Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C

Current

• Owner, President at Real-Life Projects, Inc.
• Project management writer and speaker at www.alexsbrown.com
• Member at Toastmasters International

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Past

• Founder and Moderator at Toastmasters International LinkedIn Group
• Strategic Planning Office Manager at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group, USA
• Project Manager at Chubb & Son

• Vice President, Senior Applications Manager at Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc.
• Applications Manager at Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc.
• Product Manager at Automatic Data Processing, Inc.

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3 more...

Education

• Princeton University
• Collegiate High School

Recommended

9 people have recommended Alex S.

Connections

342 connections

Industry

Professional Training & Coaching

Websites

• Articles and Speeches
• Real-Life Projects, Inc.
• NSA Speaker Profile

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Summary

Expert project manager with expertise in managing complex projects for on-time, on-budget delivery. Have solved complex business and technical problems negotiating creative solutions that satisfy conflicting goals. Mentoring individuals and speaking as a professional expert to project management professional groups.

For more details, visit my website at http://www.alexsbrown.com. It has my articles on project management and slides from all of my public presentations.

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Specialties:

Project manager handling projects ranging from corporate strategic planning, marketing, Information Technology, and business process automation. Experienced with both property & casualty insurance and U.S. brokerage industries. Experienced speaker and trainer.

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Experience

• Owner, President

  Real-Life Projects, Inc.

  (Privately Held; Myself Only; Professional Training & Coaching industry)

  April 2006 — Present (2 years 7 months)

  Helping businesses execute their strategic plans, communicate and coordinate work across departments, and improve business results. Applying real-life experience managing projects to a wide variety of business problems. Providing keynote speeches, customized training, and business consulting. Visit www.rlprj.com for more information.

• Project management writer and speaker

  www.alexsbrown.com

  (Non-Profit; Myself Only; Professional Training & Coaching industry)

  2002 — Present (6 years)

  Writing papers, delivering speeches, and giving on-line advice to hundreds of project managers world-wide. For details, visit http://www.alexsbrown.com.

• Member

  Toastmasters International

  (Non-Profit; 10,001 or more employees; Professional Training & Coaching industry)

  2001 — Present (7 years)

  -Area Governor of the Year 2005-2006, District 46
  -Founder of the Toastmasters International LinkedIn group
  -Humorous Speech Contest Winner, Second Place Fall 2006, Division H District 46 (over 25 clubs and over 500 members)
  -International Speech Contest Winner (inspirational speaking), Second Place Spring 2007, Division H District 46
  -Competent Toastmaster (CTM)
  -Competent Communicator (CC)
  -Competent Leader (CL)
  -Advanced Toastmaster Bronze (ATMB)
  -Advanced Toastmaster Silver (ATMS)
  -Advanced Communicator Gold (AC-G)
  -Advanced Leader Sliver (ALS)
  -Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) - The highest award in the Toastmasters speaking and leadership program
  
  Many officer and leadership roles:
  -2008-2009 Division C Governor, District 83
  -2007-2008 Area 81 Governor, District 46
  -2005-2006 Area 81 Governor, District 46
  -Club officer roles including President, Vice President Education, Vice President Public Relations, Secretary, Treasurer, and Sergeant-At-Arms

• Founder and Moderator

  Toastmasters International LinkedIn Group

  (Internet industry)

  September 2007 — July 2008 (11 months)

  Founded an on-line LinkedIn networking group for Toastmasters International members. Created the http://www.toastmasters-networking.org/ web site to support the group, and to help Toastmaster members find other on-line networking opportunities.
  
  Recruited other moderators to help run the group. Started in September 2007 with the first member, and grew the group to over 800 members by July 2008. Grew quickly, by word-of-mouth, and relied on volunteers and member honesty to confirm who was and was not actually a Toastmaster member.
  
  In July 2008, Toastmasters International saw the promise of LinkedIn and established an official LinkedIn group. Worked with TI staff to transfer all members to the new, official group. Found that our screening process had kept the quality of the membership very high. Well over 90% were current or former Toastmasters, despite the fact that our volunteer moderators never had access to the official list of Toastmasters members.

• Strategic Planning Office Manager

  Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group, USA

  (Privately Held; 201-500 employees; JP:8752; Insurance industry)

  2003 — 2007 (4 years)

  Administed the MSIG Strategic Plan, including start-up and post-project review for every effort in it. Trained and mentored over 60 project managers in the 400-person company. Reported the status of all projects and programs in the plan to the CEO, Chairman, and President. Recommended solutions to critical problems for their decision.
  -Oversaw a portfolio of between 15 and 30 active projects across every department in the company
  -Recommended changes to the project portfolio to reflect changing strategic company goals
  -Created a system of policies and procedures that define roles for sponsors and project managers, setting policies for change, budget, and schedule control
  -Estimated and administered annual budgets for the project portfolio ranging from $2 million to $7.5 million
  -Proposed up to ten new project ideas per quarter to senior management

• Project Manager

  Chubb & Son

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; CB; Insurance industry)

  2000 — 2003 (3 years)

  Managed the development of the web-based Claims Financial System. Developed system in partnership with Accenture. Guided the full software-development lifecycle, including performance testing. Launched Workers Compensation in 2002, developed Casualty for launch in 2003, and started Property and Auto.
  -In December 2000, management set a target of September 30, 2001 for end of product test. Delivered product-tested system on that date.
  -Estimated a 20-month development-and-test plan with 1,300 tasks for Property and Auto, using actual costs of previous work.
  -Managed the work of eight Chubb employees and the overall progress of a Chubb/Accenture team of over 20. Total work-hours invested from Conceptual Design to Product Test for Workers Comp was over 30 programmer-years. Each project phase was completed within 10% budget variance, and overall under budget.
  -Used Earned Value and statistical analysis to provide accurate forecasts two to three weeks earlier than previous tools.

• Vice President, Senior Applications Manager

  Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc.

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MER; Financial Services industry)

  1997 — 2000 (3 years)

  Managed two intranet sites and two components of the ML Direct Internet site. The two intranet sites provided on-line training and on-line marketing materials for 14,000 U.S. Financial Consultants and their assistants. Developed the Tour and real-time market data components of ML Direct (www.mldirect.ml.com) to service tens of thousands of Merrill Lynch customers. Managed staff responsible for supervising and helping developers, testers, and production-systems operations.
  -Managed between two and six direct reports. Directed the work of 17 people with an annual budget of $1.5 million
  -Delivered market data on the ML Direct web site on time with no major flaws in six-months.
  -Year-2000 certified a 20-year-old system in less than six weeks. Spearheaded a team to test six distinct tiers and four platforms: DOS PC, Windows NT, MVS, and Unix RS/6000. System ran without problems on 1/3/2000.

• Applications Manager

  Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc.

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MER; Financial Services industry)

  1997 — 1998 (1 year)

  Led order management and collaborative computing projects.

• Product Manager

  Automatic Data Processing, Inc.

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; AUD; Financial Services industry)

  1995 — 1997 (2 years)

  Coordinated large-scale computing projects for the brokerage industry. Involved in a variety of back-office, accounting, and regulatory reporting systems, working with dozens of broker-dealers. Projects included a massive clean-up of a database shared by over 100 clients (1.7 million records changed out of 4.3 million on file, all over a single weekend without incident. Responsible for system development to calculate broker/dealer’s accounting charges; to process mutual fund sub-accounting (FAL SuRPAS); to process international clearance and settlement (Wilco GLOSS - Unix-based); and to develop requirements for phone-based order-entry system. Dealt with many product types including stocks, bonds, options, mutual funds, and repurchase agreements.

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Education

• Princeton University

  Bachelor of Arts, US History, 1988 — 1992

  Activities and Societies:

  Princeton University Jazz Ensemble (PUJE), Princeton University Orchestra - Double Bass

• Collegiate High School

  HS, 1984 — 1988

Additional Information

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Websites:

• Articles and Speeches
• Real-Life Projects, Inc.
• NSA Speaker Profile

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Interests:

Strategic planning, public speaking, mentoring, project management, open-source software, software development, new technology

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Groups:

National Speakers Association (NSA), Project Management Institute (PMI), American Society for the Advancement of Project Management (asapm), International Project Management Association (IPMA), Toastmasters International, IEEE, IEEE Computer, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

You can also network with me on XING (https://www.xing.com/profile/AlexS_Brown) or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=575587928)

•    Toastmasters Int
•    linked PMP (www.linkedpmp.com)... 10,000+ members!!!
•    National Speakers Association
•    Strategic Alliance
•    PMI Information Systems SIG (ISSIG) 6300+
•    Project Manager Networking Group
•    IEEE
•    Trainer: A Value Has A Value If and Only If Its Value is Valued
•    PMI MetSIG
•    1. IPMA (International Project Management Association)
•    Project Managers Group (5000+ Members)
•    Toastmaster
•    Project Management Institute Group - 5,000+ Members
•    Princeton University - Alumni Association
•    PMI Risk SIG
•    Automatic Data Processing Alumni Group
•    Toastmasters International Members
•    National Speakers Association (NSA) Professional Members
•    PMI College of Scheduling
•    Princeton Referral Network (PRN)

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Honors:

Professional Member of National Speakers Association member (September 2008) - only of only a few project managers admitted as a full, professional member

Toastmasters International:
-Area Governor of the Year 2006, District 46
-Humorous Speech Contest Winner, Second Place Fall 2006, Division H District 46 (over 25 clubs and over 500 members)
-International Speech Contest Winner (inspirational speaking), Second Place Spring 2007, Division H District 46

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch