The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

The University of Dallas

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

HR Associate Manager, Enterprise Learning and Development at Allstate

Built out back office operations and strategies to grow a startup nonprofit into a sustainable force for disability inclusion and social change.

Invested $20K in a new Learning Management System, including a 2-year hosting and support contract. Successful implementation and migration resulted in a vastly improved end-user experience and increased future course-building capacity and monetization options.

Reduced HRIS expense by 53% while adding additional functionality (performance management, goal tracking, etc.) and increasing overall HR systems capability.

Improved employee experience: increased PTO benefit; added home office and professional development stipends; formalized flexible work schedules.

Created a formal sales and client success function from the ground up, hiring a dedicated resource to focus on streamlining client contact and conduct an early-stage listening tour.

The Nora Project

Chief Operations Officer, Head of Platforms and Technology

My experience developing and facilitating corporate strategy, change management, and leadership engagement sessions and workshops in the corporate sector allows me to utilize my skills as a freelance coach, consultant, and facilitator. I coach clients in the development and fulfillment of strategies aimed at helping them achieve their professional and personal goals and aspirations in order to transform the organizations they lead.

Developed and facilitated a bonding experience for the annual Board of Directors meeting for a Chicago-area nonprofit. I co-developed the agenda for the meeting with the Executive Director of the organization and facilitated the experience for incoming and incumbent board members.

Developed and co-hosted a podcast with author, coach, and master storyteller, Jeff Brunson (www.jeffbrunson.com). The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts and hosted on JeffBrunson.com (www.jeffbrunson.com/speaking/the-work-of-trueness-audio-files/).

Developed and conducted a 2-day retreat for the board of directors of a private school designed to finalize the 5-year strategic plan for the school, including completing the school budget for the next year and signing off on the overall strategic plan. 

Developed and facilitated a 1-day retreat with the incoming President of the Board of Trustees of a private school to introduce new members, introduce the President’s leadership strategy, and strengthen relationships between board members. 

Served as a Seed member of the Chicago + Acumen support chapter for Acumen, a non-profit organization committed to delivering patient capital to entrepreneurs in developing nations. As a core team, we established the initial operating committee, held the group’s first official fundraisers, and conducted membership drives. The group reached the $10,000 goal required to become an officially-recognized chapter.

Illuminate Possibilities

Principal

Served as Program Manager and Product Owner for several learning programs designed to achieve specific strategic objectives, including a program aimed at developing analytics-based leadership skills. A customized version was offered depending on job duties (staff, leadership, bonus-level). Partnered with Product Co-Owner to develop a new version tailored for teams.

Partnered with Instructional Designers to update and rewrite existing learning programs, as well as create new offerings based on specific business area needs.

Conducted research and development on a Continuous Performance Management solution designed to transform the performance process from a traditional, annual model to a continuous, fluid feedback model between leaders and staff.

Allstate

HR Manager, Enterprise Learning and Development

Provided project management, benchmark research and analysis, and consulting in the assessment, development, and implementation of the Employee Value Proposition (EVP), ensuring alignment between corporate objectives and what employees value in the workplace. 

Coached, mentored, and managed the day-to-day work of high-potential participants in the Leadership Development Program, serving as a valued resource even after participants moved on to new developmental rotations.

Developed and implemented a 3-day learning and development program in 2013 that was streamed live and made available to all 35,000+ employees to view on demand. Sessions ranged in theme from understanding the EVP to finding purpose at work to developing a personal brand strategy. 
Following on the success of the initial program, developed and curated a speaker and workshop series covering topics related to career and personal development. The series included internal and external speakers and thought leaders, requiring coordination with local facilities for in-person experiences, multimedia broadcast for live-stream and on-demand, and other departments in the US, Northern Ireland, and India offices to ensure maximum impact of time and money invested. 

Developed, hosted, and produced a 40- episode podcast with 4000+ unique listeners and 13,000+ completions in our LMS.

Developed an internal career management website and developed social media strategies for EVP. Delivery required coordination among HR business areas, application development resources, and other key stakeholders.

HR Lead Consultant, Employee Value Proposition

Led a team of project managers that provided project management support for Security Services and Infrastructure Applications. Outside of day-to-day team leadership, responsibilities included developing and reporting metrics for measuring adoption of newly-introduced concepts to ensure consistent project management practices across the technology PMO, as well as alignment to PMO mandates and standards for the PM practice. 

Developed a PM education plan aimed at addressing the challenges and risks associated with consolidating several PMO organizations into a single, centralized PMO. The end result was a comprehensive curriculum designed to ensure consistency in practice and fundamental skills for all PMO staff and leaders.

Led a team of volunteers composed of key stakeholders and project managers to develop a process and methodology for identifying, developing, and delivering training for the entire PM community.

Sr. Team Leader, Project Management Office

Led a team of 21 project managers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Partnered with counterparts in Northbrook, IL, to improve the overall relationship between PMO teams in US and UK offices. 

Developed a process to document and understand the capabilities of the PM team in Belfast and worked to increase the complexity of assignments given to the team from the US-based PMO. 

Improved transparency into the Belfast PM team's daily operations and, conversely, leveraged relationships with technology leaders in the US to help the PM team in Belfast gain more insight into IT efforts in the United States.

Increased team’s overall service satisfaction rating by our US-based partners. The team's objective was to support and manage projects in the US in a way that made the geographic and time difference insignificant. Together, we built a brand defined by the quality of project management we provided.

Allstate Northern Ireland

Sr. Team Leader, Project Management 

Led a team of network engineers charged with designing and planning the ever-evolving Allstate network infrastructure. Scope of our responsibility included core routing and switching, data center network design, WAN connectivity between data centers and over 100 different edge sites, and both cellular and Wi-Fi data networks. In addition, the team was responsible for network capacity planning, network tool administration, and mobile computing. 

Oversaw the design of a new data center from the ground up, pushing available technology to the limit in an effort to bring to life a “one data center, two locations” vision that allowed data centers in Illinois and Ohio to provide IT services as one data center. 

Oversaw the design of Allstate’s first truly wireless work environment, introduced SSL VPN architecture via the Juniper suite of products, designed and implemented a secondary wireless WAN solution to serve as backup connectivity for our Claims field sites, and migrated all network monitoring and enterprise event management systems onto IBM's NetCool product suite.

Developed and implemented a new core competency for network engineers. Each engineer was accountable for driving research and projects that tied back into our unified Network Roadmap. Each year, we completed significant projects that challenged vendors and their products to deliver innovative services without increasing overall network spend by reducing expenses and reinvesting savings and credits in new technologies.

Sr. Team Leader, Network Design and Planning

Led a team of project managers dedicated to supporting Protection Technology and Agency Sales. Outside of day-to-day team leadership, lead the effort to launch a project management office (PMO) dedicated to IT infrastructure projects. This included forming a new work intake team to manage workflow into the IT infrastructure area, as well as coordinating our area's implementation of Allstate's first project management system. 

Integrated core concepts and practices from the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), the CobIT project management methods, and ITIL library into the daily operations of the PMO. 

Participated as a member of a core team responsible for the development, implementation, and management of an “Account Team” model designed to provide business areas with a central point of contact for all IT infrastructure-related projects, issues, and escalations. The core team remained in place through proof-of-concept and into pilot. The effort transformed the way IT interacted with the business.

Team Leader, IT Client Services

Responsible for process governance of ITIL Incident and Problem Management across various service repair teams in the Irving, Hudson, and Northbrook data centers. 

Lead the Windows repair team and helped develop a NetBackup operations team.

Led a team dedicated to the implementation and administration of Allstate’s ITIL service management system. Responsibilities included process governance of our enterprise NetBackup repair team, serving as liaison with enterprise storage administrators and engineers across 3 field locations and Home Office, and establishing and documenting processes based on internal and industry best practices. 

Led cross-platform support efforts within the Windows, UNIX, AS/400, and OS390 platforms, accountable for adherence to Sarbanes-Oxley audit requirements as these apply to CobiT technology controls associated with repair and service restoration within the Windows server and NetBackup spaces. 

Served as the Data Center Operations representative on enterprise-level Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, and Service Level Management virtual teams.

Team Leader and Project Manager, IT Operations

Led the merger of server, network, and client computing operations during Data Center consolidation. 

Led three distinct Level-3 support teams in the network hardware, Windows server administration and repair spaces, as well as three distinct Level-2 support teams in the client computing space, and created workload measurements within each area, as well as lead process refinement initiatives. 

Managed division budgets including performance bonuses, recognition, and travel, as well as managed server, network infrastructure, and other data center hardware expenses. 

Participated in a core team responsible for the development, implementation, and management of enterprise-wide Service Restoration, Incident Management, and Problem Management processes based on the ITIL Framework. 

Developed and implemented web-based tools, including the creation of a network infrastructure and Windows server database, an enterprise-wide Microsoft SharePoint documentation repository, and an incident management dashboard. 

Led numerous IT projects that included: migrating over 100 edge offices from Novel to Windows NT; migrating operational work out of engineering and into ops support teams; and rolling out a structured Change Management coordination team.

Team Leader, Network Center of Excellence

Lead four distinct Level-2 help desk teams supporting IBM AS/400 OS and hardware, Windows OS and applications, various OS390 applications and user interfaces, and troubleshooting and repair of desktop, laptop, and printer hardware. 

Established benchmarks for individual and team performance, including ticket volume reports, adherence to metrics, and adherence to quality standards. 

Acted as liaison with support groups that performed analogous functions in Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas Data Centers, helping to steer the enterprise from a decentralized to a centralized technical support system. 

Participated in numerous process refinement efforts throughout my tenure including the creation of an on-line documentation repository, the creation of a ticket traffic management unit, and a functional and organizational redesign of all level 2 teams incorporating level 1 and level 2 daily activities and accountabilities.

Ricardo Gonzalez