TABC/Toyota (~1.5 years)

TABC is a Toyota manufacturing facility located in Long Beach, California. It is, in fact, Toyota's first factory in the United States. I was there as a W-2 contractor for about 1.5 years, working in the small IS department.

• Acted as a "voice of reason" to the IS manager. Having worked at a number of other companies, I was ideally positioned to bring a fresh, outside perspective to TABC's IS department, which I felt was in need of some new blood. I was able to introduce several best practices and concepts, and explain their benefits.
• I was the local IS team member for implementations of PeopleSoft Time & Labor and Payroll modules. These projects were managed from Kentucky, but my responsibilities included requirements review, payroll data conversion, configuration of manual check-printing functionality, some training, and the design of some auxiliary reports not provided natively by PeopleSoft.
• I was the local IS team member for a project to install turnstiles, gates, and card readers, and issue new badges to all personnel. I handled the acquisition and configuration of two new servers, installation and configuration of the Lenel security software and SQL Server database, and much of the management of the security vendor/contractor.
• I developed, modified, and supported numerous applications using VB.Net, ASP.Net, SQL Server, Crystal Reports, and Access. Examples include applications to order steel coils, record quality control issues, report safety concerns, manage facilities documentation, track hourly workers, and more.

Ameriquest Mortgage Company/ACC Capital Holdings (~4 years)

Ameriquest was a large subprime mortgage company in Orange, California. It focused on retail originations, but became a sister company to Argent Mortgage, which was a wholesale originator. ACC Capital Holdings was then formed as sort of a parent company. I started out in the IS department as a W-2 contractor, and was there for just under a year. When that contract ended, I was asked to join the Treasury department as a corp-to-corp contractor, reporting to the Sr. Manager of Treasury Operations and the SVP for Cash and Risk Management. It was in this position, which I occupied for three years, that I had my greatest accomplishments. My duties can be categorized four ways:

• Mediating - I was the primary technical liaison between the Treasury department and IS. When any system which would affect Treasury needed to be changed, I either drove that change by writing the business case and providing functional and/or technical specifications for it, or I ensured that the change met our needs by coordinating with programmers, analysts, and project managers in IS. For example, rapid changes in the business meant that our loan warehouse application had to constantly evolve. I was able to determine what changes were necessary, and provide specific direction to our programmers to achieve that. When we needed to send data to our banks in new file formats, I was able to delve into our various databases to map our fields to the banks’ requirements.
• Reporting - I designed numerous reports used to provide information to staff, managers, and executives across the Ameriquest family of companies. These reports provided unprecedented visibility into the characteristics of the loan portfolio, aided in minimizing borrowing costs, helped in forecasting cash requirements, and were indispensable as loan volume grew eighteen-fold during my tenure. Here is a prime example: When I started with Treasury, they couldn't tell you what their loan portfolio looked like. Banks would call to complain that their pool had a low weighted average coupon or too many manufactured home loans, and the department just had to take their word for it. I created reports to show all relevant statistics for our portfolio overall, in addition to the pools at each warehouse lender. The department could then be proactive in ensuring that there was no adverse selection among our lenders, which not only helped Ameriquest manage its loans, but greatly enhanced our reputation with our banks.
• Managing - I was responsible for establishing many Treasury department policies and procedures and partially supervising six treasury analysts. I essentially took on the position which would later be called Warehouse Manager. As such, I spoke on a daily basis with my counterparts at our Wall St. banks and custodial banks, resolving issues with loans and scheduling borrowings and repayments. With an $18 billion portfolio of loans, there were numerous daily borrowings and repayments. I chose the loans for these transactions, and directed our analysts in performing them. I also had frequent communication with our capital markets and post-close departments, an helped coordinate the Treasury response to issues raised by those departments.
• Developing - My original contract had me doing SQL Server development and co-designing a new loan warehouse application. I led the logical database design, gathered requirements, wrote specs, converted data from the existing system, supervised UAT and training, and conducted status meetings with management.

Long Beach Mortgage (6 months)

Long Beach Mortgage was another subprime mortgage company, also in Orange, California. The company was eventually purchased by Washington Mutual, which is also gone now, obviously. I was a W-2 contractor here for six months, with a very limited assignment.

• Long Beach Mortgage had a very basic Intranet, written in Classic ASP, which primarily served Crystal Reports. I totally redesigned the frame-based Intranet, eliminating the frames so that there was greater screen area for presentation. I also created numerous NT security groups, and changed the directory structure so that access to Intranet pages could be better enforced and maintained. Additionally, I added functionality to the Intranet such as a phone directory, searchable knowledge base, and an auditing link-in to the origination system.

Day Runner, Inc. (~3 years)

Day Runner was a Fullerton, California company which made organizers, calendars, notebooks, and the like. I was there for three years as a W-2 contractor, and I participated in a large number of projects.

• Using tools such as Visual Basic, Classic ASP, SQL Server, PowerBuilder, Hyperion Pillar, DTS, and the AS/400, I developed an Intranet, as well as applications used for e-commerce analysis, order fulfillment, customer service reporting, vendor managed inventory, document imaging, budgeting, and help desk management.

UCLA - Social Sciences Computing (~2 years)

I was an employee at UCLA for just under two years, working in the Social Sciences Computing department, which supported 13 departments within the Social Sciences division. UCLA had a highly decentralized computing environment, and our group had wide latitude in providing solutions to our customers.

• Using Access and SQL Server, I designed a system which eliminated the reliance on hardcopy ledgers and allowed administrative staff to generate many different customizable reports combining local projections with general ledger data. This system was originally used within the Social Sciences division, but was soon adopted by other divisions within the College of Letters & Science.

Nestlé USA/Nestlé Brands Foodservice (~4.5 years)

Nestlé is the largest food company in the world, and I worked as an employee at the US headquarters in Glendale, California for 4.5 years. I started out in the Foodservice division as a forecaster/planner for coffee. I began developing little programs in Excel and Paradox to aid me in my own job. I was soon using those programs, plus the new Microsoft Access, to create a variety of small tools and reports for our marketing staff. After a couple years of this, I was asked to join the IS department as a systems analyst.

• Managed and supported an Executive Information System with approximately 100 users. This was a product from Comshare, and it included elements that ran on the mainframe, as well as on the desktop under Windows 3.1.
• Using Access and Excel, I developed applications used for national accounts sales forecasting, the management of coffee distributors, and the generation of numerous reports.

United States Marine Corps (4 years)

I enlisted in the Marines soon after high school, and I served for four years as a Signals Intelligence Analyst/Arabic Linguist and Electronic Warfare Operator. I reached the rank of Corporal/E-4.

• In addition to operating equipment such as direction finders and jammers, I also specialized in SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) as an Arabic listener/translator. This position required a Top Secret security clearance, with various enhancements as the mission dictated. I don't remember that much Arabic anymore, but give me a Hans-Wehr dictionary and it'll all come back to me.