Karen Sickels

Promoted to Senior Lead based on my performance delivering stellar results and willingness to embrace challenges. As a key member of Operations Shared Services, partnered with teams across the business to develop and implement improved processes, procedures, and technological enhancements to drive efficiency and improve customer experience.
• Virtually facilitated the Customer Interactions improvement project with a cross-functional team of experts, diligently mapping customer interactions from registration to post-administration. Identified pain points, bottlenecks, and improvement opportunities, leading to actionable insights that significantly enhanced the customer journey for a key product.
• Led comprehensive process analysis sessions for global product operations and security teams, identifying improvement opportunities and supporting solution development. This initiative resulted in a 75% reduction in customer security hold cycle time.
• Actively monitored incident management dashboards and delivered key performance indicator (KPI) and process metric insights to leadership, driving informed decision-making.
• Managed a project to streamline the Headcount Request process using MS Power Apps with automated workflows and conditional prompts, enhancing business justification clarity and improving overall efficiency for internal customers.

Virtually facilitated the Customer Interactions improvement project with a cross-functional team of experts, mapping customer interactions and identifying improvement opportunities.
Led comprehensive process analysis sessions for global product operations and security teams.
Monitored incident management dashboards and delivered KPI and process metric insights.
Managed a project to streamline the Headcount Request process using MS Power Apps.

Promoted to Business Process Consultant after completing an ETS Six Sigma Green Belt Project and demonstrating an elevated level of competency in process management skills. Tasked with documenting and presenting findings, recommendations, and proposed solutions to problems across the organization.
• Led a complex root cause analysis with technical and operational teams that addressed over fifteen issues and identified solutions that prevented errors from reaching our customers.
• Analyzed a large set of data and provided insights that helped focus process improvement efforts for a highly visible customer communication initiative.
• Collaborated with Program Operations, Supply Chain, and Client Management to develop detailed process maps, RACI, and risk analysis (FMEA) to enhance clarity of roles and responsibilities for year-to-year activities and support operational readiness

Led a complex root cause analysis with technical and operational teams.
Analyzed data to provide insights for a customer communication initiative.
Collaborated with Program Operations, Supply Chain, and Client Management to develop process maps, RACI, and risk analysis.

Coordinated the internal Six Sigma Green Belt Training Program. Managed the team book of work, monthly performance metrics, and prepared accurate and timely status reports for executive leadership.
• Reduced the percentage of score report image defects by 22% by leading an improvement project for TOEFL iBT® and as a result earned an ETS Six Sigma Green Belt certification.
• Created a dedicated SharePoint site that housed internal training materials, tracked progress of projects, and completed certifications.

Coordinated the internal Six Sigma Green Belt Training Program.
Reduced percentage of score report image defects by 22%.
Created a dedicated SharePoint site for tracking internal training materials.

Prepared grant request forms and obtained workflow approvals.
Directed incoming medical drug information calls.
Ran bi-weekly and monthly call volume reports.

Organized and developed a process to track and maintain medical education grants.
Coordinated global meetings and advisory boards.
Successfully stayed within budget, achieving cost savings.