Kate Herrick lives in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. She enjoys reading, traditional Irish music, international languages (particularly Spanish, Irish Gaelic, and French), cooking/entertaining, and American football. She is also a Google-Fu master, specializing in SEO-related tactics and finding the unfindable. As a senior or lead business analyst for seven years, Kate brings thought leadership, business acumen, and a solid technical background to her work. She also has a tremendous sense of humor and a flair for the creative.

January 2010 to present

Senior Consulting Business Analyst

Beacon Technologies, Inc.

Beacon is among the top technology and business practice consulting organizations in the Midwest, supporting technology development, corporate supported open source, project management, process engineering and workflow management . Clients include companies like CUNA Mutual, Land’s End, and State of Wisconsin government.

• Collaborated with client resources and other consulting organizations to devise and document internal business processes related to product development and strategy. Leveraging extensive knowledge management and archiving background, lead the effort to construct and deploy clearly-documented and easy-to-use strategic and tactical product information reference materials for the leadership team and their subordinates.
• Provided analysis support for major compliance-related initiatives that served to better place the client products in the marketplace. Developed as-is and to-be process documentation and supported efforts to devise sustainable cross-organizational and cross-functional monitoring and notification systems within the organization.

March 2008 to March 2009

Senior Consultant and Business Analyst

Direct Technology

Direct Technology provides professional consulting services, staffing, and hosting facilities for such entities as Microsoft Corporation, The World Bank, Sempra Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, AT&T, Verizon Communications, U.S. Department of Labor, numerous states, and several foreign countries.

• Collaborated with Microsoft IT client resources and other consulting organizations to enhance and maintain customer-facing software licensing system whose purpose was to furnish administration interface for managing license-related benefits. Supported functional specification development, test, and deployment efforts.
• Supported Microsoft online services (i.e. MSN, Windows Live, etc.) finance resources in developing requirements and specifications for a number of disparate systems and reports used in financial performance planning and forecasting. Furnished services including elicitation of requirements, documentation, and functional specification development.

July 2006 to December 2007

Assistant Vice President and Lead Strategic Development Analyst-Enterprise Risk Management

Washington Mutual Bank

Washington Mutual Bank was the United States’ largest savings and loan, providing financial services to individuals, small businesses, and commercial concerns.

• Recruited as lead analyst and subject matter expert in support of the development of an automated credit evaluation and decision tool used to underwrite residential mortgages.
• Gathered business requirements, collaborated to define scope and effort sizing, and engaged cross-organizational resources in development effort.
• Documented requirements catalog, business problem statements, project change requests and other documentation in conjunction with the SDLC.
• Prepared comprehensive unit, SIT, and QA test plans, wrote test scripts, executed tests and documented outcomes.
• Final project (exceeding a year in length) has six requirements catalogs directed at various audiences comprised of approximately 900 individual requirement specifications and 1800 test cases executed by remote resources located both domestically and offshore (India, Philippines).
• Managed several remedial rapid response releases (requirements, testing, and documentation) in the last two quarters to align credit standards with fluctuating domestic mortgage and lending market conditions, all on time and without defects.
• Interfaced with and managed relationships/expectations with wide range of stakeholders at every level of the organization except the executive with emphasis on understanding business operation and goals and as liaison throughout the development effort.

Hobbies/Achievements:

• Volunteer canvasser in local neighborhoods in support of four major political campaigns.
• Avid reader, particularly historical biography, religious studies and travel.
• Accomplished gourmet and home entertainer.
• Expert Internet researcher.