, virtually eliminating the need for reworking existing integrations when master data sources changed or were replaced

• Accompanied the Master Data Hub release with processes for business approval for data model changes, identifying and gaining the confidence of data stewards, laying the groundwork for future data governance committee

Technologies included Microsoft SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, Essbase, Datastage, ESP scheduler

Business Analytics

• Built shift tracker tool that gave store leaders real-time insight into store performance compared to targets, allowing them to make small adjustments that led to better overall business outcomes

• Created a tool for merchandise marketers to select products to feature and promote in-store and online events, projecting how the product would perform based on historical patterns, improving performance of promotions

• Replatformed Store Payroll Tracking system, increasing data accessibility that led to actionable insights used to reduce costs

• Founded a SQL Server user group within the company that both improved the knowledge sharing among teams, and lead to the increased usage of SQL Server, SSIS and SSRS

• Shared key learnings about scheduling SSIS with internal user group, and in SQL Saturday Presentation, "Let's Get This Started: SSIS Package Execution" on May 22, 2010

Technologies included Microsoft SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, ASP.net, C#, Excel VBA

• Introduced data warehousing and automated reporting to client, bridging gaps between sales, manufacturing and accounting

• Designed and built an inventory system for manufacturing and purchasing, including reporting for material requirements planning, gross profit margins and costs of goods sold

• Advised business and technical staff on selection of commercial off-the-shelf ERP system, while documenting current systems and writing business cases and requirements for vendor

Contracted through Inwood Technologies, LLC, of which I was managing member

• Transformed call center operations through re-envisioned CRM tool that decreased call time and increased customer satisfaction leading to additional business

• Worked closely with each call center team lead to identify pain points in existing CRM application and synthesized into new UI

• Designed and developed full package of reports to measure impact of call center from multiple angles, and migrated existing reports to new platform

• Developed ETL processes for secure, scalable and efficient data exchange with clients, including Fortune 50 companies

• Architected and configured server environment, including Windows Server 2003 Cluster for SQL Server, fibre channel SAN, NLB web farm for websites and web services, staging servers for both database and applications, and disaster recovery for all system aspects

Contracted through Inwood Technologies, LLC, of which I was managing member

• Managed team of staff developers and outside consultants delivering all web development for 100+ client websites

• Documented best practices for testing, standards for coding, strategy and migration path from ASP to ASP.Net for 30+ websites

• Improved client satisfaction through load balancing through configuration of a web server farm

• Designed set of operational dashboards for inbound call center

• Launched new member campaign through email marketing with seamless and secure data integration from email to web using encryption and SSL

• Built shopping cart components, including credit card and ACH drafting

• Developed a major portal site for various online forms used by financial institutions

• Develop database for tracking faculty, students and members of the Center

• Converted web site from HTML to PHP

• Authored multiple sections of Title VI Department of Education three-year grant proposal

• Developed database with special security and encryption requirements, data scripts for state and federal government extracts and transfers

• Held key responsibility in securing and completing a National Science Foundation grant entitled "Assessing an Untapped Supply of Information Technology Workers: Adult Women and Underrepresented Minorities"

• Developed survey to address retention and persistence in adult technology programs

• Led web and database development to collect the survey data

• Provided statistical data analysis and summary reporting

• Programmed optical scanner database integration for rapid input of survey results

• Converted key faculty and student surveys and exams from paper to online forms using ASP, eliminating expensive scanning process and making results immediately available to researchers in customizable reports

• Managed conversion of survey databases from Access to SQL 2000

• Designed new intranet for Academic Affairs, including dashboarding of operational performance results for field leadership

• Coordinated data mining of student and faculty end-of-course surveys for actionable insights that were presented quarterly to leadership and included not only quantitative results but also sentiment scores extracted from text analysis

• Used GIS and census data to optimize the placement of new campuses

• Conducted major accreditation review preparation, data analysis, and presentation

• Developed database for cataloging archaeological artifacts from KV5 tomb, excavation led by Ken Weeks

• Developed web pages for Southern Consortium of Colleges Classics departments

• Developed database for cataloging slide library