damienpauldong.com
damienpauldong@gmail.com

Experience

Interim Executive Director - Artisans Asylum

Jul 2023 - Jan 2024

Managed a $2mil annual budget non-profit organization, with a 52,000 sqft facility in the City of Boston, dedicated to the fabrication arts. Stepped down from the Board of Directors to serve a six-month term following the resignation of the previous Executive Director. Focused on improving operational excellence to help the organization reach financial stability. Worked with a combination of three full-time staff, twenty five part-time shop leads, and dozens of volunteers to deliver the following results during my term:

  • Signed a ~$1mil lease deferral agreement with our landlord, Harvard Real Estate, to give the organization a financial runway to grow operations.

  • Drove membership growth to deliver 35% above budgeted target.

  • Secured a 30% increase in revenue managing the City of Somerville's FabVille maker space program.

  • Initiated an operational audit to optimize processes, reduce operating overhead, and prepare the organization for scaling. Realized nearly $100k in bottom line savings.

  • Re-designed the workshop procurement processes across the organization to reducing turnaround times from months/weeks to days.

  • Launched a comprehensive systems optimization project to integrate disparate operations systems (CRM, bookkeeping, merchant gateway, and access control), to improve financial visibility and close a gap of nearly $35k in outstanding receivables.

  • Delivered over 50 free community events to increase visibility to the Allston/Brighton community.

  • Advocated for the organization with municipal and state electorate to identify future government funding opportunities.

  • Worked one-on-one with staff to improve morale, engagement, and retention.

Co-Chair, Board of Directors - Artisans Asylum

Jan 2023 - Jul 2023

Elected to the Co-chair position to bring leadership guidance to the Board of Directors to help improve involvement and engagement of board members.

  • Served on the Finance Committee to develop a strategy to achieve long-term financial sustainability in our new location.

  • Launched an IT Committee to create a roadmap to address operational issues using combination of part-time staff, volunteers, and external consultants.

  • Worked one-on-one with the outgoing Executive Director to identify operational priorities of the organization and develop a leadership transition plan following his resignation.

Member, Board of Directors - Artisans Asylum

Nov 2021 - Jan 2023

Nominated as a director for the largest non-profit maker space in the Northeast US. Served as a member of the Grand Opening and Executive Transition committees, helping to prepare the organization for re-opening after a simultaneous move of facilities and a change in executive leadership.

  • Volunteered as a technology advisor to the organization, with a focus on systems consolidation and cost optimization in IT operations, cutting tech spend by nearly 40%.

  • Organized a grand opening event featuring guided tours, demonstrations, and programming to educate over 700 guests about our mission, while also raising over $120,000 for the organization.

Co-Founder & Managing Director - Cicada LLC

Oct 2018 - Oct 2020

Launched Cicada, a technology-forward venue development startup designing a next-generation performing arts center in the heart of downtown Boston.

  • Secured financial backing of the project by a C-suite executive of Grubhub.

  • Built a team from the ground up comprised of experts in architecture, engineering, zoning, real estate law, audio/video/lighting systems, and hospitality.

  • Engaged with municipal officials and community stakeholders to earn neighborhood buy-in of the project vision.

  • Produced high-concept event programming designed to test the market for next-gen interactive and immersive entertainment experiences.

  • Developed advanced entertainment system workflows for prototyping of technical capabilities of the future venue. Incorporated emerging performance technologies such as projection mapping, sACN-based LED pixel mapping, interactive sensor-based show control, audio-reactive generative visuals, and virtual reality/augmented reality musical and visual arts performance.

  • Evaluated over 70 prospective locations and closed an $11.5mil commercial real estate deal for a 17,000 sqft space in Boston’s Government Center district.

IT Solutions Consultant - Merck KGaA - EMD Serono

Jan 2015 - May 2018

Developed technology solutions for enterprise applications in the areas of collaboration, process automation, unified communications, and business intelligence. Worked with internal stakeholders across company divisions to develop tailored technology solutions to address business problems.

  • Served as a change manager for a multi-year cloud transformation project. Interfaced with stakeholders and offshore development teams to migrate over 1,500 applications, databases, and workflows from legacy platforms (Lotus Notes, Sharepoint, Documentum, Liferay, and more) to the Microsoft 365 Cloud and ServiceNow.

  • Managed stakeholders from an international team of EMEA commercial unit leads from 20 countries to design a new unified self-service global dashboard built on the Qlik Sense platform, tracking over €4B worth of sales data.

  • Managed a project to automate the tracking of customs clearance workflows and documentation for international imports of products worth over $1B annually.

Manager, Collaboration Systems - Merck KGaA - EMD Serono

Sep 2010 - Dec 2015

Oversaw the full lifecycle development of all internal enterprise collaboration tools for the Americas region. Led development teams of both onshore and offshore teams to deliver software releases on platforms such as Liferay, Sharepoint, Documentum, and ServiceNow.

  • Managed IT service management for the US pharmaceutical division in accordance with ITIL best practices. Worked with internal stakeholders to negotiate service level agreements, calculate annual operating budget proposals, and prepare KPI reports for all internal technology offerings.

  • Managed IT audits for the US pharmaceutical division, managing security and compliance audits for all systems in the US pharmaceutical subsidiary (including ISO 9001, 20000, 27001 certifications).

  • Awarded a global "Innovation Award, Silver Medal" for development of an ePedigree drug safety and authenticity mobile app.

  • Awarded a US divisional award for "Leading and Living the Company Values" for consolidating the company's event planning/sourcing onto a unified platform, enabling centralized sourcing and cost reporting.

Integration Developer - Thinking Phone Networks

Jul 2009 - Sep 2010

Worked on early-stage startup as one of the first 20 employees, building a cloud-based unified communications platform for small and medium businesses. Developed integrations between our cloud platform and other third-party enterprise applications.

  • Served as a presale engineer and consultant for developing custom integrations for new client infrastructure.

  • Helped sales teams develop solutions to technical problems to assist in customer success and change management.

  • Developed turnkey plugins for Microsoft CRM, Salesforce.com, Sugar CRM, and Microsoft Outlook to accelerate integration and customer onboarding.

  • Designed marketing and training material for our integration components including product data sheets, user guides, and video product demonstrations.

Co-Founder & CTO - YouAre.TV

Sep 2007 - Jun 2009

Co-founded a startup, “You Are TV”, which was one of the first movers in the online streaming video space, targeting independent filmmakers and emerging content creators.

  • Led development of our custom video hosting and transcoding platform using PHP, MySQL, and YUI, hosted on AWS, with one of the first flash-based streaming video players on the market.

  • Built infrastructure on the newly-launched Amazon Web Services platform as a scalable solution for content distribution for online video.

  • Secured angel round founding and delivered over a dozen pitches to potential investors for additional funding rounds.

  • Grew a loyal online community of over 1,500 active creators with over 10,000 videos to our content library.

  • Packaged our technology into a white-label online video platform as a service offering.

Manager, Siebel Applications - Serono

Jun 2006 - Aug 2007

Managed the lifecycle of applications built on the Siebel (Oracle CRM) platform, overseeing project budgets totaling over $1M USD.

  • Launched Siebel Analytics (Oracle OBIEE) as the company's new cross-platform business intelligence platform.

  • Deployed Verint Impact 360 Workforce Optimization to enable call recording for compliance, legal, and training purposes in the company's patient support call centers.

  • Audited patient-facing CRM systems to validate for FDA compliance with 21 CFR part 11 reporting regulations.

Technology Consultant - Deloitte

Jul 2003 - May 2006

Developed technology solutions and strategies for Fortune 500 clients across the US as a member of the firm's Healthcare and Life Sciences practice.

  • Focused on sales and service-oriented technologies such as CRM, business intelligence, call center automation, and computer-telephony integration.

  • Delivered a systems separation project to facilitate the HP/Agilent spinoff. Developed a new data warehouse for the newly formed Agilent business units, working on data model design, ETL scripts, and report creation. Worked with the Agilent infrastructure team to implement remote server monitoring and maintenance capabilities using Quest Foglight and custom server-side scripting.

  • Led development of computer-telephony integration (CTI) between Siebel Call Center and Genesys systems, creating a unified communications platform for customer service reps with automated subscriber record retrieval.

  • Awarded a Deloitte "Applause Award" for outstanding performance in a sales engineering role, developing wireframe prototypes, resulting in the win of a major new project for Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina.

SkillS

Organizational Management

Team leadership, non-profit management, business process engineering, operations management, stakeholder management, change management, basic bookkeeping

IT Operations

ITIL Certified in IT Service Management, ISO 9001:2008, ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011, ISO/IEC 27001:2005, project management (waterfall & scrum), IT costing and budgeting

Infrastructure

Amazon Web Services, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, Git, OpenWRT, Linux & Windows Administration

Enterprise Application Development

Office 365, SharePoint, Salesforce, Qlik Sense, Oracle BI EE, Dynamics CRM, Siebel, Liferay

Programming Languages

CSS, HTML, Javascript, PHP, Python, SQL, C/C++, C#, Processing, Visual Basic, Arduino, CircuitPython

Certifications

ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management

PeopleCert
Issued May 2012

Professional Project Management (PMBoK)

International Institute for Learning
Issued May 2013

Education

Boston College, Carroll School of Management

Bachelor of Science
Computer Science & Operations Mgmt Double Major
Class of 2003